For many banjo players, the gold standard of picks are vintage National fingerpicks, particularly ones like those from the 1940s and '50s that Earl Scruggs and others used to make bluegrass music history. While old Nationals can be found for
Product reviews
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The Amazing dbl Bass Buggie and Amazing Bass Stand
Any musician knows that transporting musical equipment is not the easiest or most fun part of the job. However, most bluegrass pickers will agree that upright bass players have it the worst. Carrying an instrument taller and wider than you
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Rickard Banjos Cyclone tuners – a review
We recently received a set of the Rickard Cyclone 10:1 banjo tuners. Having heard very high praise of these tuning machines from both hobby and professional players, we reached out to Rickard and they graciously sent along a set for
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Dan Eubanks reviews the Travel Bass
Hello bluegrass friends, Dan Eubanks of Special Consensus here to tell you about an amazing instrument, the Travel Bass. I’ve been asked by Bluegrass Today to review it for you, so here goes. Gonna be a lot of bass specific
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Greg Allen Signature fingerpicks
Greg Allen has bluegrass music in his veins. As a young man he played banjo behind his famous father, Red Allen, and later with his brothers, Ronnie, Neal, and Harley, as The Allen Brothers. The boys were at the forefront of
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A review: Hawthorn RB-7 style banjo
It's been said many times of late that we are living through a golden age of banjos, a claim that seems easy to support. Even though the venerable Gibson Mastertone is no longer in production, there are a number of
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G7 Heritage capo – reworked for 2018
We heard recently from the good folks with G7 capos, a British company that has made tremendous strides in capo design this past few years. Their Heritage model was reviewed here when it was introduced in 2016, and they wanted
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TuneFox for iOS helps banjo pickers improvise
Like a lot of people, we are taking some time during the holidays to cast our gaze back over the past year, and finding a few things that we missed or overlooked during 2016. One is a terrific new app for
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Space age flat pick from I-Tone
When it comes to learning a craft, there are lots of insider tips, tricks, and so called "trade secrets" out there - the stuff that "only the pros know" and everyone else is dying to find out. This can be
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Intellitouch PT10 and PT40 tuners
OnBoard Research has sent us two of their new tuners to check out, and they are marvelous little devices. If you've been around stringed instruments twenty years or so, you'll recall the excitement when they introduced the clip-on Intellitouch tuner concept in