The Right Man For The Job
by John Lawless


Call it fate. Call it luck. Call it providence. Sometimes events conspire to place uniquely qualified individuals into a position where they can make a powerful contribution, and at a time when it is most likely to have a lasting impact.

Banjo players celebrate the fact that Earl Scruggs took the job with Bill Monroe while our beloved music was first being brought to life. Bluegrass pickers in general rejoice when contemplating what might have been had Gibson not employed Lloyd Loar and Guy Hart to design their instruments in the 1920s. Modern banjoists are surely thankful that Warner Brothers took a chance on a young banjoist named Bela Fleck who wanted to front a jazz fusion band with a 5 string banjo.

Steve Huber would surely shrink from any comparisons between himself and such well known icons. Still, the case can be made that he is just that sort of person who, by nature of background and experience, is poised to have a deep and powerful influence on the 5 string banjo community. His Vintage Flathead tone ring (commonly called the Huber ring) has won raves from the top banjo players in the business. Steve's solo CD, "Pullin' Time" (Strictly County 41), has received critical praise in limited distribution. With plans to take production of the tone rings into a full-time occupation and the introduction of a banjo line in store for 1999, it looks like Steve is well on his way.

No less a banjo luminary than Sonny Osborne is a vocal proponent of the Huber ring. When he decided to offer a signature Sonny Osborne banjo for sale (The Chief), the Huber ring was the only one he would consider. His reaction is unequivocal. "Finally, somebody is doing it the right way. Steve's gold ring is as good as the one in my prewar Granada."

Bela Fleck has also become friends with Steve, and he shared some thoughts in a recent conversation. "What I really like about Steve is that he has a deep love and respect for 'The Flathead,' which is something he and I share. We spent some time setting up one of my banjos with his ring and I have been very impressed with the results. I think that he is trying to give people something closer to that old sound and it looks like he is going to be successful with it."

So, just how did events conspire to put Steve in this position? Let's look at it in two phases.

It started during Christmas of 1974 when he went with his family to visit a friend, Bill Merris. Only 14 years old and a fan of The Beverly Hillbillies TV show, Steve was knocked out when Bill played the theme song on the banjo and he was determined to learn how to play like that. Merris let him borrow a banjo, gave him some finger picks and wrote down a few rolls for him to practice. Steve reports that he didn't come up for air for a month.

After about eight months poring over the Earl Scruggs book Steve found a group in his neighborhood, The High Ridge Mountain Boys who allowed him to play with them. "I didn't add a lot to the band but I did get the opportunity to play with a bass player, a mandolin, a fiddle and a guitar. Having some people to play with and pick up some timing was as important as learning the rolls."

Steve was motivated to become a banjo player and his high school years in southern Lancaster County, PA were spent playing basketball (All League) and bluegrass banjo. He spent time with a number of regional bands (The Five Strings of Bluegrass, The Spirits of Bluegrass, Penn Central) before taking the job with Bob Paisley and the Southern Grass in 1985. "Suddenly I was forced to focus on my timing like never before. Playing with them was the best thing that could have happened for developing my right hand."

Within a few weeks of joining The Southern Grass, Steve headed off with them for a European tour and stayed with the band for about six years. Paul Adkins and Borderline was Steve's next band home and he stayed with Paul until he moved to Nashville in 1993, where he played with Lonesome Standard Time for a year.

During the period with Borderline, Steve recorded "Pullin Time," which was released on the Dutch bluegrass and old time music label, Strictly Country Records. Steve had met the folks from Strictly Country over the course of three European tours with Bob Paisley. The album featured a mix of standards and Steve's original banjo tunes with such stellar performers as Tony Rice, Butch Baldassari, Randy Howard and Rob Ickes contributing their talents.

Phase one complete: Steve Huber establishes himself as a professional calibre banjo player with both performing and recording experience.

After graduating from high school, Steve played basketball for two years at a junior college/trade school, Stevens State School of Technology, where he received a two-year tool and die degree. He then went to work at Federal Mogul Corporation receiving his apprentice papers as a machinist and tool and die maker.

"I may have still been at Federal Mogul when I started with Bob Paisley but before long I quit work and enrolled at Penn State to study mechanical engineering. It was supposed to be a four year degree but I ran out of money and patience so it ended up as a two year. It worked out well playing with Bob while I was in school because I could study during the week and play with them on the weekends."

A number of odd jobs followed in the Lancaster area in both machining and engineering until he got a position at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland working in the Combat System Test Activity, a branch of the Army. "We would blow things up, shoot tanks and take ballistic data. It was a great job but it didn't last too long."

During this time at Aberdeen, Steve was playing with Paul Adkins and they made regular stops in Nashville. When in town, Steve always made a point to stop by Gruhn Guitars and struck up a friendship with John Hedgecoth, Gruhn's repair shop foreman. "We would talk about what I could do with metal. John had a desire to start fabricating and repairing metal parts needed for repairs and restoration. When the job at Aberdeen ended, I moved to Nashville to work at Gruhn with the understanding that I would spend half of each day working with the metal parts and the other half learning guitar repair in general. It was a nice combination and I learned a ton from those guys."

Ever since he began to play seriously, Steve had nurtured a keen interest in prewar banjos. He had developed relationships with Curtis McPeake, a recognized expert on prewar Mastertones, and Frank Neat, one of the top banjo builders in the country. Living in Nashville afforded him the opportunity to spend more time with both Curtis and Frank and he took full advantage of it. No detail of set up and construction was too mundane and Steve stored a good many things away from his conversations with these men.

The position at Gruhn only lasted a year. Steve found himself to be the "new guy" when business conditions necessitated some layoffs in 1994. At this point, a job came along as a manufacturing engineer with a major industrial firm. Steve was put in charge of process design and production of a popular piece of auto repair equipment. He was able to draw on his education in engineering and machining while learning valuable new 'real world' skills in the nuts and bolts of bringing a product from design to manufacture .

Phase two complete, concurrent with phase one: Steve Huber obtains the skills, training and experience in instrument building/repair and refines and develops his experience in machining, engineering and manufacturing.

This new manufacturing job, while paying a good salary and allowing Steve to put his education to use, did not offer him the musical outlet he had enjoyed since high school. He began to tinker with his own banjo, a 1939 RB-75 Mastertone, out of curiosity. This instrument is rare in that it has the pot of an RB-75 with an RB-7 style neck, and it came from the Gibson factory in this configuration.

Steve had long been a fan of the 'prewar sound.' Banjo players know this elusive quality well though concrete descriptions are harder to come by. One aspect that is highly prized in these older banjos is the relative lack of overtones and sympathetic 'ringyness' when you strike a string. The notes seem to decay more rapidly and have a more pronounced response in the lower mid range frequencies. Playing professionally for years and working at Gruhn had brought him into contact with many fine old banjos that had 'the sound.' Clearly, Steve's RB-75 had it, and he was convinced that the tone ring, and its distinctive tone, held the key.

"I had it apart a few times and noticed that the tone ring, when tapped lightly, had a tone to it that was different from both the aftermarket and original equipment rings that were available at the time. One day it occurred to me... I know I can machine one of these things and I had learned a bit about casting through my manufacturing job. I think I'm going to find out what it costs to make a ring."

At this point, Steve's musings were just that. No plans to start a banjo company were in his mind. It was merely a lark, a desire to be more involved with the music world again. He did a bit more investigating and found someone who could cast a ring. Now, the big question comes up: what to make it out of. The prewar formula is the Holy Grail in the banjo world and since it was clear that this experiment would be an expensive undertaking, Steve decided to take his time and try to get the metal formula just right.

"I started asking a lot of contacts I had made over the years to let me take a very, very small amount of metal from their prewar rings for analysis. I ended up with 18 samples, including my RB-75, and found out that, while they were not identical in composition, they were close. I decided on a formula that was very similar to the composition of my RB-75 ring."

Of course, when you are pouring metal of any kind, what you start with is not what you end up with in the final castings. Steve went through three initial pours of 500 pounds each, testing, evaluating and adjusting the formula before coming up with the desired composition of metals in the final alloy.

"When we finally got a good pour in the summer of 1997, I couldn't wait to get it in a banjo. I turned the first ring late one evening and put it into an old style 3 pot, not sure what to expect. I didn't even plate it - I just wanted to hear how it sounded!"

Steve was pleased with the sound and quickly turned and plated three rings which he sent to banjo craftsman Snuffy Smith for a second opinion. Snuffy and Steve had been in frequent communication during the test phase and he had promised Steve a brutally honest assessment of the results.

The week between sending the rings and Snuffy's reaction was long and fraught with anxiety for Steve. He knew that if Snuffy was unimpressed, he would have invested 8 months and a good bit of money with little to show for it. On the other hand, if the reaction was enthusiastic, he would want to proceed with commercial production.

"When he finally called, the first thing he said was, 'Hold onto your bootstraps...!' He really liked the rings and encouraged me to proceed with them. I know that, of the three I sent him, one is in Ben Eldridge's banjo and another in Jim Mills'."

Armed with some corroborating evidence, Steve was ready to start producing rings for sale. During the test phase, he had been turning the rings on a lathe at work and having them plated at a Nashville facility. At this point Steve borrowed seed capital from some friends and purchased a lathe and plating equipment for his own shop. He began to pour larger quantities of metal, up to 2000 lbs. at a time, and started investigating how to best market this new product.

Unsure how to bring the rings to market Steve contacted some friends in the business for suggestions and eventually decided to sell the rings through limited distribution. "I wanted to sell them directly to consumers but realized that I needed a presence elsewhere as well. I decided to offer them on the Internet through AcuTab and in the First Quality Musical Supply catalog."

Steve produced approximately 300 rings in 1998, many going to the top names in the banjo world. Sammy Shelor, Bill Evans, Ronnie Stewart, James McKinney, Dale Vanderpool, Ned Lubericki and Greg Cahill have all had Huber rings installed and the responses from customers worldwide is very favorable and enthusiastic.

"It's not for everybody. The neck and the rim are as important as the tone ring in producing a great banjo tone so my ring won't turn every banjo into a prewar. The fit of these three components is crucial as well. This ring, though, does generate fewer overtones - when you tap it and in a banjo - than more modern rings. It will bring any banjo closer to that 'sound,' but it has the most dramatic results in really good instruments."

As of early 1999, Steve continues to hold down his full time job in manufacturing, producing rings on the side in the evenings and on weekends. His goal is to switch to a full time focus on banjo in the near future. Not long ago he contacted renowned banjo bridge maker David Wadsworth to inquire about having a bridge manufactured to his specifications. In the course of these discussions, David offered to sell his company to Steve instead. The new Huber bridge will be a refinement of the Wadsworth and based on a return to the old Grover style bridge which Steve thinks is ideally suited to obtaining the prewar sound.

Also in the works for 1999 is a Huber banjo using his ring. "The headstock and inlay are a new design but other than that it will be a traditional banjo. I want it to be as close as possible to the sound and feel of the prewar Mastertones."

Steve also converts prewar Gibson banjos - tenors, archtops and non-tone ring models - to five string flatheads for resale with his ring. Many of the fine prewar banjos that you see are actually conversions of this sort. Gibson made relatively few original flathead five strings in the 30s and 40s. With so much emphasis on replicating the prewar formula, the Huber ring is fast becoming the favorite for prewar conversions. In many cases, one can be had for the same cost as a new banjo from one of the top manufacturers.

Only the inevitable passage of time will tell whether Steve Huber leaves a lasting mark on the five string banjo. If, however, you have an interest in this instrument and its development, you might want to keep an eye on his progress. The smart money will not be betting against him.