Nick Pohl
I'm a young instrument maker in Bavaria, a guitarist and banjo player first, a builder second. I make banjos because I couldn't stop thinking about how they're made — and because the old music they belong to is worth keeping alive.
Philosophy
I came to building the long way around — through playing. Years of guitar, then a banjo that fell into my hands and never really left them. The more I played, the more I wanted to understand the thing itself: why one rim sings and another only speaks, what a skin head does that a plastic one can’t, how a neck should sit so your hand forgets it’s there.
So I started building. Slowly, badly at first, then better. I read the old books, took instruments apart, drove my workshop neighbours mad with questions. What I found is that a banjo is an honest machine. There’s nowhere to hide. Every choice — the wood, the ring, the head, the angle of the neck — you can hear it. That honesty is what keeps me at the bench.
I’m not trying to build the loudest or the flashiest banjo. I’m trying to build the one you’ll still be reaching for in forty years.
A debt to the mountains
Much of the music I love came up out of the Appalachians, and I keep going back — most of all to West Virginia, where the hills and the tunes seem to belong to each other. I’ve sat on porches there and listened to people play music their grandparents played, on instruments their grandparents built. That’s the tradition I’m trying to earn a small place in: instruments made patiently, by hand, meant to outlive the maker and be handed down.
Every banjo I build carries a little of that with it. Not as decoration — as intent.
— Nick
What I hold to
Built by one pair of hands
No production line. I turn the rims, carve the necks, tuck the heads and set up every banjo myself, from raw board to first tuning.
Rooted in tradition
I learn from the old makers and the old players. The forms that work have worked for a hundred years — I'd rather perfect them than reinvent them.
Honest materials
Solid tonewoods, real skin, hardware that lasts. Nothing hidden, nothing faked, finished so the wood can be felt and not just seen.
Made to be played
A banjo isn't an ornament. Every instrument leaves the bench set up, in tune and ready for a lifetime of music.
Have something in mind?
Heirloom timber, a particular tone, an engraving that means something to you — bring it to the bench and let us build it together.