Slot head 5 string banjo neck

[Crusty]

Here's a replacement neck that I made for a Recording King 5 string open back banjo. It's a slot head neck with a tunneled fifth string and an integral zero fret. I made it from a stick of tiger maple with a rosewood fretboard, bindings and peghead overlay. I used guitar tuners with worm gears so that they don't slip like planetary tuners and the banjo stays in tune but it still has the appearance of traditional tuners. The fifth string dives under the fretboard at the fifth fret and continues on to the peghead where its tuner is located through a stainless hypodermic tubing tunnel and this removes the fifth string tuner from the neck and this aspect coupled with a shorter scale length that puts the upper frets closer together and a wide nut width makes this banjo effortless to play. The neck is mounted to the rim using a barrel nut in the neck heel and a long piece of all thread through the rim inside a hollow spacer and the action can be easily adjusted but I generally set banjos up with the lowest action possible. The tuner knobs were made from some rosewood violin pegs that I cut off and transplanted onto the tuners. The "nut" on it is just a strings spacer and the fret immediately below it is the actual zero fret. The peghead inlay is a turquoise man in the crescent moon wearing Ray Charles sunglasses. There's a few things I'll do differently on my next one but all things considered I think it's a success. These are the best pics I have of it and I'd take more but the friend I've loaned the banjo to is holding onto it with a near death grip.

What's the best pickup on a banjo? An F-150.