Huber Banjos News

Serial E2789-2. Original RB-00 with an original 5-string mahogany ( yes, mahogany) neck and full thickness rim. The rim has been cut for a Huber HR-30. I installed a 1950′s pot metal tension hoop and new hooks, nuts and top co-rod along with a original punched presto tail piece. Frets are new and Kluson tuners and buttons are original.  Here is a mp3 of the banjo in G -Sally-G, and Little Darlin’ With new case – Price Reduced to $5,200

Serial number E-3794-3.  This TB-18 shipped out of the Gibson factory on December 19, 1941.  20-hole heavy gold plated engraved prewar ring.  All original hardware except for tailpiece screw, tailpiece bolt nut, tailpiece bracket and outside rod nut (see pic).  No re-plate or re-finish.  Looks like the label was put on after assembly and lapped over the tone ring until someone removed the ring from the rim thus tearing the top of the label.  Exceptional flathead tone as expected. Shown with a nice conversion 5-string neck.  Original tenor neck goes with it. REDUCED PRICE  $75,000

Yes, this is one of the Holy Grails and a famous 5-string flat known as the Porter Church Granada. This baby has had some work done to it thru the years but it’s a GREAT sounding banjo. Here’s some history-Porter sold this banjo to Gary Osko in the late 1970′s for less than $7,000. Gary then sold it to Tsmara in the early 1990′s. The rings in the back of the resonator were put in when Porter owned it. It was refinished by Monty Hendricks before it was sold to Tsumara and is featured in Tsumara’s book “One thousand and one banjos” . The finger board and binding are original but it has had a plane and re-fret and a heel crack repair. The rim has been turned down and refinished to fit a gold plated bow-tie flange. This was common practice in the old days.  The tension hoop and arm rest are not original. The outside of the tone ring as had the plating buffed off at some point but the face and underside of the ring are original gold.

NEW PRICE – $150,000.  Offers are welcome.

Serial number 9139-3. All original, no excuses walnut Florentine flathead. This is a beauty. It features a plectrum neck, 2-pc flange, 20-hole high profile heavy  flathead tone ring (2 lb, 14 ounces), heavily gold plated and engraved hardware. Original tuners and plectrum case. The pictures speak for themselves.  $42,000 (or make offer).

This Gibson Granada is featured  on page 476 of the Tsumura “One Thousand and One Banjos” book. Serial number 9470-44.  It features a very rare custom tenor neck, single piece flange, raised head tone ring, gold plating and curly maple neck and resonator. All hardware is original and has been re-plated long ago. The brass tension hoop has not been re-plated. The flange has been replaced with an original prewar  pot metal flange and re-plated. Tuners are original 2-band grovers with pearl buttons. Rim, resonator and tenor neck are in original condition. Currently it is fitted with a  Huber conversion 5-string hearts and flowers neck and a Huber  no-hole conversion flathead tone ring. Comes with hard shell 5- string case.    $34,000 .00

The new HR-30 Tone Ring is for sale but availability is a bit limited at the present time. I am waiting on a supply of castings that should be here in a week or so. Selling price is $785 nickel, and $815 for gold. I am offering a $200 trade in allowance on a Huber nickel ring, and $225 on a Huber gold ring. The HR-30 will be available in 2 different sizes, Standard and Prewar.  Here’s the specs:

Standard size – .375″ step from foot to bottom of skirt, skirt inner diameter is 10.855″.

Prewar size – .403″ step from foot to bottom of skirt, skirt inner diameter is 10.843″.

The back cut is what I call a bull nose cut. The weight of the ring is approximately   3 pounds, 1.5 ounces.

The rings are stamped Huber HR-30 in the bull nose and numbered sequentially.  Huber HR-30 will be etched  on the outside of the ring under the tail piece.

Below is a bit of how the ring was developed.

There’s an old saying that goes like this. “It’s not what you don’t know that gets you, it’s what you think you know that’s just not so.”  In 1997 I started producing the Huber “vintage” flat head tone ring. I have manufactured over 4000 of these  prewar replica tone rings made of the same alloy as the old ones. Since then, I have had well over a hundred prewar flathead rings/ banjos come across my bench and have learned a lot from them in the past 12 years. Many of these old rings (not all) were very special in that they had “something going on” that no other ring has including mine. For many years I’ve been wanting to find the time to do reasearch on these “special” rings. I decided to start investigating the process of duplicating these old rings exactly about 14 months ago.  I was convinced the answer was in the casting process. I  contacted an acquaintance, Mr. Tommy Horton, who I had met about 11 years ago. Tommy is a non-ferrous casting consultant and one smart guy.  He introduced me to a metallurgist friend of his, and between the two of them have over a 100 years experience in bronze casting. Tommy agreed with me that there were casting “tricks of the trade” that were used in the 1920′s and 30′s and suggested I experiment with my pouring process utilizing some old “tricks”  to replicate the prewar process. Needless to say, he was right, and it worked!

The next part of this story belongs to Dr. Jim Rae. He is a genius, period. Jim’s doctorate is in Physiology and Biophysics and he spent much of his life studying the single molecules necessary for nerve impulses and other bioelectric phenomena. I needed a way to test prewar flathead rings to see their physical vibration characteristics.  Amazingly, many of the test methods Dr. Rae used were similar to the methods I needed to test rings. Dr. Rae designed two tests;  one, to measure the ability of a substance (in this case a tone ring) to accept vibrations and two, to measure the  forced induced vibration velocity. As of this time, we have collected the data from 15 prewar flat rings. We then measured the new rings from each pour comparing them to the prewar measurements. I then tweaked  the pouring process many, many times until I duplicated the prewar rings exactly and the HR-30 (Huber Rae-1930) was born.