Three of the brands most often called American banjo makers are American companies that have their banjos built in Asia. Gold Tone says so on their own website. Recording King makes no claim about where their instruments are made at all. That leaves one maker whose banjos are widely sold and genuinely built in the United States, and the real question is which of its models to buy.
Deering builds their banjos in Spring Valley, California, ten miles east of San Diego. Deering, Vega, Tenbrooks and Goodtime banjos are all built in the same Spring Valley factory. Five Goodtimes cover everything from a first banjo to an instrument you could take to a jam, at between about $630 and $1,000.
Deering Goodtime Two
The resonator Goodtime, built in California, and the one most people who want an American banjo should buy. Six pounds, a three-ply violin grade maple rim, and a neck that plays properly out of the box. It has no tone ring, which caps how loud and bright it will ever get — but nothing at this price is better made, and Deering back it for eight years.
At a glance
| Banjo | Pot | Tone ring | Weight | Price band | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goodtime | 11″ open back | None | 4.5 lb | ~$630 | A first American banjo |
| Goodtime Americana | 12″ open back | None | 4.5 lb | ~$750 | Clawhammer and old-time |
| Goodtime Two | 11″ resonator | None | 6 lb | ~$850 | Bluegrass, and playing in a group |
| Artisan Goodtime | 11″ open back | None | — | ~$950 | A better-dressed open back |
| Goodtime Special | 11″ resonator | Patented steel | 8.75 lb | ~$1,000 | Being heard in a jam |
What American building costs you, in parts
This is the trade, and it is worth understanding before you spend the money rather than after.
Take the cheapest banjo here against its exact imported counterpart. The Deering Goodtime open back is about $630. Gold Tone’s CC-100, also an eleven-inch open back, lists at $629.99 — and it has an eleven-inch rolled brass tone ring, 24 brackets holding the head down, a ZeroGlide nut and a gig bag. The Deering has no tone ring, 16 flat J-hooks, a Lexan polycarbonate nut and nothing in the box but the banjo. Same money, and on a specification sheet the American one loses every line.
What the money buys instead is the neck, the rim and the assembly. The rim is three-ply violin grade maple, the neck is rock maple cut and fitted in California, and the two are set to each other by someone whose job is banjos rather than volume. That is why a Goodtime plays well straight out of the carton when a $200 import needs $60 to $125 of setup work before it is comfortable. It is also why Goodtimes hold their money secondhand.
Whether that is the right trade depends entirely on what you are going to do with it. Playing at home, on your own or with one other person, the missing tone ring is not audible as a problem — a ringless pot is warmer and softer, which is what old-time players deliberately choose. In a jam with a guitar, a fiddle and a mandolin all going at once, it gets buried, and playing harder will not fix it. That is the one situation where the imported banjo with the brass ring is the better instrument.
The warranty is the other half of it
Deering cover new Goodtime banjos for eight years, on instruments made on or after 1 January 2025; anything built before that carries the original six-year term. You have to register the banjo for the cover to exist at all — Deering treats the returned warranty card as a condition of the warranty, not a formality — and it does not transfer if you sell it.
It excludes what you would expect and a bit more: normal wear, fret wear, finish, strings, a worn nut or bridge, and any case or gig bag. You also pay the freight to the factory and back. Deering’s own upper lines — the Deering, Vega and Tenbrooks banjos above the Goodtimes — carry no time limit at all, to the original owner only.
The picks
Deering Goodtime Two
- 11″ three-ply violin grade maple rim, resonator
- Rock maple neck, 26¼″ scale, 22 nickel silver frets
- Two-piece Goodtime series flange, 16 flat J-hooks
- Sealed geared tuners and a geared fifth-string tuner
- 6 lb, no tone ring
- ~$850
The banjo most people mean when they ask for an American one. The resonator — the wooden back — throws the sound forward at the audience instead of letting it escape behind you, which is what makes this the bluegrass shape rather than the old-time one. At six pounds it is light for a resonator banjo; the imported equivalents with cast rings run to nine or ten.
The nut is Lexan polycarbonate rather than bone, and 16 hooks is few by the standards of the price. Neither is a fault so much as where Deering chose to spend and not spend, and the fifth-string tuner being geared rather than a friction peg matters more day to day than either. If you already know bluegrass is where this is going, read the bluegrass guide before buying, because the tone ring question decides it.
- Built in California, and plays properly without a setup
- Light for a resonator banjo at 6 lb
- Geared fifth-string tuner, not a friction peg
- Eight-year cover on current builds
- Holds its value secondhand
- No tone ring, so it will not cut through a jam
- Plastic nut and only 16 hooks at this price
- Two-piece flange rather than a one-piece cast one
- Nothing in the box but the banjo
Deering Goodtime (open back)
- 11″ three-ply violin grade maple rim, open back
- Rock maple neck, 26¼″ scale, 22 nickel silver frets
- 11″ frosted high crown head, 16 flat J-hooks
- Hand-rubbed polyurethane and carnauba wax finish
- 4.5 lb
- ~$630
The same neck and rim as the Goodtime Two with the resonator left off, which takes a pound and a half out of it and drops the price by two hundred dollars. Four and a half pounds is genuinely light — you can hold it on your knee for an hour without noticing — and the open back gives the softer, drier voice that clawhammer and old-time playing wants.
This listing bundles a padded gig bag, a clip-on chromatic tuner, a mute and picks with the banjo, which is most of what a first-time buyer would otherwise be ordering separately. If bluegrass is the goal, buy the Goodtime Two instead rather than planning to bolt a resonator on later. Our full Goodtime review goes through the instrument in detail, and open back versus resonator covers the choice itself.
- The lowest price on an American-built banjo here
- 4.5 lb, and comfortable to hold for a long session
- Arrives with a bag, tuner, mute and picks
- Right voice for clawhammer and old-time
- Open back is quiet in company
- 11″ rim is small for serious clawhammer — see the Americana
- Same plastic nut and 16 hooks as the rest of the line
Deering Goodtime Americana
- 12″ three-ply violin grade maple rim, open back
- 12″ Renaissance medium crown head
- Rock maple neck, 26¼″ scale, 22 nickel silver frets
- Natural maple stain, satin finish
- 4.5 lb
- ~$750
The rim is twelve inches across instead of eleven, and the head is Renaissance rather than frosted white. Both changes push in the same direction: a deeper, woodier, plummier note with less of the sharp attack a bluegrass banjo is built to produce. That is the sound old-time players spend money to get, and a bigger rim is the honest way to get it rather than a tweak you can retrofit.
It stays at four and a half pounds despite the larger pot, and it costs about $120 more than the eleven-inch Goodtime. If you already know you are playing clawhammer and frailing rather than three-finger rolls, this is the one to start on, not the cheaper Goodtime. See our clawhammer picks for how it sits against the rest of the field.
- 12″ rim and Renaissance head, which is the old-time voice
- Still only 4.5 lb
- Built in California like the rest of the line
- The right first banjo if clawhammer is the plan
- Wrong instrument for bluegrass — quiet, and no resonator
- $120 over the standard Goodtime for one specification change
- Renaissance heads look translucent, which not everyone likes
Deering Goodtime Special
- Patented Goodtime Special steel tone ring
- 11″ three-ply violin grade maple rim, 13⅞″ resonator
- Rock maple neck, 26¼″ scale, 22 nickel silver frets
- Hand-rubbed polyurethane with carnauba wax
- 8.75 lb
- ~$1,000
The first Goodtime with anything under the head at all, and the reason to stretch past the Goodtime Two. Deering’s steel ring is a simpler thing than the sand-cast bell brass in their professional banjos, but it is the difference between a banjo that gets absorbed by a room and one that pushes back — more volume, a harder attack, and notes that separate instead of blurring.
It weighs 8.75 pounds, nearly three more than the Goodtime Two, and that is the ring and the heavier pot doing their job. Deering’s own list price for it is $1,229, and it is the last rung before a different class of instrument entirely: Gold Tone’s OB-150, where a sand-cast bell brass ring and a one-piece die-cast flange start, is around $1,300, and Deering’s own cast-ring banjos begin well above that. Our picks around $1,000 and the intermediate guide both cover that comparison.
- The only Goodtime with a tone ring
- Loud and clear enough to hold its own in a group
- Same California build and eight-year cover
- A real step up rather than a cosmetic one
- 8.75 lb, which is heavy on a strap for a long set
- Steel ring, not the cast brass of the professional banjos
- The dearest banjo here, and the heaviest by nearly three pounds
American companies, imported banjos
Two brands come up constantly in answer to this question, and neither builds its banjos in the United States.
Gold Tone
Gold Tone is a real Florida company. Wayne and Robyn Rogers founded it in Titusville in 1993, every model is their own design, and they publish where the instruments are built on a page called Our Instrument Origins: “The final blueprints for each product are sent to one of our partner factories in China and Korea. The majority of instruments produced by Gold Tone are manufactured in a Korean owned-and-managed factory in China that we’ve worked with since 1993.”
What happens in Florida is design, prototyping and a twelve-point setup on every instrument before it goes out. That is worth something — it is why a Gold Tone tends to arrive playable where a cheaper import does not — but the word on their own specification sheets is “setup”, not “made”. If your reason for wanting an American banjo is that you want an American-built instrument, a Cripple Creek is not one. If your reason is that you want to buy from an American company, it is. Deering against Gold Tone compares the instruments themselves.
One exception is worth knowing. Gold Tone bought Ome Banjos in September 2023 and moved the entire Ome workshop from Boulder, Colorado to a separate building in Titusville, a few blocks from their own. Ome banjos are still built by hand in the United States, and they are the one American-made line the group makes.
Recording King
Recording King was Montgomery Ward’s house brand in the 1930s, which is where the American heritage comes from and where it stops. The name was revived in 2007 as an import line, and the brand today describes itself as woven into the fabric of American traditional music — a claim about the music, not about a factory. They publish no country of origin for any instrument. St. Louis Music has been the exclusive global distributor since August 2025.
The banjos are good for what they are and the RK-R35-BR has a Mastertone-style cast bell brass ring and a one-piece flange, which no Goodtime has at any price. It is simply not an American-made banjo, and its list price moved sharply when the distributor changed, so the old reputation as the budget bluegrass answer is worth re-examining rather than assuming. We go through it in the RK-35 review.
Two smaller cases work the same way. Jameson is an import brand with no American manufacturing at all, and Washburn trade on a Chicago name from 1883 while publishing no country of origin for any banjo in their line.
The other American builders
Deering is the American maker with a full range running from a first banjo upward. It is not the only one building in the United States, and the others are worth knowing by name if you are shopping seriously or looking secondhand.
- Deering — Spring Valley, California. Goodtime, Deering, Vega and Tenbrooks are all built there, from about $600 to the tens of thousands.
- Ome — Titusville, Florida since 2023, and Boulder, Colorado before that. Chuck Ogsbury built his first hundred banjos in 1960 and founded Ome in 1970; high-end open backs and resonator banjos.
- Huber — Nashville, Tennessee. Prewar-Gibson-style bluegrass banjos, warranted to the original owner with no time limit.
- Stelling — Virginia. Geoff Stelling has been building since the 1970s, and a Stelling is one of the standard answers to what a professional bluegrass banjo is.
- Pisgah — Asheville, North Carolina. Open-back banjos, in their own words hand-made in the Appalachian mountains with native hardwoods and 100% solar power.
These are small shops building to order, and their banjos start where Deering’s Goodtimes finish. None of them competes with a $630 Goodtime, and none of them is trying to.
An American-made part worth fitting
Pisgah Mulheron banjo bridge
- Continuous-leg design, hand made
- Made by Pisgah Banjo Co, Asheville, North Carolina
- Fits standard five-string banjos
- ~$45 delivered
The bridge is the one part of a banjo that costs almost nothing to change and audibly changes the instrument, because every string’s vibration reaches the head through it. A continuous-leg bridge — where the feet are cut from the same unbroken piece as the top rather than sitting on separate legs — gives a more stable platform, and Pisgah’s argument is that it transfers the note more evenly and will not sag over years of string tension the way a conventional bridge can.
It is a hand-made part from a small Appalachian shop, and it is priced accordingly rather than as a bargain. But if the appeal of an American banjo is that a person made it, this is the cheapest way to have that be true of something on your instrument, and it will fit the Goodtime you buy above.
Which one to buy
If you want a bluegrass banjo and can spend $850, the Goodtime Two is the answer, with the understanding that the tone ring is the thing you are giving up and the build is the thing you are getting.
If clawhammer or old-time is the plan, the Goodtime Americana and its twelve-inch rim is the right instrument and the cheaper eleven-inch Goodtime is the right compromise. The Artisan Goodtime is the same eleven-inch banjo with a stained neck and better appointments at around $950 — a cosmetic step above either of them rather than a musical one, and it is reviewed in full here.
And if you are going to be playing with other people, the Goodtime Special is the only American banjo here that will be heard, which is worth the step up from the Goodtime Two if a jam is genuinely where this is going and nothing at all if it is not.
Still deciding what kind of banjo you want? Start with the types of banjo, or our beginner picks if this is the first one.