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Banjo

Vega Tenor Banjo

Name: Vega Tenor Banjo
Brand: Vega

Vega · Tenor Banjo

Price: 4 EUR – 2.728 EUR

Price history

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Availability: 6/10 (Common)

A four-string tenor banjo from the company that dominated early 20th-century American banjo building, built in the era of Vega's Tubaphone and Whyte Laydie tone-ring innovations that set the standard for the whole industry.

Where available? Go to the best price – 3 EUR About this instrument

About the Vega Tenor Banjo

Vega's early tenor banjos came out of the same production lines that produced its most influential designs: the Whyte Laydie (introduced with a scalloped tone ring redesign in 1908) and the Tubaphone, introduced in 1909 with a perforated, ring-shaped metal tone ring seated between the wooden rim and the head - a design that dramatically increased volume and became one of the most copied tone-ring concepts in banjo history. Tenor banjos, tuned in fifths like a mandolin or viola rather than the five-string's open-G-style tuning, were built to cut through the dance-band and jazz ensembles popular through the 1920s.

Rim sizes on Vega's tenor banjos of this era typically ran 10 3/4 inches, with 12-inch professional sizes available on order for players wanting more volume. From 1922-23 onward, short 20 3/4-inch-scale, 17-fret tenors were phased out in favor of the longer 23-inch-scale, 19-fret configuration that became the era's new standard.

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Sound character of the Vega Tenor Banjo

As a 4-string tenor tuned in fifths rather than the 5-string open-G tunings of bluegrass banjos, this Vega was built for early jazz and dance-band rhythm playing, where a bright, percussive attack needed to cut through a horn section without amplification. Its shorter scale and simpler chord shapes trade sustain for a quick, snappy pluck.

Bright Percussive Crisp

Technical data for the Vega Tenor Banjo

Type	4-string tenor
Tuning	Fifths (like mandolin/viola)
Rim size	10 3/4" (12" available)
Scale length (later)	23" (19 frets)
Origin	Vega, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Price history for the Vega Tenor Banjo

Cheapest seen: 4 EUR · Most expensive seen: 2.728 EUR

Cheapest seen Most expensive seen

The history of the Vega Tenor Banjo

Vega acquired the remains of the fire-damaged A.C. Fairbanks banjo company in 1904 and built on Fairbanks' banjo-making legacy to become the dominant American banjo maker of the 1900s-1920s; its Tubaphone and Whyte Laydie tone-ring designs remain reference points that contemporary banjo builders still study and reproduce.