This Rettberg & Lange Super Orpheum No. 1 tenor banjo found its way to my shop in rough shape after well over 100 years of making music. Man do I wish it could have told me all its stories! The 4 tuners were each from a different manufacture and 20 screw holes (count em!) had been drilled at one point or another to hold them in place. My first job was to fill all the holes with color-matched epoxy, replace part of the headstock which had broken off, and install a matching set of tuners.
The neck angle was so shallow the strings practically rested on the fingerboard, so next I had to reset the neck angle. On some banjos, this is a simple matter of adjusting a couple of nuts. Banjos of this era, however, have a square wooden dowel through the body that needs to be removed and the angle reset before the neck heel can be shaved off to restore the proper neck angle. The 100-year-old hide glue held firm despite an hour of blasting steam into the joint. In the end, the neck heel gave way before the glue joint!
At some point in its life, the neck was poorly refinished, so after gluing the neck cracks, I stripped, stained and refinished the neck to better match the birdseye maple rim and resonator.
After cutting 3 mm off the bottom of the neck heel, the angle to the body was restored and I restrung the instrument, curious to hear what it would sound like after many years of idleness. The tone seemed to lack volume, but after tightening the head and raising the bridge, eureka! It could really ring! It should give its new owner many years of happy music making.
