It's amazing that so many acoustic string instruments follow the layout of the violin family.
When I worked at Gibson, I found a booklet that they published covering their history. Back in Lloyd Loar's days, it was quite the thing to have string orchestras, no doubt an alternative to the large, Souza-esque brass ensembles of those days, between WWOne and the Depression.
There were these amazing pictures of mandolin and banjo orchestras, with the group divvied up between mandolin, mandola, mandocello, and mandobasses, like the way the bowed strings are divided by range. These were playig ragtime arrangements, the hip-hop of the day. But I'll truly never forget this photo of a bass banjo ( . . . just the name is terrifying): Four-string, about 5 feet tall standing up on it's endpin (!), with the head about 2 feet in diameter.
J o e y
