Quality…What Are You Paying For?

Deering’s Goodtime banjo is a classic example of a true American original. Some of our customers who are new to banjos become confused when they see some of the imported banjos in stores and ask us questions about why the Goodtime looks so different from the various brands of imported banjos.

Imported banjos are designed to look like expensive, professional banjos to the un-educated buyer. The Goodtime banjo, by contrast, has a clean, simple design and has no crudely pretentious ornamentation to delude a customer with “ style without substance”. The emphasis in the design of the Goodtime is tone, easy, comfortable playability and simple maintenance. In other words, substance combined with simple style. Deering makes some of the most ornate (and most expensive) banjos in the world and we know how to build the real thing. The Goodtime banjo is not a cheap imitation. The Goodtime banjo IS the real thing.

Greg Deering designed the Goodtime banjos so they would be affordable to everyone, made of high quality tone woods (Rock Maple and birch), easy to play with a slender, beautifully shaped, comfortable neck and a true multi-ply rim like the classic banjos from the 1920’s. These are ingredients found in banjos costing five times the price of a Goodtime banjo. The Goodtime banjo is the only high quality, low priced banjo available today that is hand-made in America.

Most of the imports are made in factories that make other products. It is not uncommon for foreign makers to make, pianos, guitars, furniture etc, in the same factory where they make banjos The Goodtime banjos are made with much of the same tooling that is used to build the prestigious Deering banjos, in a factory that only makes banjos. The necks on imported banjos tend to be fat and bulky and extremely hard to play for a beginner. A heavy finish tries to create the “image” of the beautiful buffed gloss finish on a professional banjo, but the scratches and machining marks under the heavy finish indicates the intention to make a banjo look more expensive, to artificially create the “appearance” of quality without going through all of the steps and workmanship to truly create a quality product.

The rim of the Deering Goodtime banjo is made of multiple layers of birch and finished on the outside surfaces in rock maple. Both of these tone woods are dense and hard and contribute to a bright clear tone. Many of the imported banjos have soft aluminum alloy rims and are acoustically inert. Tapping on them produces a thud. Tapping on an un-assembled Goodtime banjo rim produces a vibrant, musical tone. Some imports that I have inspected with “wood rims” are made from soft, light weight wood and cannot produce a bright sound. Again, they are usually darkly stained and heavily coated with clear finish to LOOK like more expensive banjos.

We regularly get heart breaking phone calls from frustrated customers who bought an imported banjo and are on the verge of giving up learning to play because the strings are so high off the fingerboard and the neck is so fat they can’t hold down chords comfortably or the banjo has such a disappointing tone that…they are losing interest

A beginner should never suffer with a pretentious banjo that was designed with false promises of shiny finish and crude plastic inlays when what they really want and need is a banjo that is wonderfully comfortable and easy to play so the player is free to create beautiful sound … that’s what music is…. creating beautiful, sculpted sound.

Many customers call me saying they saw an import banjo that sold regularly for three hundred dollars, looked “fancy”, was on sale for two hundred dollars and ask my opinion of what they should buy. When you see import banjos discounted so drastically on a regular basis, you must ask yourself, how can a dealer afford to sell this banjo so cheap? Could it be that he buys them cheap and sells you the perception of value? So, what is its real value? What is its musical value? Do you want to spend your hard earned dollars on a “perception” of value? How many “bargains” have we bought in our lives that we ended up replacing because they didn’t work, or were simply no fun to use? But even worse than mere false economy, when a banjo discourages or un-inspires you to learn to play, it has done more damage than the loss of several hundred dollars. This damage is the hardest to undo.

How do you encourage someone once they’ve been discouraged from learning to play by a poor quality banjo? As a banjo teacher for more than a quarter of a century, I have helped many discouraged students get re-energized on their banjo. It always means getting a banjo that was made to play and getting rid of the banjo that sounds and plays poorly and was designed to imitate the “appearance” of an expensive banjo when hanging in a music store.

Please don’t allow a poor banjo to discourage you. We promise you that every Goodtime banjo that comes from the Deering Banjo Company is hand built in our shop. You will be buying a quality musical instrument that was truly designed and built for playing music. At the heart of your desire, is the love of music…that is why you want to play the banjo. Don’t dash your desires on a banjo designed to trick you. Buy a real banjo of sterling quality…a banjo that will inspire you to pick it up and play…a banjo that is a real banjo…a banjo made by banjo specialists…buy a Deering Goodtime banjo, and INSPIRE your heart and your music.