Babbling Brooks

A nightmare before Christmas

Help help I’m a Brooks Banjo stuck in a Bluegrass banjos body!!

No seriously, if you want to know who “King Tinkerer” is look no further, it’s Marc Horowitz. He’s the man responsible for ordering the first Bacon tone ring over a silverspun. He plays on fishing wire, he stretches Tyvex heads (vapor proofing material for building houses). Marc has taken off the Bacon tone ring and replaced it with a Dobson and maybe back again, I hope. He has tried three different types of tuners in his banjo. Basically he is the quality control guy, really putting the whole banjo picture to his test. I’ve learned a lot from him, he’s not afraid to tell me what he really thinks and he continues to have good ideas. This one drives me crazy because I really want to play it and it is 2000 miles away. Marc found an old Sligerland Maybelle resonator and “King Tinkered” it, mounting it on a Bacon Silverspun I made for him a few years ago. The resonator was for a 10 3/4” tenor and fit into the 11” rim with a little woodcutting and felt. Nice Job Marc. Upload some mp3’s on the site brother.

Happy Holidays

  Holy cow another year went by in a blink of an eye like driving past a small town in Texas, if your not paying attention you’ll miss it. Lots of work this year, much thanks to all of you who have ordered banjos this year and in the years past. This was year six full time making banjos in this shop! The tally this year was 30 banjos, my usual average. I shoot for 36, but something always gets in the way of the last six. It’s always something, but I feel that I’m better than ever at my craft and I love working each day. Thanks again everybody for keeping this ball rolling.
  I have just completed a new bench in my shop, so hopefully more space will add on at least another 3 banjos to next years tally. My son Aubrey has been eagerly helping out in the shop lately also. Since he’s entering high school next year, Aubrey is biting at the bit to get a MAC BOOK PRO and the price tag has him down in the shop with undivided attention. Maybe this can add up to another 3 or 4 banjos in the tally. Aubrey is king of the ring roller and slip roll, making the tone rings and rolling out tension hoop stock for me. Aubrey is also skilled at set up and assembly. If he has a need or a want he will be down in the shop in a second, when the need is met I’m on my own again. I feel blessed to have him around and it’s quality father/son time.

  It’s the time of year where I’m getting ready for the Portland Old Time Music Gathering which happens January 12th-16th. It is also the time of year where it is frightening to drop off a banjo to ship. I went yesterday to Fed Ex to drop of a small package and they already had more than a truckload of packages ready for pick up. So, I will bring joy for the New Year and ship out this batch of banjos after the Christmas rush. There will be new banjos at New Years parties this year. I have a huge batch of 15 banjos going at the moment due to Stew Mac running out of Bacon tone rings. The new tone rings showed up last week, bringing the back burner banjos back into the mix. It’s super exciting having so many banjos about ready to string, next week I hope to flood yall with photos. For now here is a picture of our Holiday Banjo and in the background is my personal banjo that has come back to life after being stripped of it’s Bacon tone ring for about 2 years. It’s great to have it back. Happy Holidays! A special thanks goes out to John Bowlin this year for being a magnificent friend. He has helped me in so many ways this year, a lot of it is subtle and that’s what I really like about him. John sees my path as a banjo maker and really goes out of his way to be supportive and shine light on the aspects that can improve to make my banjos and my life a lot better. Much Respect.

Bigger silverspun rims

  This week I finished my first 12” silverspun rim. The dilemma in the past was lack of a supplier for the longer nickel needed to make bigger than a 11.5” silverspun rim. The only reason I was offering 11.5” rims was because that was the biggest rim I could make with 36” of nickel. Now the gates are open, I can get 6 foot sheets of nickel!

  Pretty much the biggest reason I started making banjos in the first place, was to produce silverspuns. I sold a really nice old S.S. Stewart I owned one day, out of desperation, and regretted it minutes after.  I would spend hours when I was getting started making banjos, drooling over all the S.S. Stewarts in the Tsumara banjo book my mentor Stephen Owsley Smith owned. Steve told me not to worry, one day I would make my own banjos that nice. I had too much respect for the man to let him down and laid awake at night until I had a plan. I used my foot as a stop, hunched over on the front porch of my cabin, to make my first silverspun rim. Now, 11 years later, I need to finish the rim I owe him, I finally feel up to snuff and he can have the 12” rim he requested. If you have ever seen an instrument made by Steve, you will know what I’m talking about when I say respect. He is the best maker of instruments in the guitar and mandolin family there is, hands down. He made them out of a school bus at 7,000 feet for 30 years in Taos, New Mexico. He likes life away from the public eye and has a lengthy wait list, so most folks will never hear of him. He lives is Hawaii now and has a thatched shop, Aloha Steve! He was the one who told me to quit my job and make banjos full time…so I quit my job (working for a high end stair builder, 4 1/2 hours from home in Denver), went out and spent $400 on a school bus to set up my shop by golly. When folks like that tell me what to do I listen.

  Now that I have found a supplier of long sheets of nickel, I have my machinist working on some risers for my lathe and bigger mounting plates. I’m building a huge new work bench for assembly and I have a huge batch of 12 banjos going at the moment. It feels like a whole new operation around here. In the coming months look for a 14” slothead gut strung silverspun, a 16” slothead silverspun cello banjo, a 16” silverspun mando cello banjo, a 9” silverspun mandola banjo and an 11” silverspun octave mando banjo. It feels like the love boat around here, exciting and new!! Thanks to everybody who has kept this ball rolling with 11 years of solid orders!

Banjo 176 mp3s

Banjo 176 is a 10L model guitjo with nylon strings. It has a 12” x 3 3/8” x 1/4” rim with a 1/4” round brass tone ring. Here are a few recordings of this banjo I made with the 15 minutes I had to do so on my trusty H2 recorder. Better than no recordings at all. The beauty of H2 recorders is that you can get something decent recorded in just a few minutes. When the Fed Ex truck pick up time is breathing down your neck.
 
 

Banjo_176_Guitjo_E.mp3

Banjo_176_guitjo_D.mp3

Banjo #137 mp3

Here is a track of Banjo #137 that is for sale on the banjo hangout. It is an 11.5” 18 shoe Spartan with a combo fingerboard. Which is a nickel plate from the 1st to the 7th fret, then it is fretted from the 8th to the 17th. This is an exercise in figuring out how to post mp3s from my H2 recorder. Testing testing banjo two three.

Banjo_137_11.5_combo_fretboard_.mp3

Banjo_137_11.5_combo_fingerboard_.mp3

Two More Banjos In The Gallery

The photo gallery has two more recent banjos:

• Banjo #169: A 20L Spartan
• Banjo #175: A 10L Spartan

New Videos Posted

New videos of Banjos 157 and 174 are posted at Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVPadDCTF0E

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_5oHjKxHY4

New banjo posted in gallery

  Banjo #174 posted in the gallery. A new favorite, I really like the looks and feel of this banjo. It is a 20L with classy star inlays and a Bacon tone ring. The rim has an ebony rim cap. The nickel finish on the tone ring and the tuners was removed professionally by a plating company and it really looks good to me. The customer had it done, so I’m not sure about price.

http://brooksbanjos.com/index.php/gallery/category/C29/

more interesting mail

About 3 hours after Yuki’s package arrived, a package came fed ex from VT. Um err uuh 1925 2.5 dollar Indian head Quarter Eagles and really old looking Brazilian rosewood. These rosewood pieces have been stickered since the early ‘60’s and were cut from an old log, so it’s legal… and it was sent to me, I didn’t purchase it. So, hopefully I’m off the hook for having the stuff in my shop. I’m guessing that the two coins and the pieces of rosewood are of equal value to the instrument I’m using these on. It is going to be an all cherry 20L with the rosewood on the headstock and as a rim cap. The peghead will be a slothead with the rosewood faceplate and the two gold coins inlayed front and back. Yep, those coins are pure gold, there’s gold in them there banjos!

tee shirt designs

To possibly keep a long story short, I grew up on land that was taken from the Japanese during World War II. My house was two blocks from Whites’ Point and Royal Palms state beach in San Pedro, CA. I spent a majority of my time growing up down at Royal Palms, more time probably than at home. I was out surfing as much as possible. Before World War II, Whites’ Point and Royal Palms was a Japanese resort with hot springs and an abalone harvesting operation. In 1933 an earthquake leveled all of the buildings and later that decade the only tropical storm to ever hit CA, washed the remains of the resort out to sea. Leaving me and my friends, decades later, all of the cement foundations and outdoor ballroom to grow up with and wonder about. Not to mention underwater hazards. The last remaining structure was the fountain from the middle of the resort, which a friend and I watched get swallowed by the sea in 1983 during a huge pacific storm. We also got to meet many Japanese tourist coming to visit the area.

Here is a slide show of the area from the 1920’s take a peek if I have your interest;

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/pvlocalhistory/with/3855599783/

Here is a little more history and a picture of the fountain;

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/5views/5views4h101.htm

  So, I have always had a connection with Japanese Culture in America, basically through the history of the land I grew up on. I have always had a fondness of Japanese art and especially Japanese art that depicts shall we say “Americana”. In 2005 I made a friend, through my website, in Japan who is an artist and his work is some of my favorite. His name is Yoshi Yuki, he lives in Tokyo and he has a great love of banjos and old time music. This is his blog…  http://blogs.dion.ne.jp/goodgoodsillustration/. Last year he agreed to do T shirt designs for me and today they arrived… I LOVE THEM!! I hope yall do to. It is very enjoyable that through making banjos, I have found friends abroad.

  Pictured are the watercolor and pen on thick paper originals. They will be scanned by those tee shirt making peoples, to make tee shirts. Brooks Banjos tee shirts!!

  The first is a T made with banjo and fiddle to spell out the music we all love so much.

  The second is a banjo on an old chair the lettering says “Katakan” which Yuki says means “Brooks Banjos”  How cool is that!!??

  The third is my BB tailpiece and the lettering says “Hirgana”  which means “tailpiece”

  The fourth picture are big waves at Royal Palms point and you can see on the shore the remnants of the outdoor ballroom floor from the 20’s that was built by the Japanese. There are tables and booths of stone built into the cliffs also…

  The fifth picture is of all the boys taking a licking at Royal Palms jetty.

  THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH YUK!  You have made my day, my wife and I both weeped when we opened the box. MUCH RESPECT.