Resonator guitar
Encyclopedia
Resonator
A resonator is a device or system that exhibits resonance or resonant behavior, that is, it naturally oscillates at some frequencies, called its resonant frequencies, with greater amplitude than at others. The oscillations in a resonator can be either electromagnetic or mechanical...
s) instead of the wooden sound board (guitar top/face). Resonator guitars were originally designed to be louder than conventional acoustic guitars which were overwhelmed by horns and percussion instruments in dance orchestras. They became prized for their distinctive sound, however, and found life with several musical styles (most notably bluegrass
Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...
and also blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
) well after electric amplification solved the issue of inadequate guitar sound levels.
Resonator guitars are of two styles:
- Square necked guitars designed to be played in steel guitarSteel guitarSteel guitar is a type of guitar or the method of playing the instrument. Developed in Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a steel guitar is usually positioned horizontally; strings are plucked with one hand, while the other hand changes the pitch of one or more strings with the use...
style. - Round necked guitars, which may be played in either the conventional classical guitarClassical guitarThe classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...
style or in the lap steel guitarLap steel guitarThe lap steel guitar is a type of steel guitar, an instrument derived from and similar to the guitar. The player changes pitch by pressing a metal or glass bar against the strings instead of by pressing strings against the fingerboard....
style.
There are three main resonator designs:
- The "tricone" ("tri" in reference to the three metal cones/resonators) design of the first NationalNational String Instrument CorporationThe National String Instrument Corporation was a guitar company that formed to manufacture the first resonator guitars.-National resonator guitar designs:...
resonator guitars. - The single cone "biscuit" design of other National instruments.
- The single inverted-cone design of the DobroDobroDobro is a registered trademark, now owned by Gibson Guitar Corporation and used for a particular design of resonator guitar.The name has a long and involved history, interwoven with that of the resonator guitar...
.
Many variations of all of these styles and designs have been produced under many brand
Brand
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...
s. The body of a resonator guitar may be made of wood, metal, or occasionally other materials. Typically there are two main sound holes, positioned on either side of the fingerboard extension. In the case of single cone models, the sound holes are either both circular or both f-shaped, and symmetrical; The older "tricone" design has irregularly shaped sound hole
Sound hole
A sound hole is an opening in the upper sound board of a stringed musical instrument.The sound holes can have different shapes: round in flat-top guitars, F-holes in instruments from the violin or viol families and in arched-top guitars, rosettes in lutes. Bowed Lyras have D-holes and Mandolins may...
s. Cutaway body styles may truncate or omit the lower f-hole.
National tricone
The resonator guitar was developed by John DopyeraJohn Dopyera
John Dopyera was a Slovak-American inventor and entrepreneur, and a maker of stringed instruments. His inventions include the resonator guitar and important contributions in the early development of the electric guitar....
, seeking to produce a guitar that would have sufficient volume to be heard alongside brass and reed instruments, in response to a request from steel guitar player George Beauchamp
George Beauchamp
George Delmetia Beauchamp was an inventor of musical instruments and a co-founder of National Stringed Instrument Corporation and Rickenbacker guitars....
. Dopyera experimented with configurations of up to four resonator cones, and cones composed of several different metals.
In 1927, Dopyera and Beauchamp formed the National String Instrument Corporation
National String Instrument Corporation
The National String Instrument Corporation was a guitar company that formed to manufacture the first resonator guitars.-National resonator guitar designs:...
to manufacture resonator guitars under the brand name National. The first models were metal-bodied and featured three conical aluminum resonators joined by a T-shaped aluminum bar which supported the bridge, a system called the "tricone". Wooden-bodied tricone models were originally produced at the National factory in Los Angeles, California. These models were called the "Triolian", however only 12 were made and the bodies meant for tricones were changed to single cone models, but the name remained.
Dobro
In 1928, Dopyera left National to form the Dobro Manufacturing Company with his brothers Rudy, Emile, Robert and Louis, Dobro being a contraction of Dopyera Brothers' and also meaning "goodness" in their native Slovak languageSlovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
. Dobro released a competing resonator guitar with a single resonator with its concave surface uppermost, often described as bowl-shaped, under a distinctive circular perforated metal cover plate with the bridge at its centre resting on an eight-legged aluminium spider. This system was cheaper to produce, and produced more volume than National's tricone.
National biscuit
National countered the Dobro with its own single resonator model, which had previously been designed by Dopyera before he left the company; while also continuing to produce the tricone design which many players preferred for its tone. Both the National single and tricone resonators remained conical with their convex surfaces uppermost; the single resonator models used a wooden biscuit at the cone apex to support the bridge. Both companies at this stage were sourcing many components, and notably the aluminium resonators themselves, from Adolph RickenbacherAdolph Rickenbacher
Adolph Rickenbacker was a Swiss-American who founded the Rickenbacker guitar company.Adolf Rickenbacker was born in Switzerland....
.
National Dobro, Hound Dog, and Gibson
After much legal action, the Dopyera brothers gained control of both National and Dobro in 1932, and subsequently merged them to form the National Dobro Corporation. However all production of resonator guitars by this company ceased following the US entry into World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in 1941.
Emile Dopyera (also known as Ed Dopera) manufactured Dobros from 1959, before selling the company and trademark to Semie Moseley
Semie Moseley
Semie Moseley was a luthier, and the founder of Mosrite guitars.He was born in Durant, Oklahoma in 1935. His family migrated to California along a path similar to many "Bakersfield Okies", first moving to Chandler, Arizona in 1938, and two years later in Bakersfield, California...
, who merged it with his Mosrite
Mosrite
Mosrite is an American guitar manufacturing company, based in Bakersfield, California, from the late 1950s to the early 1990s. Founded by Semie Moseley, Mosrite guitars were played by many rock and roll and country artists....
guitar company and manufactured Dobros for a time.
In 1967, Rudy and Emile Dopyera formed the Original Musical Instrument Company
Original Musical Instrument Company
The Original Musical Instrument Company was formed in 1967 by two of the original Dopyera brothers, Rudy and Emile, to manufacture resonator guitars.The first instruments were branded Hound Dog...
(OMI) to manufacture resonator guitars, first branded Hound Dog. In 1970 they again acquired the Dobro trademark, Mosrite having gone into temporary liquidation.
OMI was acquired by the Gibson Guitar Corporation
Gibson Guitar Corporation
The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...
in 1993, which announced it would defend its right to exclusive use of the Dobro trademark, which had come to be commonly used for any resonator guitar. , Gibson produces several round sound hole models under the Dobro name, and cheaper f-hole models both under the Hound Dog name and also its Epiphone
Epiphone
The Epiphone Company is a musical instrument manufacturer founded in 1873 by Anastasios Stathopoulos. Epiphone was bought by Chicago Musical Instrument Company, which also owned Gibson Guitar Corporation, in 1957. Epiphone was Gibson's main rival in the archtop market...
brand. All have a single resonator, and many are available in either round or square neck.
Other National instruments
After the formation of the National Dobro Corporation, the term 'National' was often used to mean an instrument with a non-inverted cone, to distinguish these designs from the inverted-cone 'Dobro'. Makers particularly used it for single-cone biscuit designs, as the relatively elaborate and expensive tricone was for some time out of production. Players and collectors also used the term for the older tricone instruments, which despite their softer volume and rarity were still preferred by some players.In 1942, the National Dobro Corporation, which no longer produced Dobros or any other resonator instruments, was reorganized and renamed Valco
Valco
Valco was a manufacturer of guitars, guitar amplifiers, and other musical instruments from the 1940s through 1968. Only other relatives alive today live in Staffordshire England.- History :...
. Valco produced a large volume and variety of fretted instruments under many names, with National as its premium brand. By the early 1960s, Valco was again producing resonator guitars for mail order under the National brand name. These instruments had biscuit resonators and bodies of wood and fiberglass
Fiberglass
Glass fiber is a material consisting of numerous extremely fine fibers of glass.Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass fibers, but mass manufacture of glass fiber was only made possible with the invention of finer machine tooling...
.
In the late 1980s, the National brand and trademark reappeared with the formation of National Reso-Phonic Guitars
National Reso-Phonic Guitars
National Reso-Phonic Guitars is a manufacturer of resonator guitars and other resonator instruments including mandolins, ukuleles and 12 string guitars.The company was formed in 1989 by Don Young and McGregor Gaines, in a Californian garage...
. , it produces six-string resonator guitars of all three traditional resonator types, focusing on reproducing the feel and sound of old instruments. Its other resonator instruments include a 12-string guitar, ukulele
Ukulele
The ukulele, ; from ; it is a subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings....
s and mandolin
Mandolin
A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...
s.
Non-USA instruments
Czech RepublicIn the late 90's Amistar, a Czech Republic manufacturer, began marketing tricone resonator guitars.
Australia
Wayne Acoustic Guitars produced a spider bridge resonator guitar in the '40s and '50s in Australia. They were crudely made out of what was at the time cheap Australian timber using a tone ring rather than a tone well but their biggest problems were no neck reinforcement and a very different pressed (rather than spun) cone. This is often called a pillow cone due to the shapes pressed into the face to strengthen the cone. Many examples exist today and if the neck is straight and a good cone is used can give a reasonable sound. As of 2010 Don Morrison is producing highly regarded resonators under the Donmo brand name.
Asia
Many Asian brands such as Johnson, Recording King, Republic Guitars and Rogue also produce or import a wide variety of comparatively inexpensive resonator guitars. Johnson has also produced resonator ukuleles and mandolins.
South Africa
A company called Gallotone in South Africa is also known to have produced resonator guitars in the 1950s and '60s.
Playing
Resonator guitars are popularly used in bluegrass music and in blues. Traditionally, bluegrass players used square necked Dobro-style instruments played as a steel guitar while blues players favored round-necked National-style guitars, often played with a bottleneck. However, some contemporary players disregard these stereotypes and use resonator guitars in a wide variety of musical contexts.Styles and positions
The resonator guitar is most often played as a lap steel guitar, and the more common square necked version is limited to this playing position. Square neck instruments are always set up with the high action favored by steel guitar players, and tuned to a suitable open tuning.The round necked version is equally capable in either lap steel or Spanish guitar position. It may be set up with a variety of action heights, ranging from the half inch favored for steel guitar (making use of the frets almost impossible) to the small fraction of an inch used by conventional guitarists. A compromise is most common, allowing use of a bottleneck on the top strings but also use of the frets as desired, with the guitar played in the conventional position.
Many different tunings are used. Some square neck tunings are not recommended for round neck resonator guitars, owing to the high string tension required, which in turn requires the stronger square neck. Slack-key guitar
Slack-key guitar
Slack-key guitar is a fingerstyle genre of guitar music that originated in Hawaii. Its name refers to its characteristic open tunings: the English term is a translation of the Hawaiian kī hōalu, which means "loosen the [tuning] key"...
tunings are most suitable for bottleneck playing, and conventional E-A-D-G-B-E guitar tuning is also popular.
In bluegrass music
The resonator guitar was introduced to bluegrass music by Josh GravesJosh Graves
Josh Graves , born Burkett Howard Graves, was an American bluegrass musician. Also known by the nicknames "Buck," and "Uncle Josh," he is credited with introducing the dobro into bluegrass music shortly after joining Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1955...
, who played with Flatt and Scruggs, in the mid-1950s. Graves used the hard-driving, syncopated three-finger picking style developed by Earl Scruggs
Earl Scruggs
Earl Eugene Scruggs is an American musician noted for perfecting and popularizing a 3-finger banjo-picking style that is a defining characteristic of bluegrass music...
for the five-string banjo. Modern players continue to play the instrument this way, with one notable exception being Tut Taylor
Tut Taylor
Tut Taylor is an American bluegrass musician.Taylor played banjo and mandolin as a child, and began playing dobro at age 14, learning to use the instrument with a distinctive flat-picking style. Taylor was a member of The Folkswingers in the 1960s, who released three LPs; he recorded his debut...
who plays with a flat pick.
Tuning for the resonator guitar within the bluegrass genre is most often an open G with the strings pitched to D G D G B D or G B D G B D, from the lowest to highest. Occasionally variant tunings are used, such as an open D: D A D F# A D
Other notable bluegrass players include Jerry Douglas
Jerry Douglas (musician)
Jerry Douglas is an American record producer and resonator guitar player. Called "Dobro's matchless contemporary master," by The New York Times, and lauded as "my favorite musician" by John Fogerty, Douglas is one of the world’s most renowned Dobro players.-Career:In addition to his twelve solo...
, Mike Auldridge
Mike Auldridge
Mike Auldridge is widely acknowledged as a premier resophonic guitar player. He played with The Seldom Scene for many years, creating a fusion of bluegrass with jazz, folk and rock.Auldridge started playing guitar at the age of 13...
, Rob Ickes
Rob Ickes
Rob Ickes is a dobro player. A Northern California native , Rob Ickes [rhymes with "bikes"] moved to Nashville in 1992 and joinedthe contemporary bluegrass band Blue Highway as a founding member in 1994...
, Phil Leadbetter
Phil Leadbetter
Phil Leadbetter is one of the leading players of the resonator guitar.In 1994, Phil received a Grammy Nomination for "Best Bluegrass Album" at the 37th Annual Grammy Awards for his work with J. D. Crowe and the New South on the album "Flashback". In 2005 he was voted International Bluegrass Music...
and Andy Hall.
In country music
The resonator guitar was used in older country musicCountry music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
, notably by Bashful Brother Oswald
Bashful Brother Oswald
Beecher Ray Kirby , better known as Bashful Brother Oswald, was an American country musician who popularized the use of the resonator guitar and Dobro...
of Roy Acuff
Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the King of Country Music, Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown" format to the star singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.Acuff...
's band, but has been largely supplanted by the pedal steel guitar
Pedal steel guitar
The pedal steel guitar is a type of electric guitar that uses a metal bar to "fret" or shorten the length of the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. Unlike other types of steel guitar, it also uses pedals and knee levers to affect the pitch, hence the name "pedal"...
.
In blues music
The resonator guitar is also significant to the world of blues music, particularly the SouthernSouthern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
style of country blues
Country blues
Country blues is a general term that refers to all the acoustic, mainly guitar-driven forms of the blues. It often incorporated elements of rural gospel, ragtime, hillbilly, and dixieland jazz...
that grew out of the Mississippi Delta
Mississippi Delta
The Mississippi Delta is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. The region has been called "The Most Southern Place on Earth" because of its unique racial, cultural, and economic history...
and Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
. Unlike country and bluegrass players, most blues players play the resonator guitar in the standard guitar position, with the strings facing away from the player. Many use slides or bottlenecks.
Many players in the 1920s and 1930s, including the great Bo Carter
Bo Carter
Armenter "Bo Carter" Chatmon was an American early blues musician. He was a member of the Mississippi Sheiks in concerts, and on a few of their recordings...
, and others like Bukka White
Bukka White
Booker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...
, Son House
Son House
Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. was an American blues singer and guitarist. House pioneered an innovative style featuring strong, repetitive rhythms, often played with the aid of slide guitar, and his singing often incorporated elements of southern gospel and spiritual music...
, Tampa Red
Tampa Red
Tampa Red , born Hudson Woodbridge but known from childhood as Hudson Whittaker, was an American Chicago blues musician....
and Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller
Blind Boy Fuller was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.-Life and career:Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina,...
, used the instruments because they were louder than standard acoustic guitars, which enabled them to play for a larger crowd in areas that did not yet have electricity for amplifiers. For the same reason street musicians like Arvella Gray
Arvella Gray
Blind Arvella Gray was an American blues, folk and gospel singer and guitarist.His birth name was James Dixon, and he was born in Somerville, Texas, United States...
used resonator guitars while busking
Busking
Street performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles...
, e.g. on Chicago's Maxwell Street
Maxwell Street
Maxwell Street is an east-west street in Chicago, Illinois that intersects with Halsted Street just south of Roosevelt Road. It runs at 1330 South in the numbering system running from 500 West to 1126 West. The Maxwell Street neighborhood is considered part of the Near West Side and is one of the...
. The instrument is still used by some blues players, notably Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal (musician)
Henry Saint Clair Fredericks , who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American Grammy Award winning blues musician. He incorporates elements of world music into his music...
, Eric Sardinas
Eric Sardinas
Eric Sardinas is an American blues-rock guitarist born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is noted for his use of the electric resonator guitar and his live performances. He sometimes sets his guitar alight on stage and during shows....
, Alvin Hart, The Deacon Brandon Reeves, Derek Trucks
Derek Trucks
Derek Trucks is a Grammy Award-winning, American guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. He founded The Derek Trucks Band and worked as a session musician when he was still in his early teens. Throughout those teenage years, he toured with The Allman Brothers Band primarily as a slide...
, and Johnny Winter
Johnny Winter
John Dawson "Johnny" Winter III is an American blues guitarist, singer, and producer. Best known for his late 1960s and 1970s high-energy blues-rock albums and live performances, Winter also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues legend Muddy Waters...
.
Varieties of resonator guitar
Single resonator guitars with a bowl resonator and spider (Dobro style) are often heard in bluegrass music, while tricone (National style) instruments are still preferred by many blues players. Single-resonator biscuit (also sometimes called National style) instruments are also currently produced, and give a different sound again.Many bluegrass players prefer wooden bodies, blues players either metal or wood. The early metal-bodied instruments were generally of better quality than the earliest wooden-bodied ones, but this may not be the case with more recent instruments. Metal bodies may be brass, aluminum or steel. Fiberglass has also been used as a body material, and a marble
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
bodied resonator guitar is commercially available. Both metal and wooden bodies are often painted, or wooden bodies may be stained or lacquered, metal bodies may be plated or plain.
Bluegrass players tend to use square necks, while blues players tend to prefer round necks. Square-necked guitars give a slightly greater variety of possible tunings, while round-necked guitars give a much greater variety of playing positions.
Single resonator instruments can have round sound holes with screens, or round sound holes without screens, which many players used to remove to improve the bass response. They can also have f-holes, often with gauze screens that are also sometimes removed but have an important function in strengthening the belly particularly if the body is of wood.
An enormous number of combinations are possible, most can be found either on old or new instruments or both, and many styles of music can be played on any resonator guitar.
Electric instruments
Although the original aim of the resonator was increased volume, some modern instruments incorporate electric pickups, and players add pickups to non-electric instruments, and use the resonator purely for its distinctive tone. As the resonator is far more sensitive to audio feedbackAudio feedback
Audio feedback is a special kind of positive feedback which occurs when a sound loop exists between an audio input and an audio output...
than any semi-acoustic guitar
Semi-acoustic guitar
A semi-acoustic guitar or hollow-body electric is a type of electric guitar with both a sound box and one or more electric pickups. This is not the same as an electric acoustic guitar, which is an acoustic guitar with the addition of pickups or other means of amplification, either added by the...
, the design of these pickups is extremely critical and specialized.
Other resonator instruments
As well as resonator guitars, resonators have been used on:- BassesAcoustic bass guitarThe acoustic bass guitar is a bass instrument with a hollow wooden body similar to, though usually somewhat larger than a steel-string acoustic guitar...
, available from Regal . - UkuleleUkuleleThe ukulele, ; from ; it is a subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings....
s, (see Resonator ukuleleResonator ukuleleA resonator ukulele or "resophonic ukulele" is a ukulele whose sound is produced by one or more spun aluminum cones instead of the wooden soundboard...
) produced by National and Dobro 1928–1940. - BanjoBanjoIn the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
s. - Tenor guitarTenor guitar1932 Martin 0-18 T Sunburst Tenor Guitar|thumb|rightThe tenor guitar or four-string guitar is a slightly smaller, four-string relative of the steel-string acoustic guitar or electric guitar. The instrument was developed so that players of the four-string tenor banjo could double on the guitar...
s. - MandolinMandolinA mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It descends from the mandore, a soprano member of the lute family. The mandolin soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. A mandolin may have f-holes, or a single...
s and mandolaMandolaThe mandola or tenor mandola is a fretted, stringed musical instrument. It is to the mandolin what the viola is to the violin: the four double courses of strings tuned in fifths to the same pitches as the viola , a fifth lower than a mandolin...
s. - Mountain/Appalachian DulcimerAppalachian dulcimerThe Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings. It is native to the Appalachian region of the United States...
s
Famous names
the three most famous historic brands of resonator guitar, National, Dobro and Regal, were all in use, but all by different companies to the ones that produced the historical instruments, each after one or more long breaks in production:- The National name is used by National Reso-Phonic Guitars, founded in 1987, who specialise in reproductions of historic instruments of all brands, not just National pattern instruments
- The Dobro name has been owned by Gibson Guitar Corporation since 1993
- The Regal name has been a brand of Saga Musical InstrumentsSaga Musical InstrumentsSaga Musical Instruments is a manufacturer and wholesale distributor of stringed instruments, particularly fretted instruments and members of the violin family, and parts and accessories for them...
since 1987
US patents
- #1,741,453 covering the tricone
- #1,896,484 covering the Dobro
- #1,808,756 covering the biscuit single cone resonator, lodged in the name of Beauchamp
See also
- GuitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
- Steel guitarSteel guitarSteel guitar is a type of guitar or the method of playing the instrument. Developed in Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a steel guitar is usually positioned horizontally; strings are plucked with one hand, while the other hand changes the pitch of one or more strings with the use...
- Slide guitarSlide guitarSlide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles...
- Country musicCountry musicCountry music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
- Bluegrass musicBluegrass musicBluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...
- BluesBluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
- Country bluesCountry bluesCountry blues is a general term that refers to all the acoustic, mainly guitar-driven forms of the blues. It often incorporated elements of rural gospel, ragtime, hillbilly, and dixieland jazz...
External links
- Resonators Explained by Paul Kucharski
- American fretted musical instrument makers, pre-Civil War to WWII, comprehensive list.
- notecannons.com, Colin McCubbin's site devoted to prewar resonator instruments.