Fretless Mountain Banjo, new, walnut, gotoh tuners, made in West Virginia!!

I finished this one today September 11, 2026. The overall dimensions are 11” wide , 2 1/4” side height , 36 1/4” overall length and I have the bridge a comfortable 24 1-2” from the nut in the photos. The Gotoh tuners make this instrument super easy to tune especially for someone older who is getting arthritis or weakness. The Aquila 1b super nylgut strings give it that old time sound that you will fall in love with. The solid walnut neck is quarter sawn which gives you a lot more strength. This has my V neck profile that is a very old style and feels very comfortable in the hands and as far as I know im the only one making them in this style because it requires hand tools like a draw knife and spoke shave to shape & I think most makers of these today take advantage of modern tools and even cnc machines but for the past 20 or more years I’ve made these the old time way that men like Frank Proffit or Stanley Hicks from the foxfire book or old YouTube clips would have recognized and been familiar with. I don’t often use gotoh tuners because they are so expensive but I notice to the right person they understand the value and convenience. Because they are nylgut strings they will take about two weeks to stretch and settle in but I have brought them up to standard tuning 3 times so that will help you a lot. I also want to mention that the 5th gotoh peg, I used the special 5th string $50 peg reamer that stew Mac sells because it’s important to me that peg fits right and will come out if needed in years to come. A lot of makers use the wrong reamer or just a drill bit and expect epoxy to substitute for a properly made 5th peg hole. I’m a slow small one man operation and I don’t have that big a name because I’m not able to produce in quantity just over 90 hours of work in each banjo. I will include a set of guidelines for this that explains things in more detail. These should be selling for more than I have them priced but at the same time I want to sell them too. My work would be a lot like what you’d see at colonial Williamsburg as far as craftsmanship and authenticity. I have four walnut banjos made. I was very lucky to find quartersawn walnut for the necks and wood for the bodies but they were expensive and only got enough for 4 banjos. This listing is the only 11” wide one I have then I will be listing a 10” and two smaller 9 1/2” size ones. I will say I love the dark walnut look on this one especially on the body I don’t often find walnut that dark and it’s got grain character that I tried to capture in photos. I do take shipping seriously and spend around $50 to ship each banjo as I custom make each box and use two kinds of bubblewrap and styrofoam peanuts & a few different kinds of tape so that all adds up when I have to buy shipping materials and that’s not counting my time which is free because I want to keep these affordable but not too cheap otherwise I can’t afford to keep making them and it’s not looking good with how prices keep going up for materials but I do what I can. I use reverb safe shipping which fully 100% protects us both. Let me know if you have any questions and thank you so much for reading this listing & I hope to do business with you!