CE Professional "Secret Improvements"

[Joel Hooks]

I wonder if the "secret improvements" are the screws in the fingerboard and heel?

[Jody Stecher]

Yeah, those "improvements" are hell on luthiers and anyone else trying to separate neck and pot for any reason.

In what year was this advertisement printed?  I used to have a Clifford Essex Imperial made before the WW1 ("The Great War) that had these screws or nails or bolts. What a pain.  It was a good sounding banjo especially with a natural vellum and a two footed bridge made from Osage Orange wood..   A lucky student of mine has it now. I told him that I'd sell him the banjo on the condition that if he ever wanted to change the bridge that he give the Osage one back to me.

[Joel Hooks]

The fingerboard is screwed on too, so says the catalog.

I love my Professional, but I have to say that it is the most overbuilt banjo I have ever seen.