Useful Instrument

I’ve recently acquired a very useful and relatively inexpensive instrument. I usually play box and tenor banjo (19 fret usually). I need to learn new tunes all the time.

As I’ve been playing fifth-tuned instruments for decades, I find it easiest to learn tunes (in the sense of getting the notes hard-wired in my brain) on the banjo before transferring them to the box.

Learning tunes on the banjo isn’t an entirely quiet process, even when you play as gently as you can. There’s something about the tone that makes the sound penetrate walls, floors and doors.

Enter my new instrument - the Ozark 2223. It’s based on the 2222 cheapo bouzouki, but is better made (particularly the fingerboard) and has a gloss finish. Like the 2222, it has a good solid spruce top.

The great thing about it is the scale length - at 23" it’s exactly the same as my banjos’. It’s double strung, like a mandola. I’ve tweaked the setup and fitted medium gauge banjo strings: 2 x 12, 18w, 28, 38.

I can now sit and quietly learn new tunes on it, and the fingering - including the stretches - will be just the same if I play the tunes on the banjo. But no-one else in the house has to listen to me practicing. The Ozark’s tone is sweet and mild compared to the banjo. It doesn’t penetrate. I’m popular again.

I’ve taken the Ozark to sessions, where I’ve used it as a melody instrument and found it to be quite powerful enough to cut through four or five fiddles, and it’s less intimidating to other sessioneers than a banjo would be. The 23" scale is long enough for chords (if I wanted to use them) to work well (unlike most mandolas which have much shorter scales and may tend to produce rattling, flabby-sounding chords on their heavy strings).

And last but not least, it weighs next to nothing, which is great news for my back when good banjos tend to weigh upwards of 4 kilos.

My tune-learning rate has doubled since I got the thing.

I am not surprised that there is no responses to this. This is just a story about some obscure instrument which someone finds useful.
There is some amount of rubbish posted on this site

Not worth a discusion.

I wouldn’t have put it as rudely as Ian Sutherland did (whoever that is… first time poster with this single comment and all), and I wouldn’t rule out the grounds for a discussion zoukibanjo, but you didn’t appear to ask for one. Did I miss the question?

And anyhow, the information is always appreciated.

“Learning tunes on the banjo isn’t an entirely quiet process, even when you play as gently as you can. There’s something about the tone that makes the sound penetrate walls, floors and doors.”

If you’re interested, you can look up the “shape of the wavelength” of the banjo and investigate all it’s “overtones”. The analysis would explain why it’s sound is so sharp and penetrating.

And what instrument is this you’re talking about? All I could gather was that it’s something like a bouzouki or mandolin and that it has a soft but sound.

Glad you found something more convenient for you. I remember when I got a heavy, thick, metal mute for my fiddle. I practiced all the time when I got ahold to that thing. It quited my fiddle by about 80% by shutting out all the high end overtones. I’m really upset about losing it too, finding another has proven to be very difficult.

Good luck with the tune learning and don’t forget to give a bit of time to the individual tunes!

@zoukibanjo: “Not worth a discusion.”

Is the Ozark not much cop then?

“I can now sit and quietly learn new tunes on it, and the fingering - including the stretches - will be just the same if I play the tunes on the banjo”

“… found it to be quite powerful enough to cut through four or five fiddles, and it’s less intimidating to other sessioneers than a banjo would be.”

“And last but not least, it weighs next to nothing, which is great news for my back when good banjos tend to weigh upwards of 4 kilos”

Three good benefits that could be of interest to other banjo players. There’s certainly no end of junk and nonsense spouted on this forum but I certainly wouldn’t include this post in that category.

A tenor guitar would also serve the same purpose, with the added benefit of being single stringed. The usual advice to us banjo players is to stuff various items of hosiery, underwear, cushions or even the cat between the co-ordinator rods - perch pole on older banjos - and the head to deaden the sound. That’s the joy of playing the banjo, there’s no end of useful advice coming your way, more often than not from non-banjo players.

Andy, …. do you use a dead cat or a live one?

A live one’s fine, as long as the claws a facing away from the head. Filling it with muesli also works.

OK, I’ll ask - the cat or the banjo ?

Have you ever tried getting a cat to eat muesli?

“That’s the joy of playing the banjo, there’s no end of useful advice coming your way, more often than not from non-banjo players.”
Generally of the nature of an improbable anatomical storage location for the instrument I would have thought.

I’ve seen a cat that can *say* muesli. Well, nearly. When I tried to get him to say ‘slee’, he said, ‘Me? How?’

I actually thought that this was a nice post, and couldn’t work out why it got slammed by the initial respondant. Whether or not to practice on a related but different instrument is quite an interesting choice to make. For a while, I used a mandolin as a way of quickly learning tunes that I actually wanted to play on a fiddle, which has the same tuning as a mandolin. The advantage was that it allowed me to work on my general technique and bow skills, which were quite poor at the time. These are now good enough to learn tunes on the fiddle directly, so I am playing less mandolin but it was a useful period to go through.

I’d add that practicing on the mandolin now holds me back; whilst the tuning is the same, the scale length is different, and hence leads me to play out of tune on the fiddle.

I though it was perfectly normal and acceptable to play the banjo out of tune?

Those Ozarks are pretty terrible but i suppose for the purpose of learning a few tunes its ok. Maybe.

Ozarks come in many shapes and sizes, and different countries of manufacture; the 2223, for those who don’t know, is the “Octave Mandola” model made in Romania.
I was initially dismissive of the Romanian-made Ozarks, but it might well be that they are improving their manufacturing and quality control. As I play a Korean-made Ozark bouzouki, which I have modified in various ways to improve it, I’m not going to look down on a brand simply because of the name on the headstock. There now also seem to be a whole load of instruments identical to mine in most ways, but bearing variations of headstock design and brand, made in a number of Pacific-Rim countries, and selling at vastly differing prices.
None of these deserve the put-downs above, presumably issued by people with much more disposable income to hand to enable them to purchase luthier-built instruments.
After all, we all had to start playing on something, and only years of experience lead us to understand the failings in our first purchases.

My first zouk was a Hora piece of rubbish. I then had. A Korean Ozark too. I then made a decision to upgrade to a luthier made instrument for which i worked double shifts and saved like a demon. Its not about disposable income. Its about finding a zouk that suits the player and as i said above, the op’s Ozark is fine for its use. Fine to at home to practice on. Whst woyld you expect for £150