Zither-Banjo

In the mid-to-late 1800s, a German stringed instrument called the "Concert Zither" became popular in certain kinds of music. The zithers of that era had both fretted and "drone" strings. They were played in the lap like modern-day Appalacian Dulcimer. They also had a sweet, subtle tone, similar to today's autoharps. In 1869, English banjo manufacturer William Temlett patented a 7-string banjo that was supposed to emulate that sound. He called it a "zither-banjo."

One of Temlett's upgrades was a device that was intended to reflect the sound from the back of the banjo head out toward the audience. Previously, nearly all banjos were "backless," which allowed the vibrations from the inside of the head to be deadened against the player's clothing. That was fine if you were using strumming styles that tended to be quite loud. But if you were going to fingerpick the banjo to imitate the zither sound, the banjo would need to be louder.

Temlett's zither-banjo had what we now call a "resonator." It is shaped like a shallow bowl a couple inches wider than the head of the banjo. This allowed the sound from the back of the banjo's head to come out the front of the instrument. The resonator increased the volume and sustain of the instrument and made fingerpicking it in a concert setting viable.

So in the late 19th-early 20th Century the American banjo was open back and usually had a metal body with the vellum head mounted on the metal. The English banjo had a wooden body which formed a resonator at the back and held some sort of metal construction inside the wooden body to anchor the vellum head. The resonator, a separate wooden disc on the back, wasn't introduced on American banjos until about 1924.

The French copied both designs. French banjo catalogues from the 1920s/30s offer banjos in two styles - the English style (Type Anglais), and the American style (Type Americain).