Review: 2012 Gold Tone AC-5 Composite Banjo
The Gold Tone AC-5 Composite Banjo is a design that was introduced in 2012 as their new entry level/travel banjo. Its main selling point was the use of a rim that is made of a composite material similar to the Ovation guitar.
The ads state that the design “may stray a bit” from the traditional wood design, but that's not entirely true. Even in the earlier days of the banjo, the rim or body have been made of materials like gourds, steel, aluminum or wood covered with steel or aluminum. Some of the best banjos I've ever heard and had a chance to play had metal rims, particularly the British made ones.
The closest antecedent would be those old Kay banjos that used a body made of bakelite, and to this day has a cult audience, and the later Rover that used a similar material in its entry level model. Both had a tone and clarity that was excellent for its price range.
What gave non-wood banjos a bad name was the infamous 70's Asian banjos that used aluminum rims. The trademark sound was bassy and echoed, with bad intonation. The thing was, even back then, no one seriously felt that the aluminum rim was the problem. Aluminum rims are still in use today in the 200.00 range and are considered a good value.
The problem with the Asian banjos of the period was that after the rim, they added lousy necks, cheap hardware, inferior bridge and nut materials, and pegs that seemed to be designed to go out of tune.
This led to the aura of the “wood banjo” being superior. Which is actually an irony. All of the high-end banjos have a brass (or in the case of the early Gibsons, aluminum) tone ring mounted on top of the rim where the banjo head makes contact. Without that metal ring, you lose a lot of tone and volume. An all-wood banjo would be almost unheard of in bluegrass, where volume is king.
There are all wood banjos where the top of the rim is shaped like a tone ring. The original high quality economy banjo, the Deering Goodtime, was an all-wood type. Great sound, but with a volume level that made it a better learning or solo banjo than one you could use in an ensemble. That design is frankly out of date, as many banjos in its price range use some kind of tone ring now.
In other words, the idea that a “wood banjo” is better is a myth. You can make one, but only for certain applications, and you sacrifice volume and aspects of tone that would be necessary for genres like bluegrass and even country.
The Gold Tone AC-5 goes into another direction, and not only has a rim that is a composite, but an old-fashioned shallow resonator as well. In addition, the inner surface is divided into four sections by shallow ridges, designed to bounce back sound like an Ovation guitar.
I'm not sure about that theory, but it does work. It's one of the loudest banjos in that price range, and I tried it out against pretty much every banjo that was similar on the wall of the music store. A good high end resonator banjo is louder, but of course, a lot more expensive.
The tone is surprisingly similar to a maple wood banjo, though my ears it's rounder, and purer in tone. In other words, those who like wood rimmed banjos may find this one a little bit too clean and chimey. The resonator adds sustain, and the design seems to eliminate the problem of low and mid-priced banjos all have, which is that the volume drops as you play up the neck. You can go past the 12th fret on this one.
Which brings us to the neck. It's one of the best necks I've ever played. It's non-tapered and slim, and double truss rodded to compensate for the strength that you lose with such a design. It has a bone nut, the guitar pegs stay in tune (though they feel a bit cheap when putting on new strings), and the rosewood fretboard with medium jumbo frets has a great feel and intonation is good all the way up.
Though it's billed as an entry level banjo, I can only recommend it to beginners with the warning that one flaw is the way Gold Tone attached the resonator is close to being bush league. It uses a single screw, which was common with old tenor banjos, but it goes up into the coordinator rod using a hole that's so shallow (not even a quarter inch) that it's incredibly easy to strip the thread.
The resonator fits very snug to the rim, which is good, but it makes it hard to tell if you've unscrewed the bolt enough to remove it, and overtightning would be potentially disastrous. If you try one out at a store, don't buy it until they remove the resonator to confirm if the bolt thread is intact, and if you get it by mail order, that should be the first thing you check.
That said, the Gold Tone has a feature set that's well above its 340.00 street price. The rim and resonator have a tone that I found perfect for my needs, the neck is superior, bone nut, nice solid metal adjustable tailpiece, decent hardwood and ebony bridge, and very competent pegs.
Some may find the use of guitar pegs at this price range a bit off-putting, as by the time you get to the 400-dollar range, traditional planetary pegs are standard in most models. Personally, I've never cared. Cheap planetary pegs are as bad as cheap guitar tuners, and in some ways worse (particularly for beginners). If it stays in tune, style of peg is fine with me. Guitar pegs are actually easier to tune.
One very nice thing about the AC-5 is that it's relatively light for a resonator banjo. I used to carry around bluegrass type resonator banjos and it always felt like carrying a bowling ball and found that I preferred open backs anyway. This model has a nice hybrid tone that sounds like an open-back, but with more volume and resonance. If you take the resonator off (carefully), the open back sound is also excellent.
I can personally get around the problem of that fragile little screw arrangement since my general practice is to remove the screw and slot the resonator on as needed (I like to switch back and forth), and the thing fits snug enough that it won't fall off unless you're playing live standing up. I mainly use it for recording, so not having the resonator secured is no big deal.
In the case of other users, most will just use it as a resonator banjo, or remove the shell and use it as an open-back, and rarely switch. In either case, the resonator does have to come off to do basic adjustments like loosening or tightening the head, or adjusting the neck, so it's an issue Gold Tone needs to solve before a bunch come back to the factory with stripped resonator attachment bolts. Even the use of higher quality steel for the mounting section and bolt would be a vast improvement.
In my case, the banjo has been placed alongside of the Recording King Madison and the Gold Tone old time in my collection, and that fantastic neck has made my favorite instrument even more fun to play.
If the price tag had been 600.00, and it was equipped with planetary pegs, I'd have bought it anyway...but then, I've owned both a vintage Kay Bakelite and Rover composite banjo in the past, so the Gold Tone AC-5 was a welcome guest in my collection. I can add that I like Ovations to boot.
In your case, definitely try before you buy, and maybe you'll find that this new design is the perfect entry level banjo that will last just fine into the intermediate phase, or as the only one you'll ever buy (which is the most common scenario).
Beginners get a lot of advice, the most common is to get the most expensive one you can afford. That advice is ten years old, and not valid anymore. Most of us could care less about taking a path towards a 2,000+ dollar banjo. So, unless you're on that path to an expensive banjo (and it's a good one, don't get me wrong) the AC-5 has brought in a new question into the equation, which is, why pay more?
- Al Handa
2013
Note: This review first appeared on the ePinions.com site in 2013. This and other reviews were short takes that accompanied the link to a business that sold the guitar. As a rule, the guitar had to be at least examined and played by the reviewer (and ideally owned). In my case, a severe case of GAS made it possible to have at least owned the reviewed instrument for a short while. I'm reprinting these as having another source on a guitar never hurts, even if the reviews aren't definitive. Other than minor corrections, these short takes are unchanged from the original text. I figure that it might be helpful to keep the older perspective.
The Quitturz by Al Handa
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