Banjo - tenor or five string?

Awful Scut Mk2

Thinking of taking up the banjo, it's an instrument I've always liked. I'm not sure which is the more commonly used in traditional music though. I read that the five string is more of a rhythm instrument, is that right?

Five strings are considerably cheaper than tenors too, I'm lead to believe.

MattKid

tenor for trad irish music, 5 string for bluegrass

banjopaul

Yep, tenor banjo is for Trad. Some people play try to play trad on 5-string(check out leon hunt for that) but i don't like it, I dunno why, it just doesn't seem to fit in.

torregolf

is it crazy to ask what i should be paying for a '60's framus tenor banjo?

martin1

About 3 years ago I sold a framus 5 string with resonator for E600,but Im not sure about the tenor.
The 5 string or g banjo is certainly not just a rythym instrument.In my opinion,its the most difficult instrument of all to play as you need two good hands to play it properly.
Happy playing whichever you go for.

banjoface

dudes go and ask a guy called johnny info on banjos in the acoustic room trad shop
dundrum village...cool stuff

Rainman1

Definitely 4 string tenor for trad music, tuned GDAE and you will be able to play with any trad group. Would recommend picking up Gerry O'Connors tutorial DVD, any decent music shop will have this, very good as an intro to trad Banjo playing. If you are totally committed go for the most expensive banjo that you can afford, some of the vintage 1930's banjos are very good, if you are unsure, go for something cheaper and see how you get on, trad banjo playing is a lot more technical than guitar and you will need to spent a fair bit of time learing the scales before you can start knocking out anything useful, get your scales finger perfect and then move onto learning ballads, then you can then start working on the fun stuff such as adding triplets etc., a bit of work to get started, but the effort is well worth it.