The Ibanez B300 is a full-size five-string resonator banjo built around a basswood block rim, a rolled tone ring and a two-piece flange, with a walnut resonator, abalone purfling and twenty-four brackets. It sells for around $600. That specification does not exist anywhere else at that money — the American-built banjos in the same bracket have no tone ring, no flange and no resonator.
What Ibanez took out to get there is the tuning. The B300 has friction pegs, not geared machines, and a plastic nut. Both are stated on Ibanez’s own specification sheet, both are the things owners complain about, and both are fixable for less than the price difference to the next banjo up.
Ibanez B300
The most traditional bluegrass layout you can buy for around $600 — block rim, rolled tone ring, resonator, two-piece flange, twenty-four brackets — attached to friction tuners and a plastic nut. Worth it if you are willing to have it set up and to put geared pegs on it. Not worth it if you want to open the box and play.
What Ibanez actually specifies
These figures are Ibanez’s own. The neck is okoume with a bolted joint, the fingerboard purpleheart, the inlay acrylic and the resonator walnut with an abalone purfling line round its edge. The nut is plastic. The head is an eleven-inch coated Remo Weatherking under a steel tension hoop, pulled down by twenty-four brackets.
| Ibanez B300 | Ibanez B200 | Gold Tone CC-100R | Deering Goodtime Two | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rim | Basswood block | Basswood | 11″ multi-ply maple | 3-ply violin-grade maple |
| Tone ring | Rolled | Rolled | 11″ rolled brass flat bar | None |
| Resonator | Walnut, abalone purfling | Sapele | Maple | Maple |
| Neck | Okoume | Okoume | Maple | Rock maple |
| Fingerboard | Purpleheart, acrylic inlay | Purpleheart, acrylic inlay | Rosewood, snowflake inlay | Maple |
| Tuners | Chrome friction | Chrome friction | Sealed geared | Sealed geared |
| Nut | Plastic | Plastic | 1-3/16″ ZeroGlide | Not published |
| Head | 11″ Remo coated Weatherking | Remo Weatherking | 11″ Remo LC coated | Frosted |
| Brackets | 24 | 24 | 24 | 16 |
| Flange | Two-piece | Two-piece | Two-piece | None |
| Scale | 26.4″ | 26.4″ | 26-3/16″ | 26 1/4″ |
| Built | Import | Import | Import, set up in Florida | California |
| Price band | ~$600 | ~$500 | ~$800 | ~$850 |
The B200 sitting $100 below it is the same instrument in cheaper clothes: same rim, same neck, same fingerboard, same friction pegs, same flange and bracket count. What the extra hundred buys on the B300 is walnut instead of sapele on the resonator, the abalone purfling round its edge, and the headstock inlay. It is a hundred dollars of appearance, and nothing in it changes how the banjo plays or sounds.
The friction tuners
A friction peg is a tapered shaft held in the hole by pressure, with a screw in the end of the button that you tighten to increase the grip. There is no gear train. Turning the button a few degrees moves the pitch a long way, and whatever tension is left in the string keeps trying to turn it back. A geared peg — planetary on a banjo, four turns of the button to one of the shaft — moves in small predictable amounts and stays where it is put.
This is the one thing owners of the B300 consistently raise. Reviews on Banjo Hangout rate the instrument 8 and 9 out of 10 and still describe “weak tuners which do not hold tight” and a fifth-string peg that arrived badly seated. One owner replaced the whole set with Gotoh planetary machines and considered the banjo finished after that.
There is a curiosity in Ibanez’s own range here. The cheapest banjo they make, the B50, is fitted with open-gear machine heads. The B200 and B300 above it both use friction pegs. Moving up the line loses you the geared tuning, because the friction peg looks more traditional on a banjo with a two-piece flange and a purfled resonator.
The cheap fix
The fifth string is the one that will drive you mad, because it is short, it is under the least tension and it is the one you retune most often when you capo. A single geared fifth-string peg costs around $16 and takes about ten minutes.
Golden Gate P-142 geared fifth-string peg
- 10:1 gear ratio
- Seats into a 9mm hole
- Triple nickel plating, removable pearloid button
- Single peg, not a set
- ~$16
Ten to one is a lot of gearing for one string, and it turns the fifth from the peg you fight into the one you forget about. Measure the hole in the neck before ordering. Nine millimeters is the usual size on a modern banjo, but it is worth a caliper rather than an assumption, and a hole a previous owner has already reamed will be wider.
- Fixes the worst of the problem for around $16
- 10:1 gearing, far finer than a friction peg
- Ten-minute job with a screwdriver
- Leaves the other four as they were
- Needs a 9mm hole
The proper fix
Gotoh SPBJ4-AIN planetary tuners, set of four
- 1:4 planetary gearing
- Nickel plated, vintage cream pearloid buttons
- Made in Japan
- Set of four, for the peghead only
- ~$135
Planetary machines are what a bluegrass banjo is meant to have, and Gotoh’s are the ones most players fit. The gearbox sits in a compact housing behind the headstock, so a set of four looks close enough to the friction pegs they replace that the banjo does not change character.
Be honest with yourself about the arithmetic first. This is a fifth of what the banjo cost, and adding it to the price of the B300 puts you within reach of a banjo that came with geared tuners and a proper nut already. It is the right purchase if you already own the B300 and a poor one if you are budgeting for it up front.
- The tuning problem gone entirely
- Gotoh build quality, and they will outlast the banjo
- Keeps the traditional look
- Around $135, on a $600 instrument
- Does not include the fifth peg
- The peghead holes may need reaming to fit
How it sounds, and why the rim matters
The pot is the interesting part of this banjo. A block rim is built the way a barrel is: short blocks of wood glued edge to edge into a ring, then turned round. It is how Gibson built Mastertones and how most expensive banjos are still built, and it is almost never what you get on an import at this price, where a three-ply laminate is the norm. The B300’s block rim is basswood rather than maple, which is softer and lighter than the traditional wood, but the construction is the real thing.
On top of it sits a rolled tone ring: a hoop of metal bent to shape, which the head bears down on. Ibanez does not publish what it is made of. What matters is the class of ring rather than the metal — a rolled hoop is bright and adds cut and volume over bare wood for very little weight or money, and it is not the same animal as a cast bell-brass ring, which is three pounds of poured metal and is what you are hearing on bluegrass records. Nothing near this price has a cast ring; the cheapest one worth owning is the Gold Tone OB-150 at around $1,300, which is covered in the banjos worth having around $1,000.
The result, once the head is tightened properly, is a loud, bright, punchy banjo with a fast decay — squarely a bluegrass voice rather than an old-time one. Owners who have set one up compare it favourably with instruments costing several times as much, and the block rim is the reason that comparison is even in the conversation. If a resonator is not obviously what you want, the difference between an open back and a resonator banjo is worth settling first.
What it needs when it arrives
Both published owner reviews describe the same experience: the banjo turned up assembled but not set up. The head was slack, the coordinator rods needed adjusting, the action was high and the tuners were loose in their holes. After an afternoon of work both owners were delighted with it. This is normal for an import at this price and it is the single biggest thing separating a $600 banjo from an $800 one.
If you can do it yourself, the order is: bring the head up to tension, set the coordinator rods so the neck angle gives you the action you want, position the bridge by the twelfth-fret harmonic, and put decent strings on. If you cannot, a banjo setup at a shop runs $50 to $100 and it is money far better spent than any hardware upgrade.
The plastic nut is the other thing worth knowing about. Ibanez lists it as plastic, and a soft nut with slots cut slightly too narrow is the usual reason a cheap banjo plays sharp in the first position and pings when you tune. A luthier will cut you a bone one for very little while the banjo is in for setup.
What to put on it
The strings it ships with are not worth keeping. A medium 10–23 nickel-plated set is the standard bluegrass gauge and the right thing to put on a resonator banjo with a tone ring; light 9–20 is the alternative if you want less resistance under the fingers, at the cost of some volume. The banjo strings worth buying goes through the gauges properly.
| What | Which one | Price band |
|---|---|---|
| Strings | D’Addario XT, medium 10–23, nickel-plated — treated to last several times longer than plain steel, which matters when the strings are the thing keeping friction pegs under tension | ~$9 |
| Tuner | Snark SN5X clip-on — chromatic, reads by vibration, and you will use it more on this banjo than on most | ~$22 |
| Case | Gator GC-BANJO-XL molded ABS — 14.4″ lower bout, so it takes the B300’s 14″ resonator; nothing ships with the banjo | ~$160 |
A clip-on that reads vibration rather than sound is worth insisting on here, since a banjo in a room with other instruments defeats a microphone tuner entirely. If you want something with banjo-specific sweetened tunings instead, the banjo tuners worth owning covers that ground.
The banjo to buy instead, if you would rather not do any of that
Gold Tone CC-100R Cripple Creek
- Resonator, 11″ multi-ply maple rim
- 11″ rolled brass flat-bar tone ring
- Sealed geared tuners
- 1-3/16″ ZeroGlide nut
- Maple neck, rosewood board, 22 frets, 26-3/16″ scale
- 24 brackets, Remo LC coated head, Terminator tailpiece
- 6 lb, gig bag included
- Hand set up in Florida, seven-year transferable warranty
- ~$800
Everything the B300 makes you do yourself, this has already had done. It is set up before it ships, so the head is at tension and the action is right out of the box. The tuners are geared. The nut is a ZeroGlide, which is a fitted replacement that cuts the slots to the correct depth and is the specific answer to the plastic-nut problem. A gig bag is in the box.
What you give up is the block rim. The Gold Tone’s pot is multi-ply maple, which is the ordinary way of building a rim, against the B300’s blocked construction. On paper that goes Ibanez’s way and it is a real difference in how the two are made. In the hand, a set-up banjo with geared tuners beats a better-built one that will not stay in tune, and that is why this is $200 more.
- Arrives set up and playing
- Geared tuners and a ZeroGlide nut, so nothing to fix
- Rolled brass ring and a resonator, same layout as the Ibanez
- Gig bag and a seven-year transferable warranty
- Around $200 more
- Multi-ply rim rather than a block one
- Plainer than the B300 to look at
Above both of them, the cheapest American-built resonator banjo is the Deering Goodtime Two at around $850, which has no tone ring at all — a decision Deering makes deliberately, and one that suits old-time better than bluegrass. The banjos worth stepping up to sets all three against each other.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Ibanez B300 a good beginner banjo?
Not really, and the reason is the tuning rather than the instrument. A beginner cannot yet tell the difference between a banjo that has gone out of tune and a hand that is fretting badly, so friction pegs cost them confidence they cannot spare. Someone who already plays, knows what a setup is and is buying on hardware for the money will get on with it very well.
Does the B300 come with a case?
No. There is no case and no gig bag, so budget for one separately. The resonator is 14 inches across and the body is a shade over four inches deep, which is a full-size bluegrass pot — any case sold for a full-size five-string resonator banjo will take it.
What is the warranty on an Ibanez banjo?
Ibanez file banjos under their acoustic line, and that warranty runs for the lifetime of the original retail purchaser, given by Hoshino USA and requiring the original sales receipt. Tuning hardware is the exception: it is covered for one year, not for life. Given which part of this banjo people replace, that is worth reading twice.
Can the friction tuners be swapped for geared ones?
Yes, and it is a common thing to do. The fifth-string peg is the easy one — a geared replacement drops into a 9mm hole. The four on the peghead are a bigger job, because planetary machines use a larger shaft than a friction peg and the holes usually need opening up. That is a ten-minute job for anyone with a reamer and a job for a shop otherwise.
Is the B300 loud enough for a bluegrass jam?
With the head brought up to proper tension, yes. The resonator throws the sound forward, the rolled ring adds cut, and twenty-four brackets pull the head evenly enough to hold that tension. It will not have the bark of a cast bell-brass Mastertone-style banjo, but nothing at three times the price will either.
Verdict
The B300 is a genuinely unusual instrument for around $600: block-rim construction, a rolled tone ring, a two-piece flange and twenty-four brackets, wrapped in a walnut resonator that looks like a banjo costing twice as much. Nobody else puts that combination in this bracket, and owners who set one up properly are consistently pleased with how it sounds.
It is also a banjo that expects work. It arrives unset, the nut is plastic and the tuners are friction pegs, and Ibanez’s warranty covers those tuners for one year rather than for life. If you are happy to spend an afternoon and around $16 on a geared fifth peg, it is a lot of banjo. If you want to open a box and play, the extra $200 for a Gold Tone CC-100R buys exactly the things the Ibanez leaves you to sort out.
Still working out where your money goes on a banjo at all? What a banjo actually costs and the bluegrass banjos worth owning both cover wider ground than this page does.