1918 Orpheum Brass Band 5-string Banjo Used

$2,500.00

Details

Now here’s a rare bird. This Orpheum Brass Band was made in 1918 and we’ve never offered another one for sale. The model was introduced in 1914 and it was designed to be as loud as, well, a Brass Band. Its volume comes from its size and this is a big banjo. The head is over 13 inches in diameter, and it has 29 frets, 9 of them in the fingerboard extension stretching 4 inches over the head and the string scale is over 28 inches. It has the patented Orpheum archtop tone ring. We’re not 100% sure what Orpheum was thinking when they built this banjo, but we suspect they could see that four-string banjos were becoming more popular at the dawn of the Jazz Age and they wanted to come up with the ultimate five-string open back to stem the tide. It didn’t work and by 1916 Orpheum was making a dozen tenor banjos for every five-string and by 1920 it more like fifty tenors for every five-string. We don’t know how many Brass Band models Orpheum made, but it can't have been more than a couple of hundred.

This rather bizarre but beautiful banjo is pretty much all original except for the tuners, which are geared PegHeds, and the custom plastic head. There's a nicely-done repair to the fingerboard extension and the neck is quite straight with some lovely carving at the heel. The original leather Bull’s Head brand case is included but it’s quite fragile and we don’t recommend using it to carry the banjo. This is a loud banjo, as you might expect, but it’s not harsh and it has a pleasing, rounded tone. Orpheum made other big-head banjos, the most oft-heard being the one played by Charlie Poole on his earlier recordings. Walt Koken, a contemporary musician, still plays one today so you can hear an example on YouTube. Thanks to the huge head they have a tone like no other and this Brass Band has one of the highest "what the....?" banjo rankings when pulled out at a jam session.