1900 Oscar Schmidt, As-Is
1900 Oscar Schmidt, As-Is. Another banjo that has had a lot of fun over the years. Look at the fretboard in the first position. You’ll see significant finger wear that doesn’t happen overnight. The poplar neck has a scale length of about 26”. The first 4 frets have been removed. The peghead looks like there were 4 Champion tuners at one time, The 5th tuner hole has been significantly enlarged and will need a bushing before adding an appropriate tuner. The out of round rim is a single ply of ¼” maple and averages 10-7/8”. There are 12 brackets. 10 of the shoes are spread eagle castings, one is a hex shoe, and one is a round shoe. The rim also has two decorative metal strips on the outside. A new goat skin head was installed here in the SFI shop. To make playable, you will have to round up neck attachment hardware, tuners, tailpiece end bolt, tailpiece, strings, and a bridge. With the snow blowing outside our West Virginia shop today, it makes me think this is a perfect winter project to restore as a fretted banjo, or install a fretless fingerboard so you can play all the notes that are in-between the 12 notes in the western scale. $150