I know what you’ve been thinking: “When is he gunna tell me about the world’s biggest banjo?”
Well, unreliable sources claim that an object in Branson, Missouri is the World’s Largest Banjo, but I doubt it’s a real banjo. To qualify as a true banjo, you need vibrating strings and you need these vibrations to be transmitted to a membrane via a bridge for the purpose of amplification. A website describing Branson’s disturbing monstrosity makes me suspect that what they have there is a mere sculpture of a banjo:
“The neck holding five fiber optic strings is 47-feet long. A true replica of a collectible Gibson banjo, the huge fiberglass shell has a sturdy frame of over 3,000 pounds of steel.”
Perhaps Gibson’s factory in the Opry Mills Mall in Nashville (top) holds the record instead. The search continues … By the way, see Cecilia Conway’s book for an extensive analytical treatment of the features that constitute the essence of a banjo.