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Well, I have just about finished Lloyd's giant gourd banjo. After stringing it up and playing it this evening, which concludes several weeks of work, I think I can safely say that it is the finest sounding gourd banjo I have yet produced. Of course, I think that to be the case every time I finish any banjo, but it seems particularly true at the moment.



There are certain key structural differences that are working together to give this banjo a massive, deep, and full-blasting growl of a tone. First, the size. Lloyd wanted the neck to have a 28" scale to match the giant 14" pot tackhead I keep at home. Longer scale necessitates higher string tension, the end product of which is greater sustain and a richer (in my opinion) tone.



Second: the gourd. The gourd I used for this project came from Paul Sedgewick's shop. In the first place, it is gigantic, being about 13 inches in diameter. Another interesting thing is that it is also very thin. So thin, in fact, that I had to reinforce it with an epoxy resin. The resin coated the interior of the gourd, creating what is essentially one big resonator. Frequencies that would have been previously absorbed by the sound-deadening, soft, rough interior of the gourd are now projected with great clarity.