New resonator guitar day

Stuckfast

Not technically a dobro as not made by the Dobro company, but as of today I am the proud owner of a square neck resonator guitar. 



It was made by Jiri Lebeda in the Czech Republic, who apparently specialised in building decent mid-priced instruments. I'm no expert but it sounds great to my ears and is a ton of fun to play.

(Incidentally, it's only now I have one that I understand why square neck dobros are a thing. I had always wondered why you wouldn't just use buy a round-neck instrument and use a nut extender if you want to play slide. Anyway, it turns out the string tension is much higher than on a standard acoustic and so the neck needs to be stronger. It's tuned G-B-D-G-B-D but the string gauges are 16-56.)

razorbill

Congrats on the new guitar! I saw this one posted on the British Steelies Society forum. It looks great and seems a really good value. Would love to hear a demo

Stuckfast

Yes John the seller was absolutely lovely and gave me loads of advice about it (apparently you should restring resonators one string at a time as slacking off all the strings can play havoc with the resonator, who knew?). A demo might have to wait til (a) I'm better at it, and (b) it has new strings...

Petepassion

Awesome fun.
i bought a round neck fitted with a lace pick up a couple of years ago.
drive pedal into the AC50 and Orange 4x12 gets a proper big filthy sound.
   
   

Teyeplayer

Well that answers the square neck question, never knew that. Looks great op, happy ngd! 

DavidR

Congrats.

Every acoustic player should have a resonator to doodle on every so often. I wish I had a wooden one like your Jiri Lebeda @Stuckfast . Wooden resonators are lighter than metal ones, many of which are 9lb plus and heavy to hold! You can play slide on standard necked resonators with lighter strings but they don't sound the same. I have a Regal RC-51, Chinese knock-off of a National Style 1, and I play it with John Pearse 710NM phos/bronze 13's which a genuine Style 1 ships with. These are a bit heavier than the 12's I play on my other acoustics, but still a bit light for slide in many people's book.

Also I'm rubbish at slide but it's still fun to have a go every so often and, otherwise, the RC-51 sounds great for the blues and ragtime stuff I play. Just heavy!

DavidR

P.S. When you say not a Dobro, Dobro is just a brand.

Sometimes it's used as a generic name for all wood-bodied, single cone resonators, but this is only in the same way as vacuum cleaners are sometimes called Hoovers. Hoover is a brand too, but all they are is just the original type of vacuum cleaner.

So when you say you don't have a real Dobro it doesn't really matter. What you do have is a fine wood-body, single resonator guitar. And it might be better than a Dobro!

:-)

guitarjack66

DavidR said:

P.S. When you say not a Dobro, Dobro is just a brand.

Sometimes it's used as a generic name for all wood-bodied, single cone resonators, but this is only in the same way as vacuum cleaners are sometimes called Hoovers. Hoover is a brand too, but all they are is just the original type of vacuum cleaner.

So when you say you don't have a real Dobro it doesn't really matter. What you do have is a fine wood-body, single resonator guitar. And it might be better than a Dobro!

:-)

So Resonator is the word for the whole genre then?

DavidR

Sort of. Resonator is the word for any guitar with a Resonator in. Dobro (I think) implies a wood-bodied, single cone resonator.