I have a 24k gold plated flathead gibson mastertone. My dad bought it in 1973 and drove all the way from MS to SC just to get it. He paid 2000 for it but the guy said he could get 3000 easy. I have grown up listening to him playing it and I've never heard a better sounding banjo. It just goes right to your soul, gives you the chills. Every time I hear someone playing a banjo, it just doesn't sound as good to me. Even if they are playing a new gibson mastertone it just doesn't seem to sound like my dad's. I use to ask him why his banjo always sounds better than the others when I was a little girl and I didn't even know there was a such thing as different mastertone banjos. My dad recently passed it down to me and I'm learning how to play it and I've started trying to research it to find out what is so special about it. I can't find a banjo like it but I have found the parts and they seem to be pre war. The only thing that my dad has replaced is the head because he played a hole through it, the bridge, and the strings. The head was replaced again after they came out with the 5 star head and it made it sound even better! I don't have good pix of the banjo right now but I will get them on here when I can. I am hoping that if I describe the banjo, I can get some helpful info about it. It has 24k gold plated engraved hardware(very fancy). It has a checkerboard neck with an ebony fingerboard, curly maple resinator with white around the edges (not checkerboard like the other ones I've seen, which is odd), it has a flathead mastertone tone ring (24k gp I think, never replaced) one piece flange, 14k gold Bill Keith tuners on the 3rd and 4th strings. The tuners were added later and they're custom made to match the other tuners. My dad bought the banjo used and since he paid 2k in the early 70's and drove all that way to go get it, I think it might be worth something. I don't want to sell it, I just wanna learn more about it. After looking online it seems that this banjo is pieced together with all the highest quality parts. Here it is 40 years later and it sounds just as good as it did when my dad first picked it up out of the case the day he bouight it. He bought this banjo because he wanted the best of the best because his banjo was going to be a big part of his life and when he heard it he had to have it. My dad was the best banjo player on the MS Gulf Coast and has all kinds of rewards and first place trophies that he won with this banjo. I have one pic of it right now but I can't figure out how to poat it so I'll set it as my profile pic. It's a pic of my mom dressed as santa, sitting on my dad's lap in the late 70s or early 80s.
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