Kmise banjo review

uketanzon

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I have 4 banjo ukes and played many others.
You would think a banjo selling for $79 shipped on ebay would be a real POS.

Well I needed parts for another banjo project, and I could not buy those parts seperately cheaper than buying the banjo and scavanging them off her.

I am going to say, this thing got potential if you want spend some time and enhance her up.

(has the exact same j hook hardware as the duke 10. actually that is why I bought it. The duke ten is nice but it could use some more j hooks around her, so I am adding 5 more which i took off the kmise. Just have to buy longer philps head srews that hold the j hook housing tomthe rim body. no big deal.)

I had a spare new remo 8 inch banjo headI got from elderly, so I dismantled the Kmise, takes some time but not hard, and I trashed the junk banjo head that came with it and put on the new Remo. It fit!!!!

Threw out the crappy strings it came with and put on a set of fremont black line concerts i had available.

Took of the back wood plate and trashed that. It has to be open back. sounds terrible with that on.

Located the bridge correctly on the head using 12 fret distance method, checked the intonation and gave her a whirl. The thing sounded pretty good man!!

I got a razor blade and took off the cheesy kmise logo of the headstock, going to put a Gibson logo on the headstock, and have some fun

so for 79 bucks and a new remo head (22 bucks) and a new set of strings (8 bucks) and some time...if your mechanically inclined a bit, you can have a very decent playing and looking concert banjo.
 
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didn't like it or bought something else? Just curious. Know this was from awhile back. I bought a Duke and love the sound, but the tenor neck's too big for me.

Was thinking of making basically a firefly using the Remo 10" hand drum, a neck/fretboard I'll have to sand down some, and a tension rod to hold them together. Should be really light. The Deering's nice but it's like having a child sit in your lap.

Love what you came up with to tinker with it. I think I could put on the 10" head by just opening up the radius at the bottom of the neck.


Tried a GT Little Gem, but something just sounded a little off to me. Probably my ear. Loved the look of it, but I just couldn't fall in love with it.
 
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