I recently found myself in possession of a old tenor banjo and have been doing my best to try and identify how old it might be and where it was produced. It is a 19 fret very plain tenor banjo with a well worn in skin head. There are no manufacturer stamps or labels anywhere on the instrument. The peghead would seem to indicate a relationship of some sort to banjos produced by Gretsch in the 30s. The skin head and older friction tuners would seem to support that time frame. The hardware/shoes are very basic but the quality of the wood seems good! It seems to be the 1930’s equivalent of a student instrument but with better quality wood. My best guess is the wood is maple with a dark stain. I’ve cleaned it up a bit, tightened the head and put a new bridge and strings on it and it sounds quite nice! It should be a lot of fun to work with the tenor tuning (CGDA).
Updated to add: Tenor Banjo 102
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