The Ultimate Sound

General

The two little phrases "simply beautiful" and "The Ultimate Sound" have not just been conjoured moreover they reflect Emeralds unique look and sound. We began life many years ago and it has been a long hard slog to achieve what we believe is a simply beautiful banjo with the ultimate sound, many top performers and banjo enthusiasts alike have extolled their praise upon us both for our relentless endeavour to bring you that ultimate sound and the look that is so Emerald.

We have taken the banjo, broken it down to component form, examined its workings rethought the charcteristics, tweaked and modified to produce what we and many others believe to be the best banjos that can be bought on the market today.

Action

Most players of the banjo have expressed the desire for a "low" action, basically they want the strings as close to the frets as possible whilst not creating any "buzz" when the string is plucked, sounds easy but this is extremely difficult to achieve and we spend hours on each fret board making sure our action is perfect, once the desired platform has been created the laborious job of crowning and polishing begins, in all a fret board can take over a day to perfect, once finished however the playability along the neck is sublime and our customers remark on its ease of play.

Tone Rings

It is a commonly held belief that the tone ring of a banjo is the heart or
the basis of the sound of a banjo.  The tone ring certainly has a major
affect on why a banjo sounds the way it does.  The character or specific
type of sound of a banjo is most clearly created and defined by the tone
ring.  The wood in the rim and neck affect the colour, or warmth or
brightness of the sound, but the tone ring really determines the basic voice or
character of the banjo.

It is important to understand that the very specific materials that comprise 
 the tone ring can have a profound affect on the character of sound of a
banjo and changing any ingredient will change the sound to some degree.
 
This is one of the most vital parts of the banjo, doing exactly what it says providing its TONE, combined with other factors of course but predominantly this piece of metal is what gives our banjos their "ultimate sound", we have the tone rings specially forged and then turned to our specific criteria, it has taken many years to get the tone ring perfect and we are proud of this rare achievement.  

Neck

So important to the player and technically the most demanding part to make, minute variations have been made in the geometry of our necks to accomodate