Question for.....

by Don Sikes , Vera Cruz, Missouri, Wednesday, July 05, 2023, 19:09 (442 days ago) @ RayLee

So... is he going to play the 6-string banjo like a 6-string guitar? or is he going to retune the guitar to open "G" (which I do on occasion)... I've replaced the top (low octave) "E" string with another high octave "E" string before on a guitar to give it some "banjo like" playability... if he's gonna play the 6-string banjo like the old "river boat" style of strumming the strings or just individually plucking the strings the using "lighter gauge" strings will work fine... trying to get a blue grassy sound or mountain (Gandpa Jones) frailing sound with a 6-string banjo is a bit hard to do.. he might be better off getting a 4-string "jazz - river boat" style banjo and just tune the strings like the bottom 4 strings on a guitar... the learning curve on that would be fairly short.

I'm originally a guitar player that self taught myself banjo back in the 1970's... started with low-key two finger style blue grass sounding playing .. then upgraded to three finger Scruggs style as I go more proficient and then finally learned to frail mountain style much later...

good luck