Think about tuners that clip onto the peg-head of banjos, guitars, or mandolins. When a string is picked the tuner picks up the vibrations of the string that are carried through the peg-head. This demonstrates the fact that every piece of the banjo vibrates when a string in picked. Some pieces have a big effect on the sound of a particular banjo and some don't. But everything contributes to the overall quality of the sound coming out of the banjo. Some pieces are easy and relatively cheap to upgrade and can cause big changes without much cost, time, or effort. By understanding the role of some of these pieces that we can improve almost every banjo with a little knowledge, time, and money.

The technical term for the sound of an instrument is “timbre” (it's a French word - it's pronounced something like “tambra” or sometimes as just “timber”). The timbre of any instrument is based on the overtones it produces. Overtones are multiples of frequencies produced by the sum of the materials in anything that produces sound. Large bells, for example produce many more overtones than almost any other instrument. A tuning fork by contrast is a pure tone or fundamental note which is the opposite of an overtone. The overtones you hear from of a particular banjo can also be thought of as the sound produced by sum of all of its parts. Bluegrass banjos have a lot of pieces made of different woods and types of metal (including metal like in our bell above). Every piece plays a role in creating the unique sound of that particular banjo. We have the ability of change some of the pieces, but not all of them. In this section I mainly talk about the pieces that are easy to modify or replace. we need to understand something about the system as a whole. Here are the main pieces of a bluegrass banjo:

      •   the rim
      •   the tone ring
      •   the flange
      •   the resonator
      •   the tension hoop
      •   the tailpiece
      •   the head
      •   the bridge
      •   the neck
      •   the tuning pegs
      •   the strings

Here are the main factors that we are usually trying to modify or improve:

      •    the sound of the banjo.
      •    the ease of fretting the strings
      •    the responsiveness of banjo to picking by the right hand

These three categories are very subjective and each player will have his or her own preferences. The goal is to find the best combination of factors for a particular player and a particular instrument. Before I start on specific setup techniques, let's talk a little more about what some of the banjo pieces above contribute to the banjo's sound.