LeVan banjos are made by hand here in the Northern Appalachians - one at a time and no two are exactly alike.   My primary practice is designing banjos for individual customers and each banjo I make is a prototype of that design. I’m not a mass-producer.  The closest I come to that is the NewVintage openback and FretNaught fretless, which I make in small batches of 3 to 6 - but even those are not all exactly the same.   Because of some of the special features and hand work, my banjos are not designed for mass production.

LeVan banjos are built from the ground up. It’s what’s called “vertical integration”;  I do not merely assemble them from parts purchased from other suppliers - I make most of the parts by hand in the shop.

The most basic model I make is the

NewVintage, shown below.

Various modifications can be made at reasonable prices.

See the New Vintage page

If you could line up all the different kinds of banjos I have made, it would make an interesting picture:

openbacks, bluegrass banjos, resonator frailing banjos, fretless banjos, banjo lutes, conversions, lightweight banjos, even a child’s A-scale.

Below is a virtual representation of some of them, made from photos of my work I have taken over the years.

Every LeVan Banjo has a distinct personality in appearance and sound