First Impression

I spotted an 8 string Zither Mandolin Banjo being sold as a Vintage 8 string Banjo/Ukulele on eBay and put on a bid. I don't play mandolin or banjo but figured I could probably string it as a ukulele if I couldn't get to grips with it. The auction said it needed a little attention and the pictures showed it was missing 4 strings and had no bridge. I figured I could fairly easily restring it and position a new bridge. A couple of days later it arrived in a large cardboard box packed out with newspaper and mummified in bubblewrap.

First thing I noticed was it's quite a heavy instrument compared to my Soprano and Tenor Ukuleles. There's no makers name on it anywhere or date. I popped onto the Collector's Corner forum of Banjo Hangout to see if anyone had any idea about it's age or origin. There I was advised it's most likely a budget or student, British made instrument built around 1890-1900 with probably a mahogany neck. So it's a lot older than I'd expected. Heck it's older than my house.

There's a "67"  stamped on the bottom of the tension ring. I guess that must have been a batch or model number.

I noticed the tuners are bushless but apparently that's normal for these instruments. The bush is a metal or plastic collar that goes between the tuning peg and the instrument's wooden headstick. With the exception of the Cigar Box Uke I made last summer all my ukulele's all have plastic bushes. Modern banjos and mandolin banjos are bushed but not these old instruments.

A chap on the Banjo Hangout forum identified that the tuning machines are imperial threaded. There's eight of them as this instrument is intended to have 4 sets of paired strings, normally tuned to GGDDAAEE. When it arrived it had 4 strings in place so I think it was probably being used as a 4 string Mandolin for a while, I couldn't play anything on them though as there was no bridge. Because banjos have a vellum (stretched skin) surface unlike wooden body instruments they don't have a fixed bridge like a guitar or ukulele so it's not unusual for old instruments to be missing them.