A resonator is a wooden bowl bolted to the back of the banjo. It closes off the pot, stops the sound escaping backwards into your chest, and throws it at whoever is standing in front of you. That is the entire mechanical difference, and everything else — the volume, the weight, the price, the kind of music each one ends up playing — follows from it.
On the same banjo from the same maker, that bowl costs about $250 and adds about a pound and a half. Deering build the Goodtime both ways, identical from the rim down, so the number is unusually easy to pin: around $600 open back, around $850 with the resonator on it.
Bluegrass needs the resonator. Old-time does not. If you are not sure yet, buy the resonator.
An open back will not keep up with a guitar, a mandolin and a fiddle in a jam, and playing harder is not the fix. A resonator banjo, meanwhile, plays clawhammer perfectly well — slightly louder and brighter than an old-time player would choose, but nothing stops you. The mistake that costs money runs one way only, which is why the resonator is the safer buy for anyone still deciding.
What the resonator actually does
A banjo head radiates in both directions. On an open back, the sound leaving the rear of the pot goes straight into your body and your clothing, which absorbs a good deal of it and scatters the rest around the room behind you. You hear more of your own playing than the audience does.
The resonator puts a hard reflective surface where your stomach was and a flange around the rim to seal the gap, so that rearward sound turns around and leaves through the front with the rest of it. The banjo gets louder in the direction of the listener and the player hears comparatively less. It also gets brighter, because the bowl reflects the higher frequencies more efficiently than it does the low ones and because a sealed pot sustains longer.
Worth being clear about the direction of the effect: the open back is not a quieter instrument so much as a less focused one. Standing next to a player, the difference is smaller than you would expect. Standing in an audience thirty feet away, it is enormous.
The resonator costs about $250 and a pound and a half
Most comparisons will tell you open backs are cheaper because there is less material in them. That is true and it is not the useful way to think about it, because open backs and resonator banjos are not two rungs of one ladder — a $2,000 open back is a serious instrument and a $200 resonator banjo is not. The number worth knowing is what the bowl costs on an otherwise identical banjo, and the Deering Goodtime line answers it directly.
| Goodtime | Goodtime Two | |
|---|---|---|
| Back | Open | 3-ply resonator |
| Rim | 11″ 3-ply violin-grade maple — the same part | |
| Neck | Rock maple, 22 frets — the same part | |
| Tone ring | None on either | |
| Weight | 4.5 lb | 6 lb |
| Built | California, eight-year warranty | |
| Price band | ~$600 | ~$850 |
A pound and a half sounds trivial written down and does not feel trivial after an hour standing up with a strap on. It is the reason a lot of old-time players who could happily afford a resonator do not own one, and it is worth weighing against the volume before you assume louder is better.
The tone ring is not the resonator, and confusing them wastes money
These are two different parts doing two different jobs, and the sound people are usually chasing when they say “bluegrass banjo” comes mostly from the one they are not looking at.
The resonator is the bowl on the back and it governs projection — how much of the sound reaches the audience and from what direction. The tone ring is a heavy metal hoop that sits between the wooden rim and the head, and it governs the note itself: whether it rings, cuts and sustains, or lands with a soft woody thud. A rolled brass or bell brass ring is what gives a bluegrass banjo its hard bright attack. A resonator banjo with no tone ring is louder than an open back but still sounds soft, and the Goodtime Two above is exactly that instrument.
This matters at the point of purchase because the two features are priced independently and sold together in the marketing. At around $850 you can have an American-built resonator banjo with no ring, or an import with a rolled brass ring and a removable resonator. Neither is the wrong answer; they are answers to different questions. If bluegrass volume and attack is the actual goal, the ring is the part to insist on, and our bluegrass banjo guide is built around instruments that have one.
Can you add a resonator to an open back banjo?
Sometimes, and it is rarely worth doing as a plan. Deering sell a retro-fit kit for the Goodtime — resonator, flange, screws and an armrest — for around $280, made to order in a couple of weeks. It fits the standard 11-inch Goodtime pots, including the four-string tenor and plectrum necks, and does not fit the 12-inch Americana models.
Add that to the open back and you are at roughly $880 for a banjo Deering will sell you finished at around $850. Buying the open back with the intention of converting it later is therefore the most expensive route to a resonator banjo, and it is worth saying plainly because “you can always add one later” is advice that gets handed to beginners constantly.
Below the Goodtime price bracket the option usually does not exist at all. Import banjos in the $150 to $400 range are not built to a standard that a flange kit is made for, and no manufacturer offers one. If the possibility of changing your mind is genuinely worth paying for, buy a banjo designed to convert rather than one you hope to modify.
Can you take the resonator off?
Physically, yes, on almost any resonator banjo — it is held on by a handful of thumbscrews. Whether it leaves you with something you want to play is another matter, and it depends on how the banjo was built.
On a bluegrass banjo with a one-piece cast flange, taking the bowl off leaves a metal ring standing proud all the way around the pot. It is uncomfortable against the body, it looks wrong, and the banjo underneath is still a heavy pot with a tone ring in it, so it does not sound like an old-time instrument either — just a quieter bluegrass one. On banjos built with a two-piece flange the flange comes off with the resonator, which is much closer to the real thing.
A small number of banjos are designed around this and say so. Gold Tone’s Cripple Creek models take the resonator off with four bolts and are light enough underneath that the result is a banjo you would genuinely choose to play clawhammer on. That is the honest hedge for anyone who cannot yet answer the question this page is about.
The scoop is what really stops a banjo switching sides
Beyond the back of the pot, the one specification that ties a banjo to a style is the end of the fingerboard. Open backs built for clawhammer often have a scoop: the frets above about the seventeenth are removed and the board is thinned underneath them, so the striking hand can move up over the neck without catching. Playing there gives the soft, warm, woody tone old-time music is built on, and it is the single most style-specific feature you can buy.
It is also a one-way door. A scooped banjo cannot play the melodic bluegrass passages that live in exactly those missing frets, so a scoop commits the instrument in a way the resonator never does. If you are hedging, hedge on the resonator and leave the fingerboard alone.
Action height is a smaller and more flexible version of the same story. Clawhammer generally wants the strings a shade higher than three-finger bluegrass picking does, but that is a setup adjustment measured in fractions of a millimetre, not a property of the instrument, and any competent shop will change it in an afternoon.
Which one for which music
| If you play | Buy | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Bluegrass, in a band or a jam | Resonator, with a tone ring | Volume and attack against guitar, mandolin and fiddle |
| Clawhammer and old-time | Open back | Lighter, warmer, and the scoop is available |
| Irish, on a four-string tenor | Either — usually open back | Sessions are close-quarters; see plectrum vs. tenor |
| Trad jazz on a plectrum banjo | Resonator | Written to be heard over a horn section |
| Singing and playing at home | Open back | You are the audience, and it will not drown you |
| Not yet decided | Removable resonator | Four bolts settle it later |
Three banjos that make the decision concrete
Deering Goodtime Two
- 3-ply resonator, 11″ violin-grade maple rim
- No tone ring
- Rock maple neck, 22 frets
- 6 lb
- Built in California, eight-year warranty
- ~$850
A Goodtime with the bowl on the back, and the cleanest illustration of what this page is about — every other part is shared with the open back model. It is set up properly before it ships, which at this price does more for how a banjo plays than any specification on the list, and it holds its value better than anything else in the bracket.
The absence of a tone ring is the thing to understand rather than the thing to be talked out of. This will sit comfortably in a jam and it will not produce the hard metallic ring of a bluegrass banjo costing twice as much. For most people buying their first resonator banjo that is the right trade, and the full picture is in our under $1,000 guide.
- American built and set up before shipping
- Six pounds, which is light for a resonator banjo
- Best resale value at this price
- Eight-year warranty
- No tone ring, so limited bluegrass cut
- A pound and a half heavier than the open back
- No case in the box
Deering Goodtime
- Open back, 11″ violin-grade maple rim
- No tone ring
- Rock maple neck, 22 frets
- 4.5 lb
- Built in California, eight-year warranty
- ~$600
The same instrument for $250 less and a pound and a half lighter, and the one to buy if old-time is the plan. Four and a half pounds is unusual enough to change how long you play in a sitting, and the unscooped fingerboard means it will still play anything you ask of it later.
If you want the deeper, drier old-time voice specifically, Deering’s 12-inch Americana is the model built for it — with the caveat that the 12-inch pot puts it outside the retro-fit kit, so that one really is open back for life. There is more on the range in our Goodtime review.
- The lightest way into an American-built banjo
- Same setup, warranty and resale as the Goodtime Two
- No scoop, so no style is closed off
- A resonator kit exists if you change your mind
- Will be buried in a bluegrass jam
- Converting later costs more than buying the Two
- No case in the box
Gold Tone CC-100R+
- Removable resonator
- Rolled brass tone hoop
- 24 hooks, planetary tuners
- SMP+ pickup fitted
- 6.5 lb
- Made in Asia, set up in Florida
- ~$850
Gold Tone’s own description is the reason this one is here: a resonator “easily removed for true openback playing”. The bowl comes off with the flange rather than leaving a ring of metal behind, and at six and a half pounds the banjo underneath is light enough that the open back configuration is something you would actually choose — which is not true of most convertibles.
It also has the rolled brass hoop the Deerings do not, so for bluegrass specifically it is the louder and brighter instrument at the same money. What you give up is the California build, the eight-year warranty and the resale value.
Two things to get right at the checkout. The plus in the name is a fitted pickup, along with the sunburst finish, the engraved armrest and the upgraded planetary tuners — if you have no intention of ever plugging in, the plain CC-100R converts identically for less. And the listing sells a three-quarter size on the same page at a lower price, so check the size selector says full before you order.
- Genuinely converts, flange included
- Rolled brass tone hoop at this price
- Set up in Florida before it ships
- Planetary tuners
- Heaviest of the three
- Import build, and resale reflects it
- You pay for a pickup you may not want
- Shorter warranty than the Deerings
Questions that come up
Is an open back banjo harder to learn on?
No. The neck, the tuning and the fingering are identical, and the lighter weight is a small advantage in the first few months. The only learning difference is the style each one steers you toward.
Can you play bluegrass on an open back?
Alone or recorded, yes, and some players prefer the sound. In a jam with a guitar and a fiddle you will not be heard, and there is no technique that fixes it. Plenty of old-time players use fingerpicks on an open back; that changes the attack, not the projection.
Does an open back need different strings?
No, though old-time players often go a gauge lighter for a looser feel under a striking hand. Our banjo strings guide covers the gauges.
Which holds its value better?
The maker decides that far more than the back does. An American-built open back will out-resell an import resonator banjo comfortably, and the reverse is also true.
Once the choice is made, the rest of the shopping is on our open back banjo guide and clawhammer picks, or the bluegrass side. If this is a first banjo of any kind, start with the beginner guide instead.