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Dean Backwoods 6 "Shootout"
For a time I even toyed with the idea of taking the two apart and trying to get one good banjo. But my fear was that I'd just destroy both of them.
Then I noticed that the "upgrade" version of the Backwoods 6 has a wooden pot. It also has a built-in pickup but that's not such a big deal when I've already proven that I could get a decent sound out of a $20 piezoelectric on the baseline model.
Still, having two relatively low-end six-string banjos, neither one of which was exactly what I wanted, wasn't the answer. Then I saw that Dean had lowered the price on both models of the Backwoods 6. And then an eBay vendor offered the upgrade model with a couple tiny scratches for a very good price. They advertised it as a second, but the photos looked fine and they said it would have a Dean warranty. So I sprang for it. I put my original 6-string on Craigs List while I was at it, and found a likely home for the Rogue.
The necks look identical except for the color of the binding. So do the headstocks, except for the color of the nut and the tuners.
Except for being black, the resonator didn't seem to be that much different than most other resonators on most inexpensive to mid-priced banjos. Theoretically a mahogany resonator should reflect sound a tad better than most other woods, but I can't tell where it makes a noticeable difference. It certainly doesn't make up for the lack of a tone ring. I guess the feeling was that if you were buying a banjo to plug in you wouldn't miss the tone ring. But you can tell . . . . More later.
As far as I can tell, the clear drumhead doesn't affect the sound one way or another. Maybe if you were into graphic arts you could put a design inside the resonator the way the Luna people do. For me, I would rather have a more authentic appearance. Though I do admit the dark chrome on black effect is cool. If I was a hipster trying to look cool and hold a banjo at the same time, this might be the one to buy.
One thing I was a little worried about was the possibility that the "humbucker" pickup would actually poke through the head, like they do on some electric banjos. You can't tell from the photos, because the head is transparent. As it was shipped, the magnetic "humbucker" pickup was right up against the head, but it didn't go through it. That way if I need to replace the head, I won't need to punch little holes into it or anything. I know why they put the thing as close to the strings as they could - for maximum pickup-to-RF (noise) ratio. So I don't blame them for screwing it in so tight. But a little testing later showed me that having it apply real pressure to the head deadened the thing unnecessarily, like the rubber clamp-on pads some drummers use to get a "tighter" sound.
There is no tone control, only volume. The output jack is above the tailpiece, rather than beneath it the way I usually install mine. I can't decide if that interferes with my right arm movement or if I'm just being paranoid.
Setting it up was a gradual process, since I had a dozen other projects going on at the same time. The head was so loose it was apparent that the thing had never been played, although it showed a few signs of being shopworn. I tightened the head a little bit at a time, going around giving each nut a quarter of a turn, except for the ones that weren't even a bit tight. Those I cranked until I felt they were as tight as the rest. I probably went around the head about six times this way. At that point the head had no give, although there is still a noticeable depression under the bridge, which isn't typical for my banjos. Rather than press the point, I figured I'd give the transparent head the benefit of the doubt for now.
Then I set the bridge, using the method described in this article. Usually I set a guitar or banjo up with the strings it came with, then change the strings. That way I don't put all that extra stress on the new set, tuning and de-tuning. As it turned out, the neck didn't need much adjustment. Though - like my baseline model - when I got to the point of "compromise" between fret buzz and action, I wound up with slightly higher action that I usually care for on my guitars and banjos. Playable, yes. Professional, no.
Then I took my fancy strap off my baseline Backwoods 6 to put on this one and I couldn't. I had the kind of strap with a leather loop that would hook around something and come back and get bolted to the base of the strap. I've used these before on lots of banjos. But almost every banjo I've ever owned, including the baseline Backwoods 6 had little rings for attaching the strap. This one didn't. Fine, I'd fasten it to a bracket, the way God intended. But the first bracket above the neck (in playing position) was so close to the neck that I couldn't get the tip end of the strap through. The second bracket was almost up against the volume knob, so I couldn't fasten the end of the strap there, either. So I went to my beach 5-string which had a cheapy strap that attached with something like shoe-strings and used that.
I contacted the vendor, explaining that I wasn't put off so much by the little stamp, as I was by the fact they hadn't mentioned it in the ad. Not there was anything I could do about it except return the banjo. I did get a good price after all, and if I'd tried the banjo in the store and seen that, I might have bought it anyway. As it is, I'll probably keep the thing. I decided to hold off on putting new strings on the thing until I heard back from the vendor.
When the vendor got back to me, they did not explain why they left out that little detail in their ad.* I was still within the window for sending it back, but the CP was the A bigger concern was how dead the thing sounded compared to all of my other banjos. So I decided to risk a set of new strings and give it a real try. I had nickel-wound guitar strings on-hand. They had the little brass pulley-shaped things on the end, so they weren't, technically, banjo strings, but they work just fine.
I wiped the fingerboard down with a household polish I'd used before (sorry, I'm out of the name brand stuff I prefer to use, and I'm not going to name the stuff I did use, because it may not work on all raw tropical woods). It soaked right in. So I did it again. And again. Then I used a soft cloth to buff it. It never got anything like a shine on it, but it now looks less "flat" than it did before, and it feels a lot smoother. In fact, the wood itself reminds me of a rosewood Telecaster fingerboard, though the action isn't as smooth.
With the strings off, I also checked for fret wear to see if it had any sign of being played before it came my way. There was nothing there but a few scratches that I very well may have put there myself.
Next I looked at the hardware by which the thumb screws which hold the banjo and resonator together screw in. The "upgrade" Dean banjo had the same kind of screw-in connections as my cheapest banjo, the Rogue 6-string. The Samick had another cheap solution, blocks of wood glued in with a sort of molly-bolt nut drilled into it (you see this on a lot of really cheap banjos). On my Samick, the nuts almost missed the block of wood a couple times, so that's not exactly a precision solution. On the other hand, the little wood blocks let the Samick's wooden pot fit into the head fairly snugly so that's not a bad thing. The aftermarket piezo in the cheaper unit doesn't put out much volume, which is why some of the better piezo-based solutions come with preamps. So I had to crank the amp pretty high to get volume high enough for my test. Fortunately my Crate has a separate "gain" knob. You wouldn't get much volume out of a cheapy amp. By cranking the amp up very high (and due to the natural characteristics of any piezoelectric setup) I wound up being able to hear more handling noise than I did with the better banjo. The thing didn't sound as much like a banjo as I would have liked, but if I played banjo-style parts on it, that helped.
The upgrade banjo has far less handling noise, and a lot more sound coming out. I could get pretty loud with a third the volume setting I needed for the piezo. That said, it sounded a lot more like a guitar than the banjo with the piezoelectric pickup did. When I played banjo-style parts on it, it sounded a lot like I was playin banjo-style parts on a guitar. That makes sense given the characteristics of the two pickups.
When banjo and guitar play the same note, the strings vibrate at the same frequency. But there are other vibrations embedded in the main vibration. These "hitchhiker" vibrations are called "overtones." On stringed instruments, the first overtone is an octave higher than the "root" frequency. The second overtone is a half-octave above that, and the third overtone is two octaves above the root position. On most most instruments, once you get past that second octave, a lot of other notes come into play. And the overtones, especially the higher ones, are what give banjos and guitars distinctive sounds, because certain overtones are more prominent on a banjo than on a guitar and vice versa.
So if you could filter the sound to keep out the higher overtones, you'd have trouble telling a guitar from a banjo. This is true of many instruments - once a violinist friend was playing through a really bad PA and when I first heard it, I thought I was hearing saxoophone. The PA couldn't reproduce the high frequencies where the overtones that distinguish saxophone from violin live.
Magnetic guitar pickups do the same thing. One of the reviews I read of the upgrade Backwoods 6 was that it sounded like a guitar when he plugged it into his amp. Well, maybe it was the amp. I tried my A/B test again with the treble turned up quite a bit. The base Backwoods 6 sounded a lot more like a banjo than it had with the controls set "flat" (not emphasizing one frequency or another). Now that I think about it, that's how I had that amp set up for the faux-Dixieland gig I used it for two years ago. If I'd brought in an "acoustic" amp - one made for acoustic guitar players, I might have been able to get an even more realistic sound, but the point is that the piezoelectric pickup, as quiet as it is by comparison, had some high frequencies for the amp to work with.
When I went back to the upgrade banjo with the treble turned up, it no longer sounded just like "a guitar." It sounded like a cheap electric guitar. Cranking the treble up just made the thing sound tinny. The magnetic pickup just didn't give the amp anything to work with in the upper frequencies. Now it is possible that you could adjust for that with a BBE or something, but I'm not convinced you could get it as close to a real banjo sound as the piezo-equipped cheaper model. In fact, if I was planning on playing the upgrade banjo in a real working band, I would consider adding a piezo/preamp solution to it, running both outputs to an amp so the sound guy or me could adjust mix some of those crisp high frequences in with the magnetic pickup. Or maybe a Fishman rare earth pickup, which is sort of between the two in terms of features and capabilities. (See our article on "banjo pickups" for more information on your aftermarket options.) Yes, I know that adding a cheap pickup to a banjo with an expensive pickup built in would seem self-defeating. If there weren't other things I liked about the upgrade banjo, it would be.
If you know from the start that you want a built-in mag pickup, because you're used to playing at high volumes in feedback-prone rooms, the upgrade instrument is your logical choice - the pickup setup is a very clean installation that would cost you real money if you paid someone else to do it as an aftermarket addition. But if you don't need amplification right now and you'd like to play a banjo that is loud all by itself, the cheaper instrument might be your choice. You can always add a $20 piezoelectric pickup later if you get into a band where you need to "plug in" all the time.
In other words, the "upgrade" banjo is cooler looking, and comes with a built-in pickup, but the cheaper one will serve most people starting out just as well.
By the way, although I tend toward pro guitars and 5-strings, Dean has given me great service so far on the banjos and bases I have bought from them. Unlike a dozen other brand names that sell 6-string banjos that list under $600, they have a sales office, a custom shop, and a repair/parts department that is actually helpful. So when I tell you that the differences between their six-string banjos have more to do with what you need them for than any difference in quality, I don't mean to imply that the dozen or so off-brands that have been flooding the market lately are just as good. Far from it.
If you're still thinking of starting out with a cheapo to see "how it works out," you should also know that:
If you've already bought a cheapo - Take it to a technician to see if it's worth "setting up." If he/she says "no," and you have time to return it, return it. If it's too late to return it, have him/her do what they can with it, and do your best. Be sure to keep in mind that a "real" 6-string banjo will play easier, so anything you can accomplish with your cheapie will go that much better if you upgrade later.
For my part, I'm keeping the upgrade banjo and selling the base-line unit and the Rogue. The electrified Backwoods Six does not have the brightness, the volume, or the ring of the base unit. But I was looking for something with a tad less ring anyway for pre-1900s music. And the built-in pickup will be nice for opportunities where all I have with me is the banjo and I have to plug into whatever's already there.
In a sense, the Rogue was good as an open-back banjo, though the neck was too narrow for me. The baseline Backwoods Six was good as a resonator banjo, but it had a little too much ring for most of the songs I wanted a six-string banjo for. So the upgrade Backwoods Six is a nice compromise that will allow me to replace two banjos with one and simplify my life a bit. But that is my decision. Your mileage will vary. And who knows, a week after I write this, I may come across another reasonably-priced 6-string banjo. If I do, I'll tell you about it, but I won't be changing instruments any time soon. As an example, the Washburn six-string banjo looks promising, but their low- and mid-range 5 strings don't exactly break any new ground for quality and price, so we'll see.
And keep in touch so we know how the 6-string banjo is faring in your part of the world.
Best of luck, all, enjoy your music, and support the arts.
Paul Race
*The reply about the CP goes:
Again, my issue wasn't with the banjo being a second - they said that up front. My issue was with them not telling me that CP was stamped on the fretboard, an issue they didn't address. I decided to keep the thing anyway, but I do prefer truth in advertising.
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