I had this made by banjo luthier Zach Hoyt. It has a 12” diameter rather than the 11” that most banjos have. It also has something called an internal resonator. These are mostly used by makers of openback 5-string banjos meant for “Old Time” clawhammer playing. The rim is maple, and the resonator is walnut.
A good friend of mine that’s a luthier (mostly guitars and ukuleles) is going to build the neck. I’d have had him make the rim but he doesn’t have a lathe.
The neck itself will have 5 strings, and will basically be a cross between a tenor banjo and a cello banjo, the tuning being CDGAE. It’ll implement a multi-scale / fanned fret design, with the high E being 22.5” (same as a 19 fret tenor) and the low C being 24.5” (same as Gold Tone’s cello banjo).
Once I got it in I went ahead and installed all the hardware to make sure it all would fit correctly. I went with raw brass on the hardware, and even got a cool armrest made of walnut.
Here’s a collage I made of three pictures:
https://imgur.com/gallery/Q089GWGIf people are interested I’ll update with more photos once the neck is made, maybe even make a video.