I regularly play both 17 & 19 fret banjos. I've noticed some slight differences, but would not say one type is better than the other. The 19 fret has a longer scale, & seems to give a richer, complex musical voice, a longer sustain & a deeper bass. The shorter 17 fret instrument is brighter, slightly strident with a fast response & quicker decay. The bass notes are weak & uninteresting. This size banjo is very comfortable to play.
Depending on your mood, repertoire & venue, each size will serve you well at home, in jams, on stage, or in the studio.

This is a question needing a long answer. To make it short, first of all
the tenor banjo cannot tune to GDAE. The string tension would be too great. Tenor banjos are used more for chord melody, single notes, tremolo.
Banjos with 17 frets are used for single note playing,tremolo, and not for chording. Playing Irish jigs are great for the 17 fret banjos. They can be used for chording, but the sound is not lively like the tenor tuning of CGDA. Jim

I routinely play a 17 fret Bacon Blue Ribbon tenor, tuned GDAE. It has been around since the 1920s and handles GDAE with aplomb (actually, I prefer it in ADAE for Irish). I have no trouble playing chords when necessary. I primarily play Irish on it but occasionally I will use it for Uke tunes, strumming chords.

I also play a 19 fret Paramount Style A tenor. The longer scale length likes CGDA tuning and it does seem to enjoy being played in Dixieland style (at least, I like it). I have a Style A plectrum too, tuned CGBD, sometimes DGBE. Very similar, but the longer scale gives it a little deeper voice.

They're very different banjos. Both are resonated...but the Blue Ribbon has a plate resonator where the Paramount has more of a standard Gibson-type resonator. They sound different, but that wouldn't keep me from playing whatever style I wanted to on either.

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Originally posted by Mojesty

This is a question needing a long answer. To make it short, first of all
the tenor banjo cannot tune to GDAE. The string tension would be too great. Tenor banjos are used more for chord melody, single notes, tremolo.
Banjos with 17 frets are used for single note playing,tremolo, and not for chording. Playing Irish jigs are great for the 17 fret banjos. They can be used for chording, but the sound is not lively like the tenor tuning of CGDA. Jim

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You misunderstand. Tenor banjos tuned GDAE are playing one octave below the violin. Nowadays, that is far more common than CGEA Viola aka Dixie/Jazz tuning.

Back to the OP. Celtic/Irish/whatever you want to call it GDAE is pretty loose on a 17 fret banjo with its 19.5"–21" scale. It's also pretty loose on a 19 fret tenor with its 23" scale. It takes the right combination of strings and touch to make something that loose sound good but many do it.

I never liked 23" for GDAE preferirng 25"–28" plectrum banjos. Those of us who ever played cello (27 ½") find fingerings easy on that scale. The longer strings, usually a lighter gauge, have a nice snap and response to them that can't be found on the shorter scale. 

Gibson made a PT for a couple of years with a scale around 24 3/4". These are quite rare and were special order. I have seen a PT-3 although the PT-6 was cataloged.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mojesty

This is a question needing a long answer. To make it short, first of all
the tenor banjo cannot tune to GDAE. The string tension would be too great. Tenor banjos are used more for chord melody, single notes, tremolo.
Banjos with 17 frets are used for single note playing,tremolo, and not for chording. Playing Irish jigs are great for the 17 fret banjos. They can be used for chording, but the sound is not lively like the tenor tuning of CGDA. Jim

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I beg to differ. Irish banjo players have been playing in GDAE tuning for about a century. For some reason, Irish musicians like having an instrument in the band that's tuned an octave below the mandolin.

One thing about the original question that I can't answer well; most 17 fret banjos are open back and most 19 fret banjos have resonators. That makes a good comparison tricky.

Thanks for your responses. I prefer the sound of my 17 fret tuned CGDA but playing fiddle tunes in that tuning can be a challenge. Now I tune GDAE and am trying different string gauges to try to get that same “snap” that I get in CGDA. With the heavier gauges of GDAE I doubt I will but I am learning how to work around it. For example, on some tunes I will capo at the fifth fret which shortens the scale length to CGDA. But it doesn’t work for all tunes.

Perhaps my wording was a bit confusing. Yes, of course the tenor banjo has been playing Irish music for more than 100 years. That's why some parts of our countries call the 17 fret banjo an "Irish Banjo".
Most musical instruments have a different name for every different size. Why doesn't the 17 fret banjo have a name of it's own to identify it more clearly? Some tenor banjo ads do not show the fretboard to identify how many frets the banjo has. It's no wonder some new players are confused about which gauge strings to buy at a music store. When you say "Banjo" you are talking about a 5 string banjo.
When you say "tenor banjo" you are talking about which fretboard length? Just my thoughts.

I've messed with different scale lengths, different tunings, different string gauges. One comment that I picked up on this forum is that strings have rigidity. If you put a 0.020" unwound string on a 20" scale instrument it will probably not sound very good because the string is not that free to vibrate. A thinner string on a 23" might might vibrate with the same frequency but sound better. I think wound strings are more flexible. So, it would make sense that a two banjos with different scale length tuned the same under the same string tension would sound different.

With regards to GDAE, it's a pretty common tuning. I've never liked the sound of chords played in GDAE. For whatever reason, mandolin players don't seem to play a lot of chords, and do a lot of chucking (or whatever they call it in bluegrass).