A rapid fire review of an excellent, budget friendly banjo with great tone and durability. See Blaine's review of the Gold Tone Mini here 👉 • Gold Tone AC-mini revi...
Great review. I will be forever convinced the operator of the instrument always outweighs the quality of the instrument. You make this thing sound great.
The one thing I would add here : I bought the AC12/A with the shorter string length and I like the bridge being a little closer to the center of the drum that adds to the warmth of the banjo .. The second thing that I just love about this banjo is the 1 7/16 " width at the nut ... It is a width I wish every clawhamer banjo neck could be ordered at ..I may buy a second one for the John Balch head and higher Nylgut strings .I love the intonation of the one I got so much I have left it with the factory set up ..All my other banjos are set up Nylgut and home made taller bridges (Ala Jason Romero :) All the best , Guy
Nice review, I have the AC-12 fitted with some minstrel nylguts, planning on getting the AC-12 fretless when they restock (September apparently, I asked them). The tailpiece often comes with sharp burrs in the slots that have a habit of cutting the strings as you mentioned, took me a few sets of strings to figure it out what the cause was. I emailed the guys I got it from in England and they mentioned that it's fairly common with these budget machined tailpieces. got some cheap diamond files online along with some fine sandpaper, filed the slots down and then went over them with wet sandpaper and it fixed the issue. But overall really nice banjo (especially for the price), it's my first banjo as well. Excited to get the fretless one because running nylguts at lower tunings induces a lot of fret buzz even after putting on a raised minstrel bridge. It's pretty hard to find a fretless/minstrel banjo in England unfortunately. There's one guy I know of (flatfootjohnny) but they're pretty pricey. Edit; Could you do a video on how to adjust the rods to fix the angle/action if you get the time? That's an issue I have on mine as well but I don't really know how to go about fixing it. I tried to adjust the truss rod and I couldn't even get it to spin, not sure if I was doing it wrong or something.
Great review. I will be forever convinced the operator of the instrument always outweighs the quality of the instrument. You make this thing sound great.
I have the AC-1, play it just as much as much as my Vega Senator. Great banjos!
The one thing I would add here : I bought the AC12/A with the shorter string length and I like the bridge being a little closer to the center of the drum that adds to the warmth of the banjo .. The second thing that I just love about this banjo is the 1 7/16 " width at the nut ... It is a width I wish every clawhamer banjo neck could be ordered at ..I may buy a second one for the John Balch head and higher Nylgut strings .I love the intonation of the one I got so much I have left it with the factory set up ..All my other banjos are set up Nylgut and home made taller bridges (Ala Jason Romero :) All the best , Guy
Nice review, I have the AC-12 fitted with some minstrel nylguts, planning on getting the AC-12 fretless when they restock (September apparently, I asked them). The tailpiece often comes with sharp burrs in the slots that have a habit of cutting the strings as you mentioned, took me a few sets of strings to figure it out what the cause was. I emailed the guys I got it from in England and they mentioned that it's fairly common with these budget machined tailpieces. got some cheap diamond files online along with some fine sandpaper, filed the slots down and then went over them with wet sandpaper and it fixed the issue.
But overall really nice banjo (especially for the price), it's my first banjo as well. Excited to get the fretless one because running nylguts at lower tunings induces a lot of fret buzz even after putting on a raised minstrel bridge. It's pretty hard to find a fretless/minstrel banjo in England unfortunately. There's one guy I know of (flatfootjohnny) but they're pretty pricey.
Edit; Could you do a video on how to adjust the rods to fix the angle/action if you get the time? That's an issue I have on mine as well but I don't really know how to go about fixing it. I tried to adjust the truss rod and I couldn't even get it to spin, not sure if I was doing it wrong or something.
When I get a moment, I'll try to post a setup video of this banjo. Thanks for the view!
epic
What’s was the tune you played at the beginning?
Drunkards Lone Child