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Collins Bluegrass Banjo

 

Review of the Collins Bluegrass Banjo by The Man in the Jar 

The first thing you notice when you pick up this banjo is the weight and feel of quality for such a relatively cheap instrument. The second thing that I realised was this is the first time I'd ever picked up a banjo. This was going to be fun! 

Features of the Collins Bluegrass Banjo  

Your bluegrass banjo will arrive without the bridge fixed. This is because the resonator body is essentially a drum and the wooden bridge sits on top of it, this would undoubtedly cause transit damage if it was shipped complete. Essentially the bridge needs to be set under the loosened strings at the same distance from the 12th fret as the nut is in the other direction. Once you're happy with the bridge placement, tighten the strings enough to hold the bridge in place and proceed to tune the instrument. Check your bridge placement by playing octaves at the 12th fret and checking they are in tune with the open string.

Tuners - There are five strings on the banjo. The 1st to the 4th run the full length of the neck and terminate in tuners at the headstock. These four tuners are covered (not sealed) and have large pearloid knobs. They work smoothly and the gearing ratio is similar to a standard acoustic guitar. The fifth string terminates just after the 5th fret and has a dedicated tuner. This tuner is set directly into the neck and the string is wrapped directly onto the knob's shaft. This means there is no gearing, so the action of this tuner is highly critical and needs a very fine touch to avoid overshooting the target note. The target note for the 5th incidentally is G with the other strings being tuned to D, G, B and D. Due to the pliable nature of the banjo's "soundboard" surface you need work at getting the instrument into a stable tuning balance. Expect to tune through the strings five or six times before the instrument settles down into some stability.

Headstock - The headstock has a traditional ornate styling.

Nut - The white plastic nut abuts the fretboard and is well finished. The 5th string has its own dedicated string guide which is affixed to the fretboard behind the 5th fret.

Neck - The mahogany neck is of course lovely and slim in the hand of anyone used to a six string guitar, especially when it thins out after loosing the 5th string at the 5th fret!  That extra tuning peg did take a bit of getting used to though.

Fretboard - The rosewood fretboard has an attractive graining and the fret markers are traditional dots in pearloid. One thing that will throw you if you are used to guitars is the fact that the marker you'd expect to be on the 9th fret on your guitar lives on the 10th fret here in banjo-land.

Frets - The frets are thin profile and well finished. 

Action - The action was perfectly playable out of the box. In any event the low gauge of the strings (only the 4th string is wound) makes the banjo a physically easier instrument to get to grips with.

Body - We all know what a banjo looks like from a distance, but getting to see one close up reveals how complex they really are. Imagine a mahogany frying pan with the banjo neck being the handle. Now imagine a tambourine-sized drum that fits quite snugly into the pan, this is what the banjo-head looks like. The banjo-head is suspended in the pan without touching the sides or bottom and held in place by four chrome brackets that sit on the edge of the pan. The look is completed by the eighteen chrome brackets that ring the banjo-head and are used to tension the skin.   

Bridge - As previously mentioned the bridge is a simple formed piece of grooved wood that floats on the banjo-head and is held on by string tension. A simple tailpiece is attached between two of the tensioning brackets at the bottom end of the banjo-head. The strings are tied off under this and tensioned over the bridge by a large chrome tab that presses down on them. I assume that new banjo strings are supplied with a tied-off loop where a guitar string has a ball-end. 

Strap-buttons -  The banjo has two chrome loops attached to either side of the banjo-head to which one could attach a strap.

Finish - This Chinese-made instrument is very well finished.

Accessories - A standard, unpadded, banjo-shaped gigbag.

 

Sound of the Collins Bluegrass Banjo

Not surprisingly it sounds like a banjo. It has the great resonance and tone that you'd expect from the Remo Weatherking banjo-head it has fitted as standard. 

 

Overall Impressions of the Collins Bluegrass Banjo

I went straight onto the internet and found a banjo tab site. Within minutes I was picking out "Duelling Banjos" with increasing confidence. More importantly I was having a lot of fun. The leap from guitar to banjo isn't that strenuous, after all when tuned to G the banjo has three of the five strings tuned the same as a concert pitch guitar. It would of course take a lot of practice to attain the speed that makes good banjo-playing such a stunning spectacle, but the Collin banjo is of sufficient build quality to take you that far should you have the dedication. And at less than £100 this must surely be the biggest and best bargain ever offered on the iMuso website.     

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