During the summer of 1984 the Kettering Banjo Society (KBS) did it’s annual show at the Fairmont West High School in Kettering, OH. We were participating in the tenth year of the summer arts festival in Kettering. Normally the show was held each year in the outdoor amphitheater. However, this year it rained. Officials moved the performance to the high school auditorium.

Each year the KBS invited all banjo bands in the area, and individual banjo players not associated with any band to perform with us. This year a fellow from Austin, TX just happened to be in town during this event, so we invited him to play with us. We also made arrangements for him to play a couple of solos. He was a very good player. When he came to the show he brought with him a restored banjo he had just purchased. It was a Vega Deluxe Profession model. He had spent over $5,000.00 on the restoration! It was magnificent! It was just a work of art! The sound was good also.

After the show was over and we were packing things away and getting ready to have a pizza party, my Mom, Father-in-law, and Mother-in-law asked, "Who was the fellow with the gorgeous banjo?" I said, "That was John Huntsberger from Austin, TX. To bad he broke a string in the middle of his last song!" They said, "No! Not him. The fellow down on the end of the front row." Well, that turned out to be a fellow with a junky Vega Vox No. 4. He really doesn’t take very good care of the banjo. It needed frets. It was dirty, and the sound was terrible. However, it did have a very bold design that you could see back in the fortieth row!

It seems in Vaudeville days, say around 1920, the most expensive instruments were gaudy and overly embellished. This was done for a purpose. The manufacturers and the banjo players wisely knew that the "fortieth row" was a long distance from the stage. The quality, artistry, and dark finish of the Victorian banjo could not be seen by the audience in the fortieth row. With all the embellishments, or "ginger-bread" as we say today, the banjos became very expensive! Thus, the banjo became a peacock! The manufacturers painted them white, used imitation pearl surfaces and gold-plated engraved metal parts. They used rhinestones of all colors to catch the stage lights, and anything that would attract audience attention, such as the painting designs on the Vega Vox No. 4.

Thus, the $5,000.00 restoration banjo was not seen. It faded into the background with the rest of the banjos. Only the gaudy stood out. Well, this gave me an idea for a new banjo. A banjo the could be seen in the "fortieth row!" I talked this over with the late Robert (Bob) Woodmansee (1944-1991) of Washington C.H., OH, who hand crafted high quality banjos. He was also a mighty fine banjo player and teacher. I was taking banjo lesson from him at the time. This new banjo was to be a peacock! White or blond, gold-plated, engraved, rhinestones, pearl and abalone inlays, and a high contrast design on the back of the resonator, with the design repeated on the inside of the resonator and a plastic coated arm rest. The first of it’s kind. The arm rest was to be plastic coated like the plastic coated drift wood tables – thick and durable plastic.

The order was placed with Bob September 18, 1984. The banjo was delivered to me in March 1987, almost three years to build the banjo. Bob didn’t work on this one banjo full time. He was busy building others at the same time, but he was very meticulous! Things had to be done right or they just weren’t done at all, and the project started all over from scratch. This was the first banjo that had abalone pieces used as part of the binding strips. Abalone was used on the top edge of the resonator lip. This was his first banjo to use rhinestones.

We worked for months on the design for the back of the resonator. I had looked through all the original designs Barbara Archer, the artist, had made and could find none that suited me. So, Bob set up a kaleidoscope on a tripod in his shop. Each week that I had a lesson I would use the kaleidoscope until I found a pattern or design that I liked. We would leave it there undisturbed. When Barb came to work the next day she would sketch the design. We continued this process for over eight months. At which time we had a stack of designs about 6 inches high! From this stack Barb selected several and made paper cutouts of the design. These she then laid out on a manila folder. When I came in for a banjo lesson we would take the paper cutout design on the manila folder place it on a stand over in the corner of the shop. Then we would step back to see how far we could see the design. Some designs faded right out after a few steps. Some were better than others. We could not discover any rhyme or reason to the fade out.

The design we eventually used had some of the pieces rotated 180 degrees. These pieces we called telephones, because they looked like the hand-set of a cradle telephone. In the original design the handles were opposite one another. This design was close, but not quite right. After rotating the telephones 180 degrees, putting the telephone handles together, we could step back and see different things happening to the design. You could get across his shop, his driveway, and the street in front of his house, and you could still see the pattern and things happening to the design! We felt this should let us see the banjo from the "fortieth row." 

We had our share of problems with this banjo as with the Atomic Model (my first new banjo). Each piece of abalone had to be shaped to fit the round contour of the lip edge of the resonator. Lots of manual labor went into this effort, since each piece was only ½ inch long. Next, the high contrast of the design on the back of the resonator was accomplished by inlaying ebony into the curly maple resonator. However, when starting the finishing process of sanding, the ebony bled into the white of the curly maple. Thus, the sanding process on the back of the resonator was very careful and demanding so as not to get the ebony smeared into the curly maple. Bob decided to use cubic zirconia instead of rhinestones. We figured they had more brilliance and would sparkle more. Wrong! When the cubic zirconia was glued in the resonator flange, the index of refraction difference between the glue and the cubic zirconia was such that the light was trapped instead of being reflected back out of the cubic zirconia. You could hardly see the things! They had absolutely no sparkle!

Bob next ordered rhinestones with a silver coating on the pavilion (that pointy part of the bottom of a brilliant cut diamond). Again, this took months to accomplish. Bob could not find a supplier. I went to the Thomas Registry and found several companies that manufactured rhinestones. Then I had to write to them to see what they had to offer for a project of this nature. All this took valuable time. I finally found a company in Cincinnati, OH that made just what we were looking for – a brilliant cut, having a silver coating on the pavilion, and the top coated with an Aurora Borealis coating which reflects different colors depending on which way you look at it. With the silver coating on the pavilion the light reflects from the surface, and bounces around inside the rhinestone and is very sparkly and pretty.

The sound this banjo produces is truly amazing! It gets out there to the "fortieth row" and rattles around. It is very easy to play because the action is very low, and the fret wire is wider, like a guitar’s. It is now June 1997 as I write this and the banjo has been refretted twice and is in need of it again. I wore a hole in the first head, and now have a hole in the second head. The neck has been heat treated once. The arm rest is still as pretty as it was the day I received the banjo! I love my banjo!