Adjustable tailpieces

[Hal Allert]

Has anyone had any experience with using tension-adjusting tailpieces? I am considering trying one instead of my old no-knot to obtain a little more brightness out of my Whyte Laydie. I recently switched to Chris Sands' heavy strings after using his medium strings for  a long time. I found the mediums were moving around too much as I got more strength in my playing. I am using a Grover 3-legged bridge for reasons unknown to me. I think it was the bridge that came with the banjo and I never paid any attention to it before. (Will a lighter bridge like the Cole give me brighter sound or is the heavier bridge what I am looking for?)

I have tried to keep the banjo as original as I could for historical reasons but now believe I should be considering any modifications necessary to get the best sound from it. It is not a collector's item, it is a musical instrument and should provide me with the sound I want rather than look the way it was originally.

[Jody Stecher]

In general Whyte Laydies are brighter than I would wish them to be. But if bright is what you want, reduce the mass of your bridge. Eric Stefanelli makes excellent 2 footed bridges and he can't make you exactly what you want. Is you Whyte Laydie a large or small pot model?  The pots of around 12 inches diameter can sound indistinct if the rest of the banjo is not set up right. What is the scale length?  Some Whyte Laydies had a scale of 28 inches and in my opinion at that length CS heavy is too heavy unless one tunes below standard pitch. You can get your banjo speaking brilliantly by considering scale, pot diameter, thickness or thinness of vellum, string type, and bridge type. And of course tail piece type.  The type of tailpiece whose downward pressure on the strings can be adjusted seems to have a different effect on steel and nylon stings. On steel more pressure results in a loss of mids and lows.  On nylon there is a loss of chaos which the brain interprets as a gain in clarity. But if the head is evenly tensioned and sufficiently tight and the bridge, strings etc are all in balance there should be no need for that kind of tailpiece though in my mind it does no harm. In other words there will be no sonic chaos to get rid of in the first place.  How old is the vellum? Is it a real hide or is it plastic? I seem to recall you live in a climate without sudden changes in humidity. In which case you are safe with a hide. But one way to clarity that still is sweet is a Renaissance head. Whytle Laydies of all pot sizes tend to sound unmusical to me with standard plastic heads but the Ren head works very well with the whyte laydie tone ring.

[Mike Moss]

I'd avoid using adjustable pieces on nylons, they do eventually tend to cut through the trebles. I started out with nylguts and nylons on a Waverly tailpiece and it cut through three first strings before I switched to a Fielding, which does apply a bit of downward pressure and looks very nice to boot. The modern Chinese no-knot (no-good?) tailpieces are also very hard on the nylons.

[Jody Stecher]

I agree that the Fielding is a better tailpiece than a Waverly. But I also should say that I've used nylon strings with a Waverly on one banjo for 20 years without a mishap. Sometimes the same strings were on that banjo for 3 years. If the tailpiece was going to sever the string it would have done it by then. So I think Mike's experience might have an anomaly. On the other hand the adjusting screw on this same Waverly tailpiece broke off when the tailpiece was about 5 years old. This in combination with Mike's experience suggests insufficient quality control. No such problems with the  Will Fielding tailpiece which  is in another category of quality. And it comes either in brass or nickel plated. it can be viewed here: http://www.fieldingbanjos.com/tailpieces.html

it won't make your banjo sound brighter but it might make it sound better.