Mandolin-banjo became more popular. In the heyday of mandolin orchestras and banjo bands (late 19th–early 20th century), all sorts of instruments were produced. The mandolin-banjo is one of the hybrids that resulted. It enabled mandolinists to produce a banjo sound without having to learn that instrument's fingerings. The instrument adds the banjo's volume to the mandolin. The banjolin is different from the banjo-mandolin in the number of strings that it has. Banjolins today are supposed to have four strings instead of 8 strings (in courses or pairs). However, that distinction is not universal; the "banjolin" name was patented in 1885 by
Mandolin called a cylinder-back mandolin manufactured by the Vega Company between 1913 and roughly 1927), which had a similar longitudinal bulge but on the back rather than the front of the instrument. The mandolin was given a banjo body in an 1882 patent by Benjamin Bradbury of Brooklyn and given the name "banjolin" by John Farris in 1885. Today "banjolin" describes an instrument with four strings, while the version with the four courses of double strings is called a "mandolin-banjo". A resonator mandolin or "resophonic mandolin" is a mandolin whose sound is produced by one or more metal cones (resonators) instead