In early 1970, a friend at work let me read his copy of Earl Scruggs And The Five String Banjo. I had always loved the banjo and I found this book most interesting, especially the part about building your own banjo. My first effort was very frustrating… I found that there was a lot more to building a good banjo than I had imagined.

One of the problems I had was cutting the fingerboard scale. It took a lot of time and patience… too much time. Working in the tool and die shop at General Electric, I had access to precision machinery and was able to build a small and accurate fret slotting saw and template for banjo fingerboards. I assumed others might be in similar circumstances, so I ran a small ad in one of the trade magazines. Almost overnight I was overwhelmed with orders for our pre-slotted banjo fingerboards. My wife Anne and I filled the orders and began to search for other banjo-related products. We put out a small two-page flier, and First Quality Banjo was born.