This was a very pleasing, powerful instrument. A third instrument had a flathead birch rim with a Tennessee 20 tone ring, a maple neck and ebony fingerboard. This banjo had a bit more powerful sound. A second instrument had an archtop maple rim with a Hopkins-McPeake conversion tone ring, a maple neck and an ebony fingerboard. This banjo had a good, clean powerful sound. One had a flathead maple rim with a McPeake tone ring, a maple neck and a rosewood fingerboard. I had three banjos with his rims in them. *This was borne out at a recent jam at Tony's residence. They are also available as retrofits to Stelling instruments, and many of the top players are using them. Tony Pass rims may be obtained for any style banjo and are available in submerged maple or birch. There is as much difference between a Tony Pass block rim and block rims that are made by other people as there is between a Rolls Royce and a rollerskate. In the Tony Pass rims, there is so little glue and so much direct contact between the surfaces, that the rim becomes a unit. Many banjo specialists feel that glue absorbs sound. The Tony Pass block rim has less than 70 square inches of glue. The average 3-ply rim has more than 144 square inches of glue in it. What he does claim, and these rims back him up, is that a banjo that has one of these rims in it will have a more powerful, cleaner sound that is quite rich.* Tony does not claim that these rims will give you a pre-war sound, whatever that is. For all practical purposes, it vibrates as a single unit. And this is a very efficient type of rim, acoustically speaking. So what does this mean in terms of a banjo rim? Well, instead of having a rim that is 24 separate pieces, you now have a rim that is, for all intents and purposes a single piece of wood. They are strong enough that they are virtually unbreakable. Tony routinely strength tests the pieces he saws off of the corners of the octagons that become the rim layers. Basically, the amount of glue that is left in the rim is such an insignificant amount that you could put it into a thimble and still put your little finger into it.Īnd it is an incredibly strong joint. This is also true of the glued joints between the three layers of wood. All the glue that is left is forced into the pores of the wood. At each glued area, so much of the glue is squeezed out that wood touches wood for the entire joint. Well, what's the difference? Interestingly enough, it is a very significant difference. They are then glued together in such a way that the glue joint is no longer a glue joint - it becomes a “glued joint.” Each surface is flat and is perfectly mated to the one it fits against. When Tony makes the 24 blocks that form the rim, he machines them to their final shape rather than simply cutting and sanding them. This is where Tony's rims are radically different from the ones that most of us know about. Acoustically speaking, it is also not good. This line looks to be about 1/16 of an inch thick. One outstanding example of such a line is in the center layer of the rim on the cover, in a direct line below the left thumb of the person holding the banjo rim. This causes thick glue lines between some of the blocks. The other method leaves the banjo with large areas of end grain showing, and this is particularly undersirable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the difficulty in finishing it.Ĭlose examination of the rim on the front cover of the Siminoff book will reveal that there are many areas where the blocks forming the rim do not meet properly. However, the only one of them that is really worth considering from a structural and tonal basis is the idea that Roger Siminoff has. These books are the only books that discuss banjo construction that most people are familiar with. Burt Brent and published in Earl Scruggs and the 5 String Banjo. Others might think of the decorative block rim that is picture in the instructions for building a banjo that were written by Dr. For many years, the Siminoff book has been the “Bible” of banjo builders. When most people think of a block rim, they think of the kind of banjo rim that is pictured on the front cover of Roger Siminoff's book Constructing a 5 String Banjo. The purpose of this page is to share what I can with you, so you can understand what makes these rims special. I am not in a position to divulge the information that I now have about these rims, but I learned some very interesting things about the process and the finished product. Question: “When is a block rim not a block rim?”Īnswer: “When it is a Tony Pass Block Rim”ĭuring the first weekend in May of 2002, I had a rare chance to see the secret process Tony Pass uses to assemble his rims.
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