Overall Comments
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Tim Smith of Mt. Wolf, Pennsylvania is an unusual luthier. His website is a statement of his working philosophy in a nutshell: www.savethebanjos.com. Tim's passion to reviving older, medium-grade banjos and finding homes for them. I purchased a circa 1900 no-name open-back with Cannonball nylon strings from Tim for a very reasonable price and was completely happy with. So happy, in fact, that I sent him my Deering Goodtime open-back awhile later and asked him to customize it by doubling the number of hooks, adding an ebony fingerboard, ebony heel cap, and re-styling the Gumby-like peghead. He did excellent work at a reasonable price. Tim represents his work fairly and his website contains step-by-step, illustrated case histories of many of the banjos he has brought back to like. Check with Tim if you're interested in an economical, turn-of-the-century instrument that shows its history -- Tim doesn't restore banjos to a like-new state; that's not his thing. But he definitely gives them a new lease on life. |
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