Types of Banjos: What Each One Plays, and Which to Buy

Nearly everyone arriving at this question wants a five-string. It is the banjo on every bluegrass and old-time record, it is what the word means with nothing else attached to it, and the other kinds exist because particular musicians wanted the instrument to do a job the five-string does not do — carry an Irish reel, take guitar chords without relearning anything, hold down rhythm in a 1920s dance band, fit in hand luggage.

Almost everything that separates one from another is the neck. Nearly every banjo ever built stretches a head over a circular wooden pot; count the strings, then count the frets from the nut to where the neck meets that pot, and you have identified the instrument.

Every type at a glance

Open back and resonator are not on that list on purpose. They are a choice made on top of a type rather than a type of their own, and most of these instruments are sold both ways.

The five-string, and the short string that defines it

A five-string banjo has four strings running the length of the neck and a fifth that starts at the fifth fret, with its own tuning peg poking out of the side of the neck at that point. It is the shortest string and it is tuned to the highest note — a g above the string next to it — and it is not fretted in ordinary playing. It rings as a drone.

That one string carries the whole tradition. Clawhammer is a downward strike of the hand in which the thumb catches the fifth string on the way back, and the rhythm it produces cannot exist without it. Bluegrass rolls are three-finger patterns built around the drone falling in a fixed place. Take the fifth string off and both styles stop working, which is why no four-string banjo plays either of them however hard it is pushed.

Standard tuning is gDGBD, an open G chord, so a beginner’s first tunes come out of it with almost no left hand at all. Our guide to tuning a banjo covers the alternatives, and the string count question goes further into why five became standard.

Open back or resonator

A resonator is a wooden bowl bolted to the back of the pot. It stops sound escaping backwards into your body and throws it forward at whoever is listening, so the banjo gets louder in the direction it is pointed and brighter with it. On the same banjo from the same maker that bowl costs about $250 and adds about a pound and a half.

Bluegrass needs it. Old-time does not, and the extra weight is the reason plenty of clawhammer players who could afford one do not own one. If you have not settled on the music yet, the resonator is the safer purchase, because a resonator banjo plays clawhammer perfectly well while an open back will not keep up with a guitar and a fiddle in a jam. The full comparison is in open back versus resonator, and our open back picks cover that side on its own.

Three five-strings that make the choice concrete

Two others are worth naming without a full write-up. The Gold Tone AC-1, around $315, is a composite-rim open back and the obvious step between the budget instruments and the Deerings. The Gold Tone CC-100R+, around $850, has a resonator that genuinely unbolts, which makes it the one to buy if you cannot yet say which music you are heading for. Both sit at their maker’s list price.

The four-strings: tenor and plectrum

Both are four-string banjos on the same eleven-inch pot, and side by side they look like one instrument in two lengths. A plectrum has 22 frets on a scale of about 26 inches and is tuned CGBD. A tenor has 17 or 19 frets on a scale between about 20 and 23 inches and is tuned in fifths — CGDA, or GDAE when it is going to an Irish session. Both are played with a flat pick.

The split goes back to two sets of musicians walking into the same 1920s dance band from different instruments. Five-string players took the drone string off and kept their scale length and their fingering, and that is the plectrum — which is why a plectrum banjo is, quite literally, a five-string without the short string, on the same 22 frets and the same 26-inch neck. Mandolin and banjo-mandolin players wanted their own fingering to come with them instead, so they got a shorter neck tuned in fifths, and that is the tenor.

For Irish playing the fret count matters more than any label on the box. A tenor becomes an “Irish tenor” the moment it is restrung and tuned GDAE, and nothing in the construction changes. The 19-fret neck is what most professional players use; the 17-fret short scale is the choice for small hands and for children, and buying it for the name rather than the reason costs money to undo.

Around $600 is roughly where four-string banjos worth owning start, and Deering build the same instrument in both necks at the same price, which makes that comparison unusually clean. Plectrum versus tenor works through the decision in full, and there are dedicated picks for tenor banjos, plectrum banjos and Irish playing.

The six-string banjo

A six-string banjo, or banjitar, is a banjo pot with a guitar neck on it, tuned EADGBE. Every chord shape and every scale a guitarist knows is correct on it from the first minute, which is the entire point and the entire appeal.

The idea is not new. Six-string and zither banjos were being built in London and New York in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, and the modern instrument is a revival rather than an invention. What it will not give you is the sound people associate with the banjo, because that sound comes from the drone string and from rolls played around it. A six-string in a guitarist’s hands produces guitar music with a banjo’s attack and decay, which is a useful thing to own and is not a five-string in disguise.

So the honest reckoning is this: if you want to sound like a banjo player, learn the five-string; if you want a banjo timbre inside music you can already play tonight, this is the shortcut and it works. The Jameson six-string at around $175 is the cheap way to find out whether the idea suits you, and it is a budget import at that price rather than a serious instrument — the good ones start at three or four times the money. Our six-string picks go into the models properly.

The banjolele

A banjolele is a ukulele neck on a small banjo pot, tuned GCEA and played with the same four chord shapes. It was a music-hall instrument in the 1920s and 1930s, when a ukulele on its own could not be heard past the third row, and that is still what it is for: the ukulele repertoire at a volume that carries.

It is also the smallest and lightest thing on this page by a wide margin, which makes it the practical choice for travel and for small hands. It is not a route into banjo playing — the scale, the tuning and the technique are a ukulele’s — and anyone buying one expecting to arrive at bluegrass later will be disappointed. The Kmise concert banjolele at around $90 comes with a bag, tuner, strap and spare strings, which is most of what a first one needs. Banjo versus banjolele sets the two side by side.

The rarer ones, and what they are for

Long neck. Pete Seeger had a luthier cut his neck and splice in three extra frets 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. Capo it at the third fret and it plays everything a standard five-string plays; leave it open and you have three frets below that when a song needs them.

Banjo-mandolin. Eight strings in four courses on a banjo pot, tuned GDAE, so a mandolin or fiddle player can play everything they already know with far more cut. These sold in enormous numbers during the mandolin and banjo orchestra boom of the 1920s, which is why so many turn up in attics.

Cello and bass banjo. Built to fill the lower parts in banjo ensembles, tuned an octave or so below the instruments above. They are specialist purchases and almost nobody buys one first.

Fretless. Not a different type so much as a different neck — no fret wire, so notes are stopped against the fingerboard itself. It is an old-time and early-minstrel sound, sliding and soft-edged, and it is much harder to play in tune. Worth knowing about; not worth starting on.

Twelve-string. These have been built, but there is essentially nothing on the new market, so anyone determined to own one is buying secondhand and taking what turns up. One thing to watch while searching: a model number containing “12” usually refers to a twelve-inch pot rather than twelve strings, and Gold Tone’s AC-12 is a five-string.

What actually changes the sound

Within a type, four things account for most of the difference between one banjo and the next, and they are not the ones a spec sheet leads with.

The tone ring is a metal ring the head bears against at the top of the rim, and it is not the resonator — confusing the two is the expensive mistake. A cast bell-brass ring is about three pounds of poured metal and it is where the hard, ringing, sustaining sound of recorded bluegrass comes from. Banjos carrying one start at about $1,300. Below that, most instruments have a lighter rolled hoop or no ring at all, and the difference between those two is smaller than the difference a setup makes.

The rim underneath it is usually multi-ply maple, and it does most of the work on any banjo without a heavy ring. The head is a consumable — a fresh one costs $30 to $40 and can wake up a dull instrument. And the setup, which costs $50 to $100 at a shop that knows banjos, does more for how a cheap banjo plays than the next $200 of instrument would. What a banjo is made of takes the whole thing apart, and what a banjo costs covers the price ladder.

Where the banjo came from

The banjo’s ancestors are West African plucked lutes — the akonting, the ngoni and the xalam among more than sixty gourd-lute instruments across the region. Enslaved West Africans carried the tradition to the Caribbean and colonial North America and rebuilt the instrument from what was available: a gourd body, a hide stretched over it, a fretless stick neck, a floating bridge, and a short thumb string.

That short thumb string is the direct ancestor of the fifth string, and the clawhammer stroke is the same downward technique used on the akonting. The banjo is a Black American instrument in origin, and the five-string form it had taken by the middle of the nineteenth century — before the tenor, the plectrum and the six-string were thought of — is the one still sitting at the centre of the family.

What you need besides the banjo

A clip-on tuner comes first, and it matters more on a banjo than on most instruments because five strings at low tension drift constantly and the fifth string goes sharp every time you capo. Our tuner picks cover the options.

Strings are cheap and are the fastest improvement available on a banjo that came out of a box — factory sets are usually old by the time the instrument ships. Gauges are not interchangeable between types: a tenor in jazz tuning takes a light set, the same tenor tuned GDAE for Irish playing needs a heavier one, and a plectrum takes four of the long strings from an ordinary five-string set. Banjo strings has the detail.

A strap is not optional on a resonator banjo, which has nothing to rest on your knee comfortably and will slide off it. A capo follows once you play with other people, and five-string players need a fifth-string capo or spikes as well as a standard one. A case or gig bag is worth having before the banjo leaves the house, and several of the instruments above include one — which is worth counting when comparing prices.

Common questions

Which type of banjo should a beginner buy?

A five-string, unless you have a specific reason otherwise — you already play guitar and want to use those chords tonight, or you are learning Irish tunes on a tenor, or you want the ukulele repertoire. Every beginner’s book, every teacher and every tab site assumes five strings. Our beginner guide has the picks.

Can you play bluegrass on a four-string banjo?

No. Bluegrass rolls are built around the fifth string as a drone, and a tenor or plectrum does not have one. You can play chords and melodies on four strings very happily; you cannot produce that sound, and no change of technique gets you there. Bluegrass banjos are all five-strings for this reason.

What is the difference between a plectrum and a five-string?

The short fifth string, and nothing else of substance. Same 22 frets, same scale of about 26 inches, same pot. CGBD is a five-string’s dropped-C tuning with the drone removed. If you own a five-string you can find out this afternoon whether plectrum playing suits you: take a flat pick and leave the fifth string alone.

How heavy are they?

An American-built open back five-string runs about four and a half pounds and the same banjo with a resonator about six. Inexpensive imported resonator banjos are the heavy ones, often ten to twelve pounds, because the weight sits in cast hardware rather than a tone ring. Banjo weights has the detail, and it matters more than people expect once a strap is involved.

Can I take the resonator off a banjo, or add one?

Taking one off is usually four bolts. Adding one to a banjo that was not built for it generally is not, because the flange that seals the gap has to be there, and buying the kit afterwards routinely costs more than buying the resonator model in the first place. Some banjos are designed to convert; if you genuinely cannot say which music you are heading for, that is the feature to look for.

How many types of banjo are there?

Eight are in current production and worth naming: five-string, tenor, plectrum, six-string, banjolele, long neck, banjo-mandolin, and the cello and bass instruments. Two of those — the five-string and the tenor — account for very nearly everything sold.

So which one?

A five-string. Put the resonator on the back if you are going to play with other people or you want bluegrass, leave it off if you are heading for old-time or you mostly play at home, and if you cannot say yet, buy one whose resonator comes off. The four-strings, the six-string and the banjolele are all worth owning, but each of them is the right answer to a question you would already know you were asking.