The Deering Goodtime is a 4.5 lb open back five-string built in California, and at around $600 it is the least expensive banjo built in the United States. It has a three-ply violin-grade maple rim, twenty-two frets set straight into a rock maple neck, and no tone ring, no resonator and no truss rod.
Two of those omissions are choices you live with happily. The third — the resonator — is the one decision this purchase actually turns on, and it is much cheaper to get right now than to fix later.
Buy it — but choose open back or resonator before you order
Nothing else at $600 is made this well, and the parts Deering did not cut are the ones that decide whether you keep playing: a straight neck, level frets, geared tuners on all five strings and a rim that sounds like an instrument. Adding a resonator afterward costs about $280 in parts, which puts the retrofit above the price of the model that comes with one. Pick the version you want on day one.
The specification, from Deering
| Made in | San Diego, California |
| Neck | Rock maple, “D” shape, satin finish over natural maple stain |
| Fingerboard | None — the frets go directly into the maple neck |
| Frets | 22 pressed-in nickel silver |
| Inlays | Hardwood, Art Deco inspired |
| Nut | Lexan polycarbonate, 1 1/4″ wide |
| Truss rod | None |
| Rim | 3-ply violin grade maple, 11″ |
| Tone ring | None — the head sits on the wood |
| Head | 11″ frosted top, high crown |
| Hooks | 16 flat J-hooks, beveled steel tension hoop |
| Tuners | Sealed geared, plus a geared 5th string tuner |
| Bridge | 5/8″ Goodtime Smile |
| Tailpiece | Deering patented Goodtime, adjustable |
| Armrest | Included, bronze powder finish |
| Scale length | 26 1/4″ nut to bridge |
| Overall length | 37 1/2″ |
| Weight | 4.5 lb |
| Factory strings | .010 / .011 / .013 / .021w / .010 |
| Tuning | G D G B D |
| Case | Sold separately |
There is no truss rod, and that decides your strings
Most stringed instruments carry an adjustable steel rod in the neck to control relief — the small forward bow that keeps the strings off the frets. The Goodtime has none, and Deering is open about why. The neck is one piece of hard rock maple with the frets pressed straight into it, and there is no separate fingerboard glued on top. With a single dense hardwood and no glue line between two woods pulling against each other, Deering says the stresses that make a rod necessary are “eliminated, or almost nonexistent”. The relief is machined into the neck at the factory and stays there.
The catch is in how that relief was calculated. Deering sets it against the tension of the light strings they fit — .010, .011, .013, a .021 wound fourth and a .010 fifth. Put a heavier set on and you increase the pull on a neck with no way to answer it. Deering makes the same point from the other direction: when they built the Goodtime Six, which takes steel guitar gauges, they fitted a two-way truss rod to it, because the heavier strings needed one.
So the practical rule on this banjo is: stay at light gauge. That is not a hardship — light is the standard five-string gauge and the one most players use anyway — but it does mean the medium sets some bluegrass players prefer are not a good idea here. More on what fits in our guide to banjo strings.
Action is still adjustable, just not at the neck. Deering gives three routes: tighten or loosen the coordinator rod, reset the neck angle against the rim, or tighten the head. The coordinator rod is the usual one, and it is a steel bar running through the pot rather than the wooden dowel stick traditional open backs use, so the action moves with a wrench rather than a shim.
Open back or resonator: do the arithmetic first
The Goodtime is sold two ways from identical parts. Open back is around $600 and weighs 4.5 lb. The Goodtime Two adds a three-ply resonator and the two-piece flange that holds it, costs around $850, and weighs 6 lb. From the rim down they are the same banjo.
Deering does sell a retrofit kit, so the open back is not a dead end: any Goodtime with an 11″ pot can be converted with a flange, a resonator and a set of armrest J-hooks. The kit is around $280, made to order in ten to fourteen business days. That is the number worth writing down, because $600 plus $280 is $880, and the Goodtime Two is $850. Converting later costs more than buying the resonator model outright, and you do the fitting yourself.
Which one you want is a question about music, not budget. The resonator throws sound forward and is what bluegrass is played on; the open back is quieter, warmer, a pound and a half lighter, and is what clawhammer and old-time players use. If you know which of those you are heading for, buy that one. If you genuinely do not know yet, buy the open back — it is the cheaper mistake, and it is the more comfortable banjo to sit with for the first year. Our guide to open back versus resonator banjos goes through the difference in more detail.
How it compares
| Goodtime | Goodtime Two | Gold Tone AC-1 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Around $600 | Around $850 | Around $315 |
| Back | Open | Resonator | Open |
| Rim | 3-ply violin grade maple, 11″ | 3-ply violin grade maple, 11″ | Composite, 11″ |
| Tone ring | None | None | None |
| Neck | Rock maple, no separate fingerboard | Rock maple, no separate fingerboard | Mahogany with a rosewood fingerboard |
| Truss rod | None | None | Two-way adjustable |
| Nut width | 1 1/4″ | 1 1/4″ | 1 3/16″, Zero Glide |
| Scale length | 26 1/4″ | 26 1/4″ | 26 3/16″ |
| Weight | 4.5 lb | 6 lb | 3.75 lb |
| Bag or case | Neither | Neither | Gig bag included |
| Warranty | 8 years, registered | 8 years, registered | 5 years, transferable |
Deering Goodtime Two
- Resonator
- 3-ply maple rim, 11″
- 6 lb
- ~$850
The same neck, rim, hardware and warranty with a three-ply resonator and a two-piece flange added. The resonator reflects the head’s sound forward instead of letting it spill out of the back, which is why it is the shape bluegrass settled on — it is louder in the direction of the audience and cuts through a band.
It is a pound and a half heavier and $250 dearer, and it is a slightly less pleasant thing to hold on the sofa for an hour. Buy it if the music you are aiming at is bluegrass. Do not buy it because it looks more like a proper banjo.
- Projects forward, which is what a band needs
- Cheaper than buying the open back and converting it
- Same California build and eight-year warranty
- Six pounds against four and a half
- Wrong instrument for clawhammer and old-time
- No case at this price either
Gold Tone AC-1
- Open back
- Composite rim, 11″
- Two-way truss rod
- Gig bag included
- ~$315
Gold Tone’s entry banjo is roughly half the money and arrives with three things the Goodtime does not: a gig bag, a twelve-point factory setup, and a two-way adjustable truss rod. It also has a Zero Glide nut, a fitted nut that sets the string height at the first fret properly — the commonest reason a cheap banjo feels hard to fret. At 3.75 lb it is the lightest banjo on this page.
What you give up is the rim. The AC-1’s is a composite molding rather than three plies of violin maple, and that is most of what you hear in the difference between the two. The neck is narrower too — 1 3/16″ at the nut against the Goodtime’s 1 1/4″ — which suits small hands and crowds large ones. It is a good banjo for the money and a plainer sound. Buy it if you are not yet sure the banjo will stick.
- Around half the price
- Gig bag and a twelve-point setup included
- Has the adjustable truss rod the Goodtime lacks
- Composite rim rather than laminated maple
- Plainer, less resonant tone
- Narrower nut, tight for large hands
What is not in the box
The Goodtime arrives as a banjo and nothing else. The armrest is fitted, which is more than most makers manage at this price, but there is no bag, no case, no tuner and no strap. Two of those are worth sorting out on the same order.
A case matters more here than on a heavier instrument, because an open back has no resonator protecting the underside of the pot and the head is exposed on both faces. The important number when you shop is the rim diameter: the Goodtime’s pot is 11″, and most banjo cases are cut for the 12″ to 13″ resonator shape, which leaves an open back sliding around inside.
Crossrock CRW520OBJ11BK
- Wooden hardshell
- Cut for an 11″ open back
- Lockable latch, accessory compartment
- ~$120
Multi-ply cross-laminate wood shell with a sponge lining, one lockable latch, metal feet and a compartment inside for a tuner and spare strings. It comes in three sizes and the one cut for this banjo is the 11″ open back, so check the size reads 11-inch rather than 11–12.5 or resonator.
MUSIC FIRST padded gig bag
- 16 mm padding
- Fits a 38″ full-size banjo
- Backpack straps
- ~$46
Sixteen millimeters of padding, a cotton shell, a neck fixing band inside and backpack straps. It fits a full-size banjo up to about 38″ long, which covers the Goodtime’s 37 1/2″. Enough for carrying it to a lesson and storing it safely at home; not enough for putting it in a car boot under other luggage.
D’Addario Micro Banjo Tuner
- Piezo, reads vibration not sound
- Clamps to the tension hoop
- Color display, visual metronome
- ~$23
Built for a banjo rather than adapted to one: it clamps onto the tension hoop with a non-marring bracket instead of a headstock clip, so it stays out of the way of the fifth-string peg, and it reads vibration through the hardware rather than listening to the room. The display swivels on two axes, which is the only way to make a hoop-mounted tuner readable from playing position. It also runs a visual metronome, which matters more than it sounds when you are learning rolls.
If you would rather compare tuners properly before buying one, we have a whole guide to banjo tuners.
The warranty is eight years, and only if you register
Deering’s Goodtime warranty runs eight years, which is unusually long, and it comes with conditions worth knowing before you buy rather than after.
- You have to register it. Send in the warranty card or register online. Deering is explicit that the coverage depends on it.
- Eight years applies to banjos built on or after 1 January 2025. Anything made before that carries the earlier six-year term, which matters if you are looking at a used one.
- It does not transfer. Sell the banjo and the warranty ends. A second-hand Goodtime has no coverage at all, whatever its age.
- Buy from an authorized dealer. Deering void the warranty on instruments bought outside their dealer network.
- It covers materials and workmanship only. Not normal wear, fret wear, finish, strings, a worn nut or bridge, accidental damage, or the case or bag.
- You pay the shipping. Both directions, warranty or not.
None of that is unreasonable, and the eight years is genuinely better than the rest of the market offers. It is simply a warranty with a registration card attached, and the card is the part people throw away.
What it sounds like, and why
The Goodtime has no tone ring. On most banjos a ring — a hoop of brass or steel — sits on top of the rim and the head stretches over it, and that metal is what produces the bright, cutting ring people associate with bluegrass. Here the head is stretched directly over the wooden edge of the rim, so what you hear is maple.
The result is warm rather than brilliant, with a shorter sustain and a woody thump on the low strings. That is the sound old-time and clawhammer players want, and it is the sound the whole Goodtime range makes: no Goodtime has a ring until the Goodtime Special, which is the first one to fit a steel one. It is also why a $600 Goodtime and a $2,000 bluegrass banjo are not the same instrument with different price tags — the tone ring and the cast flange are most of the money, and Deering left both out on purpose.
The tailpiece is adjustable, which is the one free tone control on the banjo. Tightening it presses the strings harder onto the bridge and the sound gets snappier; backing it off mellows it. Deering designed the Goodtime tailpiece specifically to give that adjustment at this price, and most new owners never touch it.
Who should buy it
Buy it if you want a banjo that will still be worth playing in ten years and you would rather not replace it in two. The things that make cheap banjos discouraging — uneven frets, a neck that shifts, a fifth-string friction peg that will not hold, a rim that sounds like a biscuit tin — are all absent here, and they are absent because the same people who build Deering’s $3,000 banjos build this one.
Skip it if you want to play bluegrass in a band, in which case the Goodtime Two is the right end of the same line and a banjo with a cast tone ring is the right end of the market. Skip it too if you are not yet sure you will keep going: $600 is a lot to find out with, and the Gold Tone at half the money answers that question for less. Our guides to the best open back banjos and the best banjo for the money put it against the rest of the field.
Common questions
Is the Deering Goodtime really made in America?
Yes, in San Diego, California, in the same workshop and by the same people as Deering’s professional instruments. It is the least expensive American-built banjo on the market, and the reason it is possible at $600 is that the design leaves out the two most labor-intensive parts — the tone ring and the resonator flange — rather than cutting corners on the ones that remain.
Can I put a resonator on it later?
Yes. Deering makes a retrofit kit for any Goodtime with an 11″ pot, containing the resonator, the flange, the armrest J-hooks and instructions. It costs around $280 and is made to order in ten to fourteen business days. But $600 plus $280 is more than the $850 Goodtime Two, so it is worth doing only if your plans changed after you bought.
Can you play bluegrass on an open back Goodtime?
You can play every note of it, and with fingerpicks it is loud enough for a kitchen. What it will not do is cut through a fiddle and a guitar in a jam, because there is no resonator throwing the sound forward and no tone ring adding the brightness that carries. It is the wrong shape for the job rather than a bad instrument.
What strings does it take?
Five-string banjo strings tuned G D G B D, and it ships on a light set — .010, .011, .013, a .021 wound fourth and a .010 fifth. Stay at light gauge when you replace them. There is no truss rod to compensate for a heavier set.
Does it need a setup out of the box?
Far less than an imported banjo does. The frets are level, the neck angle is set and the bridge is placed at the factory. What you may want to adjust after a few weeks is the action, using the coordinator rod, and the head tension as it settles. Neither needs a workshop.
Is there a version for clawhammer?
Deering builds the Goodtime with a scooped fingerboard as an option, for about $60 more. Scooping removes the frets over the head end of the neck so the striking hand can sit further forward, which is the position clawhammer wants. If you already know that is the style you are learning, it is worth having. If you are not sure, the standard neck plays clawhammer perfectly well — see our guide to clawhammer banjos.
How does it compare to the Artisan Goodtime?
The Artisan is the same banjo in a darker stain with a few upgraded parts, and it costs around $950. Whether that is worth $350 is covered in our Deering Goodtime Artisan review.