A banjo has five strings. Four of them run the length of the neck like any other stringed instrument, and the fifth stops at the fifth fret, where it has its own tuning peg poking out of the side of the neck. That short fifth string is the whole instrument in miniature — it is why a banjo sounds like a banjo, and it is the reason the count is odd in the first place.
Four- and six-string banjos are also real instruments in wide use, and they are not stripped-down or added-to five-strings. They are different instruments, tuned differently and played with different hands.
Five strings, tuned gDGBD — and the short fifth is the highest-pitched of them
That is the banjo in bluegrass, in clawhammer, in old-time and in almost every photograph of one. A four-string banjo is a tenor or a plectrum, both of them jazz and Irish instruments played with a flat pick. A six-string is a banjo body with a guitar neck, tuned EADGBE. If nobody has told you otherwise, five is the answer.
Every banjo, counted
| Strings | Instrument | Tuning | What it plays | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | The standard banjo | gDGBD | Bluegrass, old-time, clawhammer, folk | Everywhere. This is the answer. |
| 4 | Tenor banjo | CGDA, or GDAE for Irish | Trad jazz, Irish session tunes | Dance bands and sessions |
| 4 | Plectrum banjo | CGBD | Trad jazz, ragtime, chord melody | 1920s repertoire, still played |
| 4 | Banjolele | GCEA | Ukulele songs, louder | Music hall, and travel |
| 6 | Six-string banjo, or banjitar | EADGBE | Whatever a guitarist already plays | Guitarists crossing over |
| 5 | Long-neck five-string | eEBEG#B | Folk revival songs in low keys | Pete Seeger’s design, still built |
| 5 | Zither banjo | gDGBD | Victorian and Edwardian parlour music | Britain, mostly secondhand |
| 8 | Banjo-mandolin | GDAE, in four pairs | Mandolin and fiddle tunes, with cut | Attics, and the secondhand market |
Two of those rows look like the same instrument and are not. A plectrum banjo has 22 frets on a neck about 26 inches long — the same neck as a five-string, without the short string. A tenor has 17 or 19 frets on a scale between about 20 and 23 inches, and is tuned in fifths. Plectrum versus tenor works through the difference, and the full family covers the bodies, the resonators and the rest.
The fifth string is the strange one
On a five-string banjo in standard open G tuning, the strings from the fourth to the first are D3, G3, B3 and D4 — low to high, as you would expect. The fifth string is G4. It is the highest-pitched string on the instrument, and it sits closest to your thumb rather than furthest from it.
That inversion is the point. The fifth string is a drone: your thumb strikes it on the way past, at the same pitch every time, while the fingers underneath it play the melody. Roll the right hand through a repeating pattern with that high G falling in the gaps and you have the sound people mean by “banjo”. Take the string away and the same right hand produces something else entirely.
The construction follows from the tuning. To get a plain .010 steel string up to G4 you have to shorten it, so the fifth string leaves the neck at the fifth fret instead of the nut — about 19¾ inches of speaking length against the 26¼ inches of the others. Its tuning peg cannot live on the headstock either, so it is mounted in the side of the neck at the same fret, which is why a banjo headstock carries four tuners and a banjo neck has one growing out of it.
- You cannot fret it below the fifth fret. There is no neck under it there. The drone is fixed at G unless you retune it.
- A capo does not catch it. Clamp a normal capo at the second fret and the fifth string is still in open G against a banjo now in A. The fixes are a sliding fifth-string capo on a rail, or small spikes set into the fingerboard at the seventh and ninth frets that the string hooks under.
- It is the same gauge as the first string. In a medium set both are .010. The length is doing all the work, which is worth knowing the first time you have a set open in front of you and two identical strings in your hand.
Which banjo do you have? Count the tuners
If you have inherited something, or are looking at a photograph, the tuners settle it faster than the strings do — strings go missing, tuners do not.
- Four at the headstock, one in the side of the neck: five-string. The commonest banjo by a wide margin.
- Six at the headstock, no side peg: six-string banjo. The headstock will be guitar-shaped, usually three a side.
- Four at the headstock, no side peg, long neck: plectrum. Count the frets — 22, and the neck is about as long as a guitar’s.
- Four at the headstock, no side peg, short neck: tenor. 17 or 19 frets, and the whole instrument looks slightly compressed next to a plectrum.
- Four tuners on something the size of a ukulele: banjolele. The pot is typically 8 inches across rather than 11.
- Eight tuners, four either side: banjo-mandolin. The strings run in four pairs.
- Five tuners, all at the headstock, closed back: zither banjo. The fifth string runs through a tunnel bored under the fingerboard from the fifth fret and comes out at the peghead, so the peg that would be in the side of the neck is not there.
That last one is a British instrument. Alfred Cammeyer built the first in the late 1880s and took it to London in 1888, where it became the parlour banjo of the period; the tunnelled fifth string was his solution to the peg that catches on everything. They turn up regularly in the UK secondhand market and almost never anywhere else.
So which one should you buy?
Five strings, unless you have a specific reason not to. It is the instrument every tutorial, every tab book and every online lesson is written for, and it is the only one that will get you to the sound most people are imagining when they decide they want a banjo. The four- and six-string instruments are for players arriving from somewhere else — from a mandolin, a tenor guitar, a jazz band or a guitar.
Jameson 5-String Banjo
- 5 strings
- Geared 5th tuner
- Removable resonator
- Remo head
- ~$175
A budget import, and honest about it, but it has the two things that matter at this price: a geared fifth-string tuner rather than a friction peg, and a resonator that unbolts, so the same banjo can be loud for bluegrass or open-backed for clawhammer while you work out which you are. Maple and mahogany shell, mahogany neck, purpleheart fingerboard. Put another $50 to $100 aside for a setup — the bridge placement and the head tension decide whether a cheap banjo plays in tune, and no factory at this price sets them properly.
- Geared fifth tuner holds the drone where a friction peg slips
- Resonator comes off, so it covers both playing styles
- Cheap enough to find out whether the instrument suits you
- Needs a setup before it plays properly
- Heavy — most of the weight is in the resonator
- Nothing about it will still satisfy you in three years
Deering Goodtime Openback
- 5 strings
- 26¼” scale
- 22 frets
- 4.5 lb
- ~$600
Made in California, and the instrument most players who stay with the banjo end up owning early. It is light enough to practise with for an hour without your shoulder complaining, it arrives playable, and the fifth-string peg and the geared tuners hold. Openback means no resonator, which is the old-time and clawhammer configuration; the resonator model is heavier and louder and aimed at bluegrass. Deering sell it at their own list price, so there is no discount to hunt for.
- Plays properly out of the box, which nothing at $175 does
- Four and a half pounds — light for a five-string with 22 frets
- Holds its value if you decide the banjo is not for you
- Three times the money of a first-instrument import
- Openback is the wrong end of the family for bluegrass volume
- No fifth-string capo or spikes, so playing in other keys is a job for later
Between $175 and $600 sit a good many instruments worth having. The beginner picks compare six of them, and the under-$200 guide covers what the cheap end is really like.
If four strings is what you actually want
Two questions decide it. Are you playing Irish tunes or trad jazz, and do you want to bring a mandolin or fiddle player’s fingering with you? Tuned in fifths, a tenor banjo hands a fiddler everything they already know. A plectrum keeps the five-string’s neck and scale and simply drops the drone, which suits chord-melody jazz and anyone arriving from a five-string.
Deering Goodtime Openback 19-Fret Tenor
- 4 strings
- 19 frets
- ~23″ scale
- 4.5 lb
- ~$600
The 19-fret neck is the one most professional Irish players use, and the extra scale length over a 17-fret tenor gives the notes more body under a bow-driven session. Same American-made pot and neck as the five-string Goodtime, same weight. Restring it GDAE and it is an Irish tenor — nothing in the construction changes, and the label on the box is not what makes the difference.
- The fret count Irish players actually use
- Light enough for a long session
- Takes either tuning without modification
- 17-fret necks suit small hands better
- Four-string banjos worth owning start around this money
- Openback, so it will not cut through a loud band
There are dedicated picks for tenor banjos and plectrum banjos if you already know which of the two you are after.
If six strings is what you actually want
A six-string banjo is tuned EADGBE, so every chord shape and every scale a guitarist knows is correct on it from the first minute. That is the entire appeal and it is a real one. What it will not give you is the five-string’s sound, because that sound comes from the drone and from rolls played around it — a six-string in a guitarist’s hands produces guitar music with a banjo’s attack.
Jameson 6-String Banjo Guitar
- 6 strings
- EADGBE
- Removable resonator
- Gig bag included
- ~$175
The same instrument as the five-string above with a guitar neck on it, and at this price that is the sensible way to discover whether a banjo body under your existing chord shapes is something you will use. Serious six-strings start at three or four times the money. Take the resonator off and it becomes a quieter, dryer thing worth playing in a room.
- Playable in the first minute if you play guitar
- Bag included, which the five-string does not have
- Cheap enough to treat as an experiment
- Needs a setup, same as its five-string sibling
- Wants lighter strings than a guitar — around .010–.047
- Will not teach you to play the banjo
The six-string guide goes into the models properly.
And the four strings that are not a banjo at all
A banjolele has four strings tuned GCEA — ukulele tuning, ukulele scale, ukulele chord shapes — on a small banjo pot. It was built in the 1920s so that a ukulele could be heard past the third row, and that is still what it is for. It is not a route into banjo playing, and anyone buying one expecting to reach bluegrass later will be disappointed.
Kmise Concert Banjolele
- 4 strings
- GCEA
- 23″ concert size
- Bag, tuner, strap, spares
- ~$90
Concert scale rather than soprano, which gives adult hands room without making it any less portable, and it arrives with the bag, clip-on tuner, strap and spare strings that a first one needs. The pickup fitted inside is more use than it sounds — a banjolele is quiet next to a real banjo, and it means you can plug in rather than fight for volume.
- Everything you need in the box
- Smallest and lightest thing on this page
- Ukulele players can play it immediately
- Nylon strings, so none of the five-string’s bite
- Teaches you nothing transferable to a five-string
- Nylon stretches, so it wants retuning several times over the first week
Banjo versus banjolele sets the two side by side properly.
What the string count means when you buy strings
This is where the number stops being trivia, because the sets are not interchangeable. A five-string set has five strings cut for gDGBD at a 26-inch scale. Put one on a tenor and you have a spare string and four wrong gauges.
D’Addario EJ55 Phosphor Bronze, Medium
- 5 strings
- .010–.023
- Loop end
- Phosphor bronze 4th
- ~$6.50
Plain steel .010, .013 and .016, a phosphor bronze wound .023 for the fourth, and a second .010 for the fifth. It is the set most five-strings are set up around, and mediums are the standard for bluegrass because the extra tension is what drives the head. Loop end, which is what a banjo tailpiece takes — a guitar-style ball end is no use.
- The reference set — most setup advice assumes it
- Warm on the wound fourth, bright on the plain strings
- Cheap enough to change on schedule rather than when they break
- Mediums are a lot of tension for an old or lightly built banjo
- Phosphor bronze dulls faster than coated strings
For everything else, match the set to the tuning rather than to the word on the box. A standard tenor in CGDA takes a tenor set — D’Addario’s EJ63 at 9–30 is the reference. An Irish tenor is the same instrument dropped a fifth to GDAE, where standard tenor gauges go slack, so it wants a heavier set like the EJ63i at 12–36. A plectrum in CGBD has its own set again; GHS’s 190 is a light stainless one at 11–26. A six-string tunes like a guitar but wants lighter strings than a guitar does — around .010–.047 rather than the .012 an acoustic light set starts at. The full string guide covers the materials and the gauges.
The rarer counts
Five, four and six account for effectively everything sold. A handful of others exist and are worth being able to name.
- Long neck, 5 strings. Pete Seeger had three extra frets spliced into a neck so he could tune the whole instrument down a minor third and sing in lower keys. The result is a 25-fret five-string on a scale of about 32 inches, tuned eEBEG#B, and it is still made.
- Banjo-mandolin, 8 strings. Four pairs tuned GDAE on a banjo pot, so a mandolin or fiddle player gets their own fingering with far more cut. They sold in enormous numbers during the 1920s mandolin and banjo orchestra boom, which is why so many survive and why the secondhand market is where you find one.
- Cello and bass banjos. Built to fill the lower parts in banjo ensembles, tuned an octave or so below the instruments above them. Specialist purchases.
- Twelve strings. These have been built, in six doubled courses, but essentially nothing is made now. One thing to watch while searching: a model number containing “12” almost always refers to a twelve-inch pot rather than twelve strings.
If you want the whole family laid out — the bodies, the resonators, the scale lengths and what each one is for — types of banjos is the page for it. Mandolins answer the same question rather differently, with eight strings in four pairs.
Why does a banjo have 5 strings?
Because the fifth is a drone rather than a melody string. It is fixed at a high G, struck by the thumb on the way through a right-hand roll, and it rings under the notes the fingers are playing. The idea is older than the American banjo. The akonting, a gourd-bodied folk lute played by the Jola people of Senegal, the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, has two long melody strings and one short drone struck by the thumb, and it is the closest known African relative of the instrument.
Is the 5th string the thickest string on a banjo?
No — it is the thinnest, tied with the first, and the highest in pitch. In a medium set both are .010. It sounds high because it is short, not because it is light.
Can you play a 5-string banjo with only 4 strings?
You can, and it becomes a different instrument. Taking the fifth string off a five-string is roughly what a plectrum banjo is, and the four remaining strings are tuned DGBD rather than a plectrum’s CGBD. Every note is still available; the rolls that make the banjo sound like itself are not.
How many strings does a bluegrass banjo have?
Five, with a resonator on the back to throw the sound forward. Bluegrass is played three-finger style on a five-string in open G, and the fifth-string drone is central to it. The bluegrass picks cover the instruments.
How many strings does a clawhammer banjo have?
Five, the same as a bluegrass banjo — usually openback rather than with a resonator. Clawhammer uses the fifth string even more heavily than bluegrass does: the thumb catches the drone on almost every beat. Clawhammer banjos go into the instruments.
What is the standard tuning for a 5-string banjo?
Open G, written gDGBD. The lowercase g is the short fifth string at G4; the others are D3, G3, B3 and D4. Strum the open strings and you get a G chord, which is why it is called an open tuning. The tuning walkthrough has the rest.
How many strings does a banjolele have?
Four, tuned GCEA — standard ukulele tuning. A banjolele is a ukulele neck on a small banjo pot, and it is played with ukulele chord shapes rather than banjo technique.
How many strings does a banjo mandolin have?
Eight, in four pairs tuned GDAE — the same tuning and fingering as a mandolin or a fiddle, on a banjo pot. Both strings of each pair are tuned to the same note and picked together, so a player thinks in four notes rather than eight.