invention VIII

This 6-string, 27" scale electric banjo has gone through two different incarnations in its life with New Orleans musician Trent Ciolino. It is a true 6-string banjo (not a modified guitar) in that it is strung and tuned like a 5-string banjo with an extra low string between the drone and the usual four strings. It was built as a hybrid electric (magnetic pickup), electroacoustic (piezo), and midi combination, and has since been altered to have the midi removed and replaced with a Sustainiac two-pickup system that allows for an entirely different playing technique in addition to the standard banjo styles. 

Its acoustic sound is created by a 6-inch synthetic hide, which resonates through hollowed chambers built inside the body made of African mahogany and bookmatched canary wood with padouk inlay. The neck is also African mahogany with an ebony fingerboard, canary wood side stripes, and fret markers inlaid with tulip wood. The drone string is tunneled beneath the fingerboard to emerge at the fifth fret for playing purposes, which keeps all of the tuning machines together at the headstock. Grover tuners hold the tuning, and the other end of the strings are secured to a tailpiece hand-carved in bronze and exotic woods, designed to fit standard loop end banjo strings or ball end strings to give multiple stringing choices. 

It utilizes a standard piezo pickup, the Sustainiac specially-designed pickup, and a Kent Armstrong thin jazz guitar pickup all on a five-way selector switch and blend knob, with a Kent Armstrong three-band active EQ preamp. 

This was truly designed for and with the specific playing styles of an unusual and gifted musician, Tret Ciolino, who knew exactly what his hands and ears wanted to do that they were unable to do on other instruments.