Some time back I wrote an article describing the different uses of 4-string, 5-string, and 6-string banjos.

http://www.creekdontrise.com/acoustic/b ... banjos.htm

Recently I saw some five-string banjos that were better suited for clawhammer and other strumming-heavy styles than they would be for Bluegrass being advertised as "Bluegrass banjos." I'm sure the manufacturers were just trying to keep totally clueless people from buying 6-string banjos and expecting to learn Scruggs-style on them. But I thought it was worth pointing out that Bluegrass performance requires a certain kind of banjo, preferably with metal tone rings and other features to boost the volume and the ring.

So here's an article on that:

http://creekdontrise.com/acoustic/banjo ... _banjo.htm

Feel free to sign up for the forum and disagree on any point.

I just added a flowchart to help folks decide what kind of banjo they needed to end of the article here:

http://www.creekdontrise.com/acoustic/b ... banjos.htm

I've also put together an "exploded" view of a professional banjo with notes, to help you decide whether a banjo you're looking at really has all the "bells and whistles" or is just as cheap as they could make it and still call it a banjo.

Here's a preview:



To see the high-rez pdf version, click here:

http://creekdontrise.com/acoustic/banjo ... natomy.pdf