Robert Spencer (American, 1879-1931)
House Fire by Becca Stadtlander
https://www.etsy.com/shop/beccastadtlander?ref=l2-shopheader-name
William Faulkner (Authors Series) by Ryan Sheffield
From the Museum of Appalachia: Murder Banjo
This banjo was owned by Henry Dobson, an African-American musician from South Carolina. One night in 1895, at a party held near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dobson played his beloved instrument for the last time. During his performance, a vicious fight broke out, and Dobson’s best friend was killed. As the man was fatally stabbed, both Dobson and his banjo were splattered with blood. He vowed never to play it again, and traded it to Charles Ross Schrecengost for a guitar. In 1989, Museum founder John Rice Irwin obtained the banjo from Schrecengost’s son, Haven, who lived in a remote hollow near Grainger County, Tennessee. The banjo, in two places bears the name of Henry Dobson. Two dates are inscribed: 1878 and 1881.
Henry Dobson (or HC Dobson) was the maker of the banjo, not the owner. Those are patent dates. Look up HC Dobson or Henry Dobson anywhere and you’ll see it. This style of banjo is very popular now. /nerd
Half-fretless banjo with brass plate up to the sixth fret. I used an old Saga open-back. From October 2011.
Here are the steps I went through to make an old Saga open-back banjo into a semi-fretless (this is not a howto, it worked for me but it might not work for you! Also, I WOULDN’T DO THIS TO AN EXPENSIVE BANJO!):
1. Remove strings.
2. Prise the frets off using a combination of a pair of pliers, and a fairly wide chisel slipped under the fret to gently lever them out. I’ve heard that heating with a soldering iron helps, it didn’t much in this case.
3. Gently sand the fingerboard a little.
4. Find a piece of brass exactly the same height as the frets. My frets were 1.2mm high. In my local DIY store I could only find a piece of brass 1mm high, and about 20*10cm in area. I decided to risk it, it worked fine. If the brass is much lower, there would be fret buzz, and if it’s much higher, you’d probably have to raise the nut somehow.
5. Cut a piece of cardboard the same size as the area to be covered by the brass plate. After much deliberation, I decided to put the plate on up to and including the sixth fret so the seventh would still be usable. Also, I made a cutaway in the brass for the fifth string as I often fret the fifth string and it seemed the simplest way to get around issues regarding the fifth string pip position and intonation.
6. Tape the cardboard template to the brass, draw around it and cut out. (I used a hacksaw. It wasn’t the ideal tool for the job, but I only wanted to do this once and it didn’t seem worth buying anything more expensive). Gently file the edges of the brass, all except the straight edge which meets the nut.
7. Stick the brass plate to the fingerboard. I’ve heard that carpet tape works well to attach the brass to the fingerboard, but I didn’t want to buy a whole roll for the sake of a few centimeters. There can (apparently) be problems if the glue used is too strong, i.e. with the wood shrinking and the metal staying the same size. I used simple double-sided sticky tape from a stationary shop, it held remarkably well. I reasoned that if the plate came off, I could just stick it on again…
8. Finally, I had a couple of spare frets left over from an old guitar, so I cut mini-frets for the 5th and 6th positions on the fifth string, and squeezed them into the holes. They work fine.
9. If you get bored with your half-fretless banjo, as I did, it’s easy to pop the brass sheet off (although it was stuck surprisingly well) and push the frets back in (I had saved them from earlier). The fretboard was a little discoloured from the tape etc., but it’s fine.
Photo credit: spacetimecurvature
(Source: flickr.com)
THERE IS A LONGER VERSION???
Who dug this up. You fool. There’s a reason we didn’t see his before. We weren’t meant to hear the child’s final screech. We were being spared and you’ve doomed us all
(Source: unclefather)
On 9th March 2008, historians have found what they believe is the first recording of a human voice. Predating Thomas Edison’s first phonograph recording of 1877. The “phonautograph”, created by etching soot-covered paper by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, was played by US scientists using a “virtual stylus” to read the lines. The recording was initially believed to be the voice of a woman or adolescent, but further research in 2009 suggested the playback speed had been too high and that it was actually the voice of Scott himself. This is the original recording.
(Source: amywinehousefan)