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John Augustus Omar Sloan
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There are currently 20 pages to this website. Please see menus at far right and at bottom of every page - Fine finished instruments: Standard five stringers, tenors, plectrums, long necks
- Custom instruments: Left or right handed, reversible left AND right handed, 11" and 12" heads, four, five and six strings
- Folding travel banjos
- Bass banjos custom made to your requirements
- Tone rings made to our design or yours
- Banjo parts: Hooks and brackets, necks, heads, resonators
- Will ship worldwide
- Handcrafted in the USA
- Please allow 90 days for completion of custom instrument orders
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Peter Sloan and John Sloan
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It is my pleasure to welcome you to our website.
My father, John A. Sloan, began making banjos in his native England back in the mid 1950s. His love for the instrument and his commitment to fine tone led him to the registering of several banjo related patents during the 1960s and 1970s (I was surprised to find blueprints drawn up for three of these among the compilation of banjo patent drawings toward the back of the well known "Banjos, The Tsumura Collection" coffee table book) and to the research and development of superior quality banjo components and finished instruments, including a traveling model that can be folded to a small size for easy carrying and that can be strung for a left or right handed player.
J. A. Sloan Banjos boast rich materials. Pegs are high quality geared models. Our steel reinforced necks consist primarily of Honduras mahogany, long valued by fine luthiers for its lovely color and grain and also for its resistance to warping.
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Beauty and strength are enhanced by multiple laminations of maple, amaranth, and rosewood or African ebony, all present in ample quantities. Cost and availability of these resources make their generous inclusion unlikely on all but the most expensive instruments today. Examine carefully any other brands you consider. Many of their necks are a single piece of wood spray painted to an attractive finish.
Rims are of laminated maple, and models following my father's original aesthetic still have forty bracket hooks holding down the tension hoop and the head. Unique tandem shoes, pictured on another page of this site, are cast in bronze or sterling silver. Compare this with the low cost flanges found on many best selling brands, or with other fine brands having bracket hooks. Most of these offer no more than twenty-four hooks, with some having as few as sixteen. All of our parts are made in-house, and for many of our instruments the only components not
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made by us are the pegs.
But the most important aspect of any instrument is, of course, its tone. Instruments made by J. A. Sloan and Son are among the finest sounding banjos made anywhere, at any price. They compare favorably to the best and costliest brands in the world. As someone shopping for a musical instrument, this consideration should be foremost on your mind, making ours a brand to consider seriously.
Finally (and maybe I'm just slightly biased) as far as I'm concerned alot of mass produced banjos have no soul. Each Sloan banjo has its own personality and is a little unique from all the others. They are not put together on an assembly line by paid employees, but lovingly fashioned the time honored way by a craftsman working in his own shop. That's the way J. A. Sloan has been doing things for half a century.
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Five-Stringer with Resonator
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2005 Five-String Premium Neck
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1964 Vintage Long Neck
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We welcome your letters, phone calls and emails. To write to us via snail mail, please address your correspondence to: J. A. Sloan & Son 2620 Interstate 45 South, Bldg. B New Waverly, Texas 77358. Telephone: 281-733-9797 or Send us an email.
If you phone, you might want to speak up a little bit if Mom answers... just in case she's forgotten to put in her hearing aid!
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My Father, J. A. Sloan, emigrated to the United States from London, England in 1956, and brought with him a unique to its time late Victorian/early Cold-War/dawning of the 60's Pop Culture aesthetic. The styling of his instruments is classic and very representative of the era in which Mr. Sloan perfected his craft. In some ways the sense of style imbued into each Sloan banjo can be linked directly to other designs contemporary with the era, such as the simple and no-nonsense lines of classic Triumph Bonneville motorcycles.
My dad got quite a laugh when he played the Chicago Folk Festival back in 1977 at Mandell Hall. Acting the clown and pulling one of his own folding travel banjos
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from a small overnight bag (spilling socks and underwear all over the stage as he did so) he announced that he would now play Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody. As the great Mr. U. Utah Phillips and I watched together from side stage, my father played the piece through without even taking a moment to tune up. The folding banjo had opened up absolutely in tune.
J. A. Sloan now resides with his wife Elizabeth in Huntsville, Texas, and celebrated his eighty-sixth birthday on August 15, 2009. He is an expert on Ragtime music, has been a well known member of the American Banjo Fraternity and the FIGA for 44 years, and has been featured on FIGA's magazine cover.
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