Why add the "scoop"?

If you're talking about the fretless area at the pot end of the fingerboard, is this not original (not how it left SSS factory)?  15 frets for all strings, 16 frets for strings 1,2, and 3, and 17 frets for strings 1 and 2. Perhaps the assumption was that everything would be played in one key, what we now call C. 

Hey Jody,  I was asking why the scoop was added, I am curious what the thought process was when the decision was made to deface a high end classic era banjo and reduce the playing gaunt.  

I've enlarged the photo as large as it will go but I'm not seeing a scoop. Nothing dug out, no excavation. I see only one photo. Maybe there's another closeup that makes it clear that there is a scoop. What is the "playing gaunt"?  Typo for "gamut" is my guess.  So this banjo was once fretted all the way across?

Yes, autocorrect gamut.

Yes, fretted all the way, this is a Stewart Thoroughbred.

the scoop is clear as day, in the “s” pattern that was (fairly recently) designed by Kevin Enoch and copied by many (including whoever took a router to this banjo).

Aaarrgh!  Not a good idea.  So much for my fantasy about why the high frets were short.  

There are obviously other banjo people in the world besides classic banjo geeks and collectors. The current value of this type of banjo is low compared to modern "scooped" clawhammer banjos. Somebody considered it an "upgrade"...or it was a basket-case. It looks like it has gotten new hardware (hooks and nuts) as well as a buff and polish. Why they didn't put geared tuners on it is a mystery to me.

Looks well done. I like scoops for playing clawhammer. I learned to CH on my 1889 Stewart Orchestra 2 (and it is a PITA to play CH on due to the low string height, etc.). Had the end of the fretboard been compromised (broken, cracked, chipped, beaten up, bad frets, etc.), I might have done something similar at the time (1985?). Instead, I had custom necks produced for a pair of FF Professionals (much later).

Meh, it can be almost invisibly returned to std. should another owner want to do that down the road. While I would never (again) hot-rod a vintage banjo like that, I would happily play it. Having only 17 frets barely limits the playability. I rarely get past the 17th fret anyway.

Yeah, but this is a "classic banjo" message board.  

I don't know how prevalent scoops were in 1985.  I am also trying to narrow down exactly when the "A scale" hit the market, and I think it was after the early 2000s.

At any rate, people are making new banjos with scoops but S. S. Stewart, as far as I know, is dead and not making any more. 

To my way of thinking  the point of not performing elective surgery on a well-made beautiful antique instrument is just as Joel says: there will be no more of them made. I also think it is an aesthetic mistake. 

The short A scale began as a local phenomenon on the North Carolina/Virginia border. The builder who got attention beyond the small geographical area between  Galax, VA and Surrey County, North Carolina (and nearby) was Kyle Creed.  One of his banjo models had a fretless fingerboard made of formica. There were also some with a wood fingerboard with a copper overlay that extended about to where the 7th or 8th fret would be, Most of his banjos were fretted.  I saw one for the first time in the late 1960s. By the mid 1970s I had seen many. I don't recall seeing a scoop on any of them. I did see a few scoops in 1980s but these were not on Creed banjos and not always aligned with short scaled necks or high tuning. The idea of the A scale is thought to have been pioneered and perhaps invented by Kyle Creed. The idea evolved from noticing the sonic properties of a banjo whose bridge is placed in the center of the vibrating head. As a bridge is moved away from the tailpiece and towards the neck the shortened vibrating length at unchanged tension causes the pitch to go up.

A local repertoire which favored the keys of A and D also may have played a part in Kyle Creed's thinking.

Interesting Jody, I've only seen one Creed banjo in person and don't really know anything about them other than the construction left something to be desired.

This website http://www.kylecreedbanjos.com/home.html  has a sales brochure that states that all of his banjos were 26-1/4" scale, which was achieved by cutting off one fret of a fingerboard cut at the Gibson scale.  The goal being to place the bridge more centrally on the head.  I could find nothing connecting Creed banjos to the concept of "A scale". 

This website seems to credit Creed with creating the "short scale" banjo but we know this is misguided.   Many classic era banjos were of "short" scale.  I have a Gatcomb standard that is under 26", and a Fairbanks and Cole that is right at 26", both are 11" rims.  The Dobsons were proponents of shorter scale banjos.

And then there is Stewart's "Special" model which was designed to be pitched one step higher to D.

When I have looked into the A scale, it seems to be a product of the festival old time jams which are based around the fiddle as a solo instrument with all others playing accompaniment.  At some point someone realized that they were keeping a capo clamped at the 2nd fret a lot of the time and had a banjo made with those two frets removed.  I would like to find out when that happened as I believe it to be an important point in banjo history which should be documented. 

Gibson banjos have various scales. The did make some with a 27 inch scale. Just over 26 is more typical. 

The *fretted* banjos Creed made had the 26 and a quarter scale.. 

Fretless banjos have any scale the player wants. Just slide the bridge. As I think I understand it  Creed's fretless banjos with the bridge in the middle would have been 26 and a quarter if the bridge was in the usual place much closer to the tailpiece.  

Creed tuned to A. So did the people who bought and played his fretless banjos. Tuning to A was a common thing when I began playing banjo in the late 1950s. It is not a new thing.  It is not a product of festival old-time jams. I met people who tuned to A decades before there were any festivals to jam at.

Metal banjo strings in the first 2/3 of the 20th century were of a very light gauge so tuning up a 26 or 27 inch scale fretted banjo a step higher than indicated on the string packages did not lead to extremely high tension and did not  endanger the banjo or the player or the strings themselves.