Gibson Vows to End All Banjo Jokes

Banjo pro Maxwell Volluum is thrilled with his new instrument.

Gibson Instruments in Nashville, Tennessee, has announced the latest in banjo technology, the Jerry Garcia signature model banjo with state of the art auto-tuning. Gibson spokesperson and head of banjo development Randy Fellows said, "Of course, everybody knows the difficulty of keeping a banjo in tune, but when we tried to implement our successful E-tuning technology from our guitars onto banjos, well, there were some challenges."

Unofficial reports say that the E-tune mechanisms were so overworked trying to keep the banjos in tune, that they overheated and sometimes burst into flames. Despite the cheers of some onlookers, banjo players were understandably upset and concerned about this development. Randy Fellows refused to comment on this.

But Fellows did explain the new development. He said, "In an effort to solve the tuning issue, we took an unconventional approach. We created an all electronic banjo that by itself is completely silent. Initial testers really liked this feature. And then we filled the pot with a sophisticated computer system that takes all the notes and automatically corrects the intonation. You never have to tune your banjo again, not that banjo players did that anyway. We know that auto-tuning is very popular with today's singers, so we just applied that technology to banjos! It's a whole new instrument! Though it still looks exactly like a banjo should look, of course."

The only drawback for now is the weight of the Jerry Garcia signature model. It comes in at just a bit more than 75 lbs. But Fellows insists that the weight is a small price to play to get a banjo like this. And we completely agree. Fellows also stated that Gibson is currently working on a similar version for mandolins. April Fools, of course.