If you are trying to figure out which Smith banjo you own, here is what I can tell you. The Northampton and Maple Leaf models were consistent in their tone systems and variable in their woods and appointments. But when it comes to the internal resonator Shelburne, model designations are not necessarily predictable in terms of whether you have a l,ll,lll,lV or professional. The appointments, especially the inlays changed frequently over the 9 years that we made banjos.<\/p>\n
Before I detail the models however, I would like to discuss wood. We used maple, cherry, and mahogany, but produced a few Northamptons in walnut and made at least one repro instrument with holly, I think an Orpheum copy which would have been consistent with the Orpheum #3.<\/p>\n
Fingerboards and peg heads were ebony in the Maple Leafs and Shelburnes. Brazilian rosewood was used mainly in the Northamptons until it got too expensive; in the later 1970\u2019s we used a substitute rosewood called wenge.<\/p>\n
Any of the above models could have fancy marquetry on the rim and colored veneers in the laminated necks or under the fingerboards and peg heads. We hand-dyed maple veneer either red or green, and used on occasion ebony or rosewood plain maple veneers as well.<\/p>\n
In my research for this project I found a newspaper clipping saying that we were paying $3 per board foot for kiln-dried Brazilian off the docks on Long Island from Marshall\u2019s- a price which is literally incredible compared to today\u2019s prices of hundreds of dollars per set of guitar wood.<\/p>\n
Maple and cherry were purchased from local saw mills; we had standing requests in with local loggers to call us if they got nice figured maple. Once we found a standing black cherry tree in Colrain, Mass., about 2 feet in diameter, going up 40 feet without a branch. We had it cut and made many instruments out of that fine tree.<\/p>\n
Banjo hardware was purchased from Stewart MacDonald, though when we could find them we bought nickel hex head shoe screws from specialty hardware stores. Our tone system brass including the 1\/4\u201d round brass (used singley in the Northamptons, and inside the spun brass tone ring of the Maple Leafs and Shelburnes) and 1\/8\u201d x 3\/8 \u00a0rectangular brass (also used inside the spun brass Maple Leaf and Shelburne tone systems) were bought by the foot from hardware stores. The spun tone rings were made by Jud Stone, who worked at the University of Massachusetts, and moonlighted for us at his lathe. Hand-spun from sheet brass, we had them nickel plated. Finding reliable platers was always a challenge.
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\nNow for our models:<\/p>\n
Northampton with its 1\/8\u201d brass tone ring and pearl maple leaf in the peg head was the most consistent of our banjos. Could be any wood and have a one, three, or five piece neck with colored or plain laminations, with or without marketry.<\/p>\n
Maple Leaf with the 3 piece tone system, one spun brass with two brass inserts, one round and one rectangular. For the neck, same as for the Northampton.<\/p>\n
Shelburne- Here\u2019s where things get dicey as they changed a lot over the years in terms of appointments. Marks\u2019 forte was designing inlay, so lots of inlay got designed. However, though we constantly tried to improve sound and the dimensions and spinning of the tone ring changed over the years, all Shelburnes had the Maple Leaf tone system as described above. They also always featured the Bacon internal resonator-this would be the defining feature of the Shelburne. I describe them as best I can below; you may have an AE Smith that doesn\u2019t fit exactly into these categories, so regard yourself as lucky and call it anything you like!<\/p>\n
Shelburne l was the simplest, with dots and a maple leaf in the head stock.<\/p>\n
Shelburne ll had a fancy head stock and dots in the fret board.<\/p>\n
Shelburne lll had a plain fret board (dots) and a back strap.<\/p>\n
Shelburne lV had fancy inlay in both head stock and fret board.<\/p>\n
Shelburne Professional had the works with fretboard and peg head inlay and usually inlay in the back strap and heel cap.<\/p>\n
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Colrain was the first \u201cShelburne\u201d professional and as far as I can tell we only made one, maybe two with this designation before the name was changed to the Shelburne.<\/p>\n
Catamount was our final bluegrass banjo; these would feature a \u201cMastertone\u201d style tone system. These show up only in the 1980 catalog and price list and depending on inlay style could be a #0,1, or 5.<\/p>\n
There are threats of bluegrass banjos being ready or almost ready for sale in our newsletters, but none ever show up on another price list. We did occasionally put full resonators on both our Northampton and Maple Leaf banjos.
\nDeerfield l and ll bluegrass banjos are \u00a0mentioned in the April 5, 1979 newsletter and two prototypes, one #ll five string and one #ll tenor are listed in the production book but these are the only two that were made.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Signet\/Cygnet was made in the later days of the company, first showing up in the April 5, 1979 newsletter and the May 1979 price list. This was a basic banjo with a Maple Leaf decal on the peg head and two metal coordinator rods in our attempt to produce a less expensive instrument. This was also advertised as available with full resonator<\/p>\n
Reproduction necks were made for many different rims, usually to convert a four string into a five string banjo. We made many Vega-Fairbanks necks for different models in all degrees of fanciness, and at least one neck each for a Slingerland, Orpheum, Paramount, and Gibson rim. In a sort of reverse process, we made many A.E. Smith necks for old rims.<\/p>\n
Custom four-string necks were also made on occasion and we made a few A.E. Smith tenor banjos.<\/p>\n
As to be expected in a small shop we customized many of our banjos. Options in the price lists include heel carving, inlay, engraving and back straps as well as the now-rare Arthur E. Smith T shirts.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arthur Smith Banjo Models If you are trying to figure out which Smith banjo you own, here is what I can tell you. The Northampton and Maple Leaf models were consistent in their tone systems and variable in their woods and appointments. But when it comes to the internal resonator Shelburne, model designations are not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"template-biz.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-58","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gii.hmu.temporary.site\/website_473ea3da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gii.hmu.temporary.site\/website_473ea3da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gii.hmu.temporary.site\/website_473ea3da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gii.hmu.temporary.site\/website_473ea3da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gii.hmu.temporary.site\/website_473ea3da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gii.hmu.temporary.site\/website_473ea3da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":537,"href":"https:\/\/gii.hmu.temporary.site\/website_473ea3da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/58\/revisions\/537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gii.hmu.temporary.site\/website_473ea3da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}