How tight should a skin be?
You may see a good deal of advice on how tight a banjo head should be. Most of this advice relates ONLY to the tension on modern bluegrass 5-strings and should not be taken as universally applicable. The best advice I can give is that you tighten the head just enough to give you the sound you want from an instrument. Never use excessive force on the tension hooks of a banjo. If the banjo sounds right to your ear, then it is set up correctly for you. Other players might prefer a different sound – but it’s your banjo! When adjusting the tension, only ever tighten the tension hooks by 1/6th of a turn all round and then re-tune the banjo and play it. If you prefer the sound you have now, then try tightening up by another 1/6th of turn. At the point where you get a sound that you don’t prefer, back off the tensioners by 1/6th of a turn and call it done. If the tensioners start to get difficult to turn or make squeaking noises, stop tightening and accept that that is the maximum tension that
