From Daniel Bennett, University of Aberdeen
Your article suggests that banjo players can sound like Earl Scruggs by using
a new bronze alloy tone ring
(This Week, 8 November, p 28).
Alas, if only it were true. Scruggs’s unique sound wasn’t due to the pre-war
tone ring in his banjo (which many other 1920s and 1930s banjo players were also
using) it was because he developed and perfected a three-finger picking
technique that many banjo players try to emulate but few even come close to.
The sound Scruggs got out of a banjo was due to an extraordinary talent that
defies scientific description. To attribute it to a “special alloy” is ridiculous.
