Description

Ever dream, back in the day, that you were secretly Pete Seeger? Or maybe someone like him? Or maybe more recently? Or, ever want a true Pete-Seeger-style long neck banjo, a real one, better yet, one from back in the day? Here it is, a real one, from the early 1960s, when all this was going full tilt and thankfully so; it was a wonderful time. For those of you who may not know, Pete Seeger, then of the world-renowned Weavers folksinging group, used a specially-made 5-string banjo with an extra-long neck, having its three extra frets behind where the nut would normally be. It was played with a capo at the third fret, thereby behaving and playing like the regular kind, but you could slide the capo back a few frets if you liked, so you could still use standard chord fingering and open tunings and sing in a lightly lower key. A few companies made these special model banjos, with ODE being a leader; these are the same people who eventually transitioned into the now gorgeously famous OME Company, still in Boulder, Colorado, and still owned and run by the same family. The rim of this banjo has a feature that helped put ODE on the map: a cast-alumium rim with tone ring a part of it. The neck is rock maple, laminated for strength and still perfectly straight. The banjo seems to possibly have had a few minor modifications, hard to know exactly as these earliest of ODEs were all hand-made and still evolving. I can say, though, that it plays like a dream with the easiest of actions, and it is totally solid throughout, all courtesy of our own in-house workshop. To paraphrase a certain beloved masked man (for some of us) of our youth: "Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. The ODE banjo rides again!”. Only $1495 w/hsc