Both are four-string banjos built on the same eleven-inch pot, and hanging side by side on a wall they look like one instrument in two lengths. Everything that separates them is the neck. A plectrum banjo has 22 frets on a scale of about 26 inches and is tuned CGBD. A tenor banjo has 17 or 19 frets on a scale between 20 and 23 inches and is tuned in fifths — CGDA, or GDAE if it is going to a session. Neither one plays bluegrass. That is the five-string, and no change of technique will get you there on four.
The split exists because two different sets of musicians walked into the same 1920s dance band from different instruments. Five-string banjo players took the drone string off and kept their tuning and their scale length, and that is the plectrum. Mandolin and banjo-mandolin players wanted their own fingering to come with them, so they got a shorter neck tuned in fifths, and that is the tenor. A century later it is still the fastest way to the answer.
A 19-fret tenor — the Deering Goodtime Openback is the one to buy
The tenor is the four-string banjo with a living tradition behind it on both sides of the Atlantic, it is what almost every professional Irish player is holding, and it is far easier to find, sell and get taught on than a plectrum. Nineteen frets rather than seventeen is the part to insist on. This one is built in California, weighs four and a half pounds and costs what Deering charges for it.
The neck is the whole difference
| Plectrum | Tenor | |
|---|---|---|
| Frets to the body | 22 | 17 or 19 |
| Scale length | 26 to 26 1/4″ | 19 3/4″ to 23″ |
| Standard tuning | CGBD | CGDA |
| Intervals | Fourth, third, fourth — a guitar’s spacing | Fifths throughout — a viola’s |
| Common alternative | DGBE, the top four guitar strings | GDAE, a fiddle an octave down |
| Played with | A flat pick | A flat pick |
| Home ground | Trad jazz rhythm, solo chord-melody | Irish trad melody, trad jazz rhythm |
| Comes naturally to | Five-string banjo and guitar players | Mandolin and fiddle players |
The pot is shared. Both take an eleven-inch head, both are sold with and without a resonator, and a plectrum and a tenor from the same maker are usually the same instrument from the rim down. Weight, tone ring and resonator are decisions you make on either one, and our open back versus resonator comparison applies to both without modification.
If you have inherited a four-string banjo and do not know which it is, count the frets from the nut to where the neck meets the body. Twenty-two is a plectrum, seventeen or nineteen is a tenor, and the proportions give it away in a photograph — a plectrum neck is as long as a five-string’s, while a tenor’s looks short against the same size pot.
What carries over from the instrument you already play
| You play | Buy | Tuned | What comes with you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fiddle or mandolin | Tenor | GDAE | Every scale and every tune you know, an octave lower, with the same fingers |
| Viola or mandola | Tenor | CGDA | The same again, and you can read your own parts off the page |
| Guitar | Plectrum | DGBE | The top four strings of a guitar, so your chord shapes are already correct |
| Five-string banjo | Plectrum | CGBD | Same scale, same 22 frets, same shapes as dropped C without the drone |
| Nothing yet | Either | — | Choose by the music instead |
The five-string row is worth spelling out, because it is stronger than a table makes it look. A plectrum banjo is a five-string with the short drone string left off — same 26-inch scale, same 22 frets, same pot — and CGBD is that instrument’s dropped C tuning minus the string you removed. If you own one, you can find out this afternoon whether plectrum playing suits you: pick up a flat pick and leave the fifth string alone.
The tuning decides the music
Tuning in fifths spreads four strings across two octaves. That is a great deal of range under one hand, which is why the tenor became a melody instrument in Irish music — a fiddle tune sits in first position with open strings doing much of the work, and the fingering belongs to the fiddler who brought it. The cost is chords. Notes a fifth apart are far apart on the fingerboard, so tenor chord shapes need stretches a guitarist would call unreasonable, and they get worse the further up the neck you go.
What comes back in return is symmetry. Every gap between strings is the same interval, so a chord shape or a scale pattern keeps its form when you slide it across the strings or up the neck. A tenor player learns a handful of shapes and moves them; a guitarist learns a great many and stays put.
CGBD is the opposite bargain. The strings sit close together in pitch, so four-note chords fall under the hand in compact shapes and ring out without a stretch — which is precisely what a rhythm banjo in a jazz band is for, and what makes unaccompanied chord-melody playing possible at all. Melody is the harder half here: less range, and more shifting to reach notes a tenor would have had sitting on an open string.
Chicago tuning is the shortcut past all of it. Tune a plectrum DGBE and it is the top four strings of a guitar, so every shape you already know is right as it stands. It takes no different banjo and no different strings, and plenty of players who bought a plectrum meaning to learn CGBD never leave it.
For Irish playing, the fret count matters more than the label
An Irish tenor banjo is not a separate instrument. It is a tenor banjo tuned GDAE with heavier strings on it — a fiddle an octave down, the tuning Barney McKenna made standard — and nothing in the construction changes. A tenor sold for jazz becomes an Irish tenor the moment you restring it.
The neck length does change the instrument, and it is the decision that costs money to get wrong. Gold Tone’s 17-fret model is the one with “Irish Tenor” in its name and it leaves the factory tuned GDAE, which makes the short scale look like the Irish standard. Among players you would hear on a record, it is not. The 19-fret neck at 22 to 23 inches is what most professionals use, and Deering’s own write-up on the question, drawing on the members of We Banjo 3, puts the 17-fret as the choice for children and for players with small hands.
The reason is tension. GDAE is already lower than the tenor banjo was designed around, and a shorter scale drops the tension further, so a 17-fret neck in Irish tuning needs thick strings to feel like anything under the fingers and still gives up punch and some intonation on the low G. Buy the short scale because your hands want it, not because the box says Irish. Our Irish banjo picks go further into the instruments themselves.
Which one is easier
For chords, the plectrum, comfortably. The shapes are compact, they resemble a guitar’s, and in Chicago tuning they are a guitar’s. For single-line melody, the tenor, because fifths put more notes within one hand position and the open strings land where tunes need them.
Physically the plectrum is the gentler of the two in spite of the longer neck. It carries low strings over 26 inches, which works out slack and easy to press down; a tenor pulls higher pitches across a much shorter scale and feels tight by comparison. Against that, the tenor’s frets are closer together, so a small hand covers more of the fingerboard — the same trade the 17-fret question turns on.
Neither is picked with the fingers. Clawhammer and three-finger rolls belong to the five-string and the drone it has that these do not; both of these are flat-picked, strummed or played with alternating down-up strokes.
What to buy once you have decided
Deering builds the same banjo in both necks at the same price, which makes the comparison unusually clean: identical rim, identical head, identical warranty, and the only thing your money buys differently is the neck the argument above is about. Around $600 is roughly where four-string banjos worth owning start, from either of the two makers building them in quantity.
Deering Goodtime Openback 19-Fret Tenor
- 19 frets, 23″ scale
- Tunes CGDA or GDAE
- 11″ violin-grade maple rim, open back
- No tone ring
- 4.5 lb
- Built in California, eight-year warranty
- ~$600
The 19-fret neck is the one to have, and this is the cheapest way to get it from a maker whose instruments arrive playing in tune with themselves. Twenty-three inches gives Irish tuning enough tension to sound like something, keeps the intonation honest on the low G, and leaves the fingerboard long enough to go up the neck when a tune asks you to.
There is no tone ring — the head bears straight onto the wooden rim — and no resonator. In a room, in a session, or against a fiddle, that reads as clear and woody and perfectly loud enough. In a jazz band with a horn section it will get buried, and playing harder is not the fix; that is what the resonator models further up the Goodtime range are for, at around $850 and $1,200.
The four-and-a-half pounds are worth a mention because banjos are not usually this light, and it changes how long a session lasts before your shoulder complains.
- 19 frets, which is what Irish players actually use
- Built and set up in California
- Light enough to stand up with all evening
- Retunes to jazz CGDA with a string change
- No tone ring, so limited cut in a band
- Open back — adding Deering’s resonator kit later costs more than buying the Goodtime Two Tenor outright
- No case at this price
Deering Goodtime Plectrum
- 22 frets, 26 1/4″ scale
- Tunes CGBD or Chicago DGBE
- 11″ violin-grade maple rim, open back
- No tone ring
- 4 lb
- Built in California, eight-year warranty
- ~$600
The same banjo with the long neck on it, for the same money. If you came from a guitar or a five-string, this is the one where your hands already know what to do, and four pounds is genuinely unusual — it is the lighter of the two despite carrying four more frets.
The same caveat applies and it bites harder here. A plectrum banjo was designed to be heard over a brass section without amplification, and an open back with no tone ring is the quietest way to own one. As a first plectrum for playing at home that is the sensible trade; as the banjo you take to a trad jazz gig it is not, and the resonator models are the answer there.
New plectrum banjos come from a very short list of makers, which is the real constraint on this side of the decision. Our plectrum banjo guide covers what exists.
- Guitar and five-string shapes transfer directly
- Four pounds, the lightest banjo Deering makes
- Chicago tuning needs nothing but a retune
- Built and set up in California
- No tone ring, and quiet is the wrong answer for jazz
- Open back only
- No case at this price
The strings are not interchangeable, and this catches people out
Both instruments take four steel strings and there the similarity ends. A plectrum’s are long and tuned low; a tenor’s are short and tuned high; and within the tenor, moving between jazz tuning and Irish tuning means changing gauge, not just turning the pegs. Put a standard CGDA set on and tune it down to GDAE and you get four slack strings that buzz on the frets and will not hold pitch.
| Instrument and tuning | Gauges | Set |
|---|---|---|
| Tenor, CGDA — jazz and standard | .009–.030 | Dunlop DJN0930, around $9 |
| Tenor, GDAE — Irish | .012–.036 | Dunlop DJN1236, around $9 |
| Plectrum, CGBD or DGBE | .011–.026 | A plectrum set, or the four long strings of a five-string set |
The plectrum row is the useful one to know. Because the scale is identical to a five-string’s, an ordinary five-string set fits a plectrum exactly — you fit four of them and have the short drone string left over. If you already keep banjo strings in a drawer, you are already stocked.
On a 17-fret tenor in Irish tuning, go heavier again. The short scale needs it, and a set built for 19 frets will feel loose on 20 inches.
If you wanted bluegrass or clawhammer, you want neither of these
The banjo sound in bluegrass and the one in old-time both come from the five-string, and specifically from the short fifth string that starts at the fifth fret and rings as a drone under everything else. Rolls are built around it; clawhammer cannot be played without it. A plectrum will give you the same scale length and a good deal of the same tone, and it still will not do that, because the string is not there to do it with.
If that is the music you are after, start with our beginner banjo guide or the rundown of banjo types. Four strings is a different tradition, not an easier door into this one.
Common questions
Can I tune a tenor banjo like a plectrum?
Into DGBE, yes, and plenty of guitarists do exactly that because tenors are easier to find. Full CGBD on a 21-inch scale ends up slack, so it wants a heavier set if you try. What you cannot change is the neck, and the long scale is where most of the plectrum’s tone comes from.
Which is more common secondhand?
Tenors, by a wide margin. They were built in enormous numbers through the 1920s and they are still in production for the Irish market. New plectrums come from a very small number of makers, which is worth knowing before you set your heart on one — our tenor banjo picks cover the other side of the shelf.
Is a plectrum banjo louder than a tenor?
No, and if anything the reverse. Volume on a banjo comes from the pot — head tension, tone ring, resonator — and those are the same choices on both. The tenor’s higher tuning across shorter, tighter strings gives it a harder and more cutting attack, which is how it took the rhythm chair in dance bands. The plectrum’s longer scale and lower tuning make it the warmer of the two.
Can I fit a fifth string to a plectrum banjo?
Not without a luthier. The neck has no fifth-string tuner and no nut slot for one, so it means drilling the neck and fitting a geared peg at the fifth fret. It costs more than the difference between a plectrum and a five-string.
Which should a complete beginner choose?
Follow the music. Sessions and Irish tunes mean a tenor in GDAE; trad jazz rhythm works on either, and the tenor is easier to find; chord-melody and anything you want to play on your own favor the plectrum. If the honest answer is that you like the sound of a banjo and have no particular tradition in mind, a five-string is the better first instrument — more material, more teachers, and more people to play with.