Gold Tone OT800 and White Ladye
Couple of days ago I discovered that the main UK distributor of Gold Tone Banjos was right here in Norwich! Have been looking to buy a new banjo for a while now so I headed down there and met Simon at Banjos Direct and tried a few out. I'm specifically in the market for a long neck banjo, and never having never laid my grubby mits on one before before I was quite excited.
I tried out a beautiful Bob Carlin signature BC-350 normal length fingerboard but with a 12" pot. Heavy as a land rover but fantastic bling and a really lovely bright sound. But that was a distraction, albeit a very pleasant one: what I really wanted to do was to compare the two decent banjos in the Gold Tone range which come in long neck flavours, the White Ladye 250 and the OT800, the main differences being a tubaphone tone ring (rather than a white layde) and a bracket band on the OT.
It wasn't a completely fair comparison as Simon didn't have a long neck OT so I was comparing a normal length with a long neck white ladye. However, I assume that the white ladye with a capo at the 3rd fret would be pretty comparable with its normal length equivalent. The White Ladye was lovely, particularly at full length - the depth of sound from those lower notes on the long neck are amazing! It was surprisingly light and sounded woody and rich. I was pretty amazed by it.
But it wasn't a patch on the OT. As well as feeling a bit sturdier than the White Ladye it felt tighter and more responsive somehow, and whilst it still had the richness and depth that the White Ladye had, it had so much more. It was wonderfully bright sounding, with so much attack, all the plunk and twang you could wish for and bags of sustain. It was so powerful played hard that all the other instruments in the shop were resonating as I played. Long story short: I loved it, so I ordered a long neck one! Hopefully will be here within the month.
One postscript to this. My current banjo is, I believe, a prototype of what is now the Grafton Popular #2 that I got from Andy Banjo 3 and a half years ago. Certainly it looks near identical, with a single cast alloy pot, which also acts a a tone ring. As detailed in an earlier post I tightened up the head over christmas so it was sounding near it's best when I took it along to compare it to the Gold Tones. And it really held it's own. Not as lovely sounding as either of them, but also not sounding like it was between only a quarter and half the price of those models. Where it lost out was in the depth of the sound, but I'd say it probably beat the White Ladye on brightness and plunk. No frills, but a great banjo that I will certainly continue to play. Hard as nails too, as I can testify having bashed the crap out of it at various gigs over the past year!
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