Among my small remaining collection of Paramount banjos is a curious early example. It is a 17 fret Style A tenor that someone tried to make into something it is not.
The major defect with the banjo is its rim, which is badly delaminated in a pattern common to old Paramount banjos. Instead of gluing and clamping to close the delams, the fellow filled them up with a compound that resembles DAP's Plastic Wood. The rim components do not properly fit together which indicates the wood rim may have become distorted since it was originally turned.
Further the fellow buffed ALL of the original nickel plating to brass and sealed it with lacquer to simulate gold. The finish looks like a student's Selmer saxophone. He also painted the inside of the resonator with a gold sparkle spray paint. The banjo neck and resonator were refinished with a hard poly-urethane product that has yellowed. The heel was broken and was suitably re-glued. Judging by the divot in the heel cap, I judge something (I bet it is a screw) was inserted to reinforce the heel repair. The hole seems filled with the same wood dough used to fill the rim delams which shrank to create the divot.
Anyway, I can do nothing to coax anything like the legendary Paramount tone from this banjo. I am sure the condition of the wood rim and its distorted relationship to the metal parts is responsible. I don't know that it is worth having a new custom undersized rim made to restore this banjo. Being robbed of its tone engine, the banjo is not a good candidate to restore or convertet to make a player of it. That is a shame. Perhaps it is merely a wall hanger now, an example of how NOT to restore a banjo.
Any thoughts.