Resophonic Basics

In the 1920s, the ensemble music of the day began to drown out the guitar. Trumpets, saxophone, and banjos all had a natural volume that simply was too much for guitars to stand up to. George Beauchamp, John Dopyera, and his brother, Rudy, joined together to design a mechanically amplified instrument. John Dopyera perfected a design utilizing three aluminum cones, Rudy suggested a metal body to enhance amplification, and the National tri-cone resonator guitar debuted in 1927.

John Dopyera left National in 1928 to develop a more affordable wood body guitar with a single cone and a spider-like bridge base. His new design was introduced under the name DOBRO® -- a combination of Dopyera and Brothers. The Dobro trademark is now owned by Gibson. Guitars of this type, built by independent guitar makers, are referred to as resonator, or, resophonic, guitars.

Today, the instrument is available in a variety of permutations. Let’s take a look at some of them.

The Neck

The most obvious difference is that resonator guitars come with two different kinds of necks, a round neck and a square neck. But why the difference? Beyond shape, the squareneck and roundneck differ in both the way they are played and the way the instrument is set up.

For instance, a squareneck is usually played in bluegrass. A roundneck most often can be found in blues, ragtime, or other forms of fingerstyle guitar. A squareneck is always played with a slide (due to set-up) where a roundneck is sometimes played without a slide.

A few other design differences include:

Square neck

Squareneck

1. The squared off neck allows for more stable playing on the lap.
2. An extended nut raises the strings 1/2" off of the fingerboard.
3. The tuning keys point upwards for easier tuning while playing.
4. The neck meets the body at the 12th, the traditional standard.
5. The headstock is slotted.

Round neck

Roundneck
1. The round neck shape is similar to a standard acoustic guitar.
2. The action is slightly higher than on a standard acoustic guitar to allow for slide work, but much closer to a standard guitar rather than a squareneck.
3. The tuning keys are enclosed machines and pointed downward as in standard acoustic guitars.
4. The headstock is closed as is common on most acoustic guitars.

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