Transparent Heads Controversy!

[Russ Chandler]

A comment from Marc over at my William Ball picture has made me curious to get a debate going.

I've put a transparent head on my CE Wood Hoop special and it doesn't half get a reaction!

Seems to me to be a shame to cover up such beautiful Edwardian engineering with a plain white skin and I think most Classic players don't have a problem with using plastic rather than vellum heads so there's no impact on the sound.

But there's no denying it turns some peoples stomachs!

What do we think?

[thereallyniceman]

I was a die-hard, and possibly fanatical, advocate of calf skin heads for classic style on my banjos, until I fitted a Remo on my CE Special wood hoop. It sounds lovely and is not affected by humidity like calf skin. So now I am a die-hard, and possibly fanatical, advocate of plastic heads.

BUT NEVER FIT A TRANSPARENT HEAD.

You forget a very important fact: Many of us classic stylers are overweight old gentlemen and the sight of rolls of fat and that podgy belly button staring through a transparent vellum is enouigh to put anyone off their chips !

NO NO NO............. DON'T DO IT

[Paul Tombs]

Transparent heads are ILLEGAL and anyone using them should be shamed and pillaried into changing it.
A Renaisance head skin is perfectly fine for getting that extra crispness and is still perfectly cool.
Shame on you Russ, have I taught you nothing? LOL

[marc dalmasso]

with the small exeptions , of course , of the guys who have a picture of Fred van Eps or Joe Morley glued inside the resonator ..

[thereallyniceman]

Resonator for classic style?...

You should know better!

:)

[marc dalmasso]

yes , i know better ; if the banjo is an original open back , i play without and if the banjo has a resonator like top of line ' CE or Vega ; i play classic style with a resonator ; I think banjo is almost like a piano _ in a piano , 70 % of the sound come from the back of this one and 30 % from the front . When electricity came in the early 20th , so came the microphone , too , and the idea of the resonator to bring the 70 % to the mike was a good one , i guess

thereallyniceman said:

Resonator for classic style?...

You should know better!

:)

[thereallyniceman]

I am only joking about the resonator, Marc.

Who's picture do you have glued in your resonator? Can I see Joe Morley or is that Helena Karel ??

At least we don't have to look at your stomach through a transparent vellum... but the knees were a bit of a shock in your last video!

:)

Ian

[Russ Chandler]

Being a chap with a natural affinity with real ale and associated snack food I appreciate the belly point!

But seriously - what's the aesthetic objection?

[Trapdoor2]

Way back when I was a tall, slim youth...clear banjo heads were all the rage in the Bluegrass world. I had a cheap-but-new banjo and it had lots of shiny bits that looked great thru the head...which I had tightened within a millimeter of detonation. Frankly, I hated the stodgy old Bluegrass look and wanted something different (look at me! I'm flashy!).

Later, I spent a great deal of money on a "professional grade" banjo (a Stelling Sunflower) and requested a clear head be mounted at the factory. It was delivered exactly as I requested...with a terrible black burn/scar on the nickel-plated tone ring, grinning evilly thru that clear head. Yes, I should have sent it back, but I was loathe to tweak the delivery gorilla's nose a second time (yes, we will fix your tone ring but all we got from the delivery service was a box of splinters). I simply mounted a frosted head and never looked back.

A clear head on an open back banjo is an abomination and an affront to the Banjo Gods. I hope you're visited by the 'ghosts of banjos past' this Xmas. Jacob Marley will be replaced by Joe Morley and he will not be amused! ;-)

[Jody Stecher]

Taken together the comments on transparent heads say that they have no impact on the sound, that they do have impact and they sound better, that they are of dubious taste, that they look cool, and that I use one. In the photo I've used to represent me on this group I'm playing a 1903 Windsor banjo fitted with a translucent calf skin vellum through which one can see not only light but my very own personal belly. This was not a deliberate Fashion Statement but I can live with it. I think opaque heads look better but circumstances produced this one instead. I can say with 71 % confidence that whether the portion of the hide of a genu-wine dead animal that has been mounted on a banjo is opaque, translucent, or transparent, impacts the sound minimally if at all. Transparent heads made from synthetic materials are another matter. They do impact the sound. Whether the impact is for the better or worse depends on personal aesthetics, and how they respond musically depends on how they interact with bridge type, string type, how far they are tightened, pot type, and the touch of the player. I agree with the musical sage Hank Bradley that plastic heads (clear and/or frosted) in the 1970s tended to produce what he called Trashy Overtones. Since that time the situation has gotten both better and worse. Old-time mylar turns out to be toxic so today's new plastic heads are of a different chemical composition and produce a different tone. I've had musically satisfying results from Ren heads and even from Fibyrskin too, all depending on the banjo and the other components. In the early days of plastic heads the clear ones always produced less satisfying bass and mid range than the frosted ones. Today I'm not sure. One thing I am sure about: a top quality animal hide produces a sound *on most banjos* that I prefer to the sound of a top quality plastic head. A defective hide does not. Now about the belly: that impacts the sound too. It functions as a mute and is as effective and detrimental to musical tone as the more commonly found diapers, socks, dishrags, and teddy bears one sees in use amongst revival old-time players. Studies on the impact of belly content are inclusive. Does the composition of the belly affect tone to the same extent as the composition of the plastic head? Real Ale versus formaldehyde & horse piss? Chicken tikka masala versus iHop pancakes? Nobody really knows. As for transparent bellies versus frosted bellies, maybe we ought not go there.