Dobro
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Dobro® is a trade name used mainly for guitars and particularly resonator guitars. The name was originally used by the Dopyera brothers and is now owned by Gibson Guitar Corporation.
In common usage, however, the term "dobro" has come to refer to any resonator guitar, and particularly those with a single metal resonator as opposed to the older tricone design.
The Dobro brand has also been used on some solid body electric guitars and electric lap steel guitars.
Contents |
History
The name came into being when John Dopyera and his brothers ("Dobro" also means "good" in their native Slovak language) left the National company (which they had helped co-found in 1927) to strike out on their own in 1929. While trying to make a louder instrument John had pioneered a mechanical amplification system consisting of three small spun-aluminum cones (similar in shape and size to modern 6" loudspeakers) which he had perfected and patented as the National "tricone" system (U.S. patent #1,741,453). While primarily used in guitars, the system was also used to amplify ukuleles, mandolins, and tenor and plectrum guitars.
The cost of manufacturing tricones was very high, pricing the instruments out of the reach of many players. In an effort to produce more affordable instruments, a single-cone design was developed. While John Dopyera always claimed that this single cone was his invention, it was patented by George D. Beauchamp, one of National's directors (U.S. patent #1,808,756), so John and his brothers left to found their own company which they called Dobro.
Since National held the patent on the single cone, the Dopyera brothers had to develop an alternative design, which they did by inverting the cone so that rather than having the strings rest on the apex of the cone as per the National method, they rested on a cast aluminum "spider" which had 8 legs sitting on the perimeter of the upside down cone (US patent #1,896,484). Both Dobro and National built a wide variety of metal- and wood-bodied single-cone guitars until World War II halted production.
Thus both National and Dobro brand guitars of the prewar years shared a common inventor, but their mechanical amplification systems were different. Actually, resonator guitars can be grouped into three major sets: National tricones, National single cones and Dobros. National and Dobro merged in 1934, bringing the Dopyeras and their resonator guitars full-circle.
Many more of these instruments are pictured at notecannons.com.
As can be seen from the ukulele advert to the right, the model name was the price. So some instruments, while remaining unchanged physically, were sold over several years and therefore actually have catalogue model numbers that get progressively larger as time went by and their prices went up! This makes it nearly impossible to identify most instruments, although the higher the model number (price) the more ornate the instrument would have been as a rule of thumb.
Towards the middle-to-late 1930s Dobro licensed most, if not all, of their instrument building to Regal in Chicago. Regal, beside making instruments incorporating the "Dobro amplifier" under the Dobro brand, also made them with Regal, Old Kraftsman, and Ward brands, to name but a few.
In a sense, the resonator guitar is actually more akin to a banjo, with its resonating skin, than a guitar, and the tonal quality of the resonator guitar reflects this. The original intent was to produce a louder sound that could compete with the rest of the band, but because the electric guitar was developed around the same time, resonator guitars never became widely popular. (In another ironic twist, Beauchamp — who had helped found National with John Dopyera and was forced out prior to the merger with Dobro — worked with Adolph Rickenbacher, whose company had made metal guitar bodies for National, in developing some of the earliest production electric guitars.)
Modern resonator guitars are typically played with a steel bar or slide, rather than by fretting the strings with the fingers. The instrument is also sometimes referred to as a "Hawaiian guitar". Resonator guitars come in either a "squareneck" (or "bluegrass") style, or "roundneck" variety, more often used in blues music. The squareneck has strings which are raised a centimeter or more over the fingerboard. The playing position of this type of resonator guitar is with the instrument held turned on its back with the strings facing up.
The dobro in bluegrass music
The dobro was introduced to bluegrass music by Josh Graves, who played with Flatt and Scruggs, in the mid-1950s. Graves utilized the hard-driving, syncopated three-finger picking style developed by Earl Scruggs for the five-string banjo. Modern dobroists continue to play the instrument this way, with one notable exception being Tut Taylor who plays with a flat pick.
Tuning for the dobro within the bluegrass genre is most often an open G with the strings pitched to 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 Mike Auldridge, Jerry Douglas, and Rob Ickes. The dobro was also used in older country music, notably by "Brother Oswald" of Roy Acuff's band, but has been largely supplanted by the pedal steel guitar.
Types of resonator guitars
Resonator guitars may be either tricones or single cones.
- Tricones always have a "T" type of underlying support, with two cones on the left (bass notes) and one on the right. The bridge connecting the T support to the strings is normally metal. The advantage of a tricone is the complexity and multitimbral nature of the sound.
- Single cone instruments may have either a wooden biscuit bridge similar to a banjo or a metal "spider" bridge. The advantage of a single cone is price and a somewhat higher volume.
- special pickups are made for both single cone and tricone instruments. A pickup will amplify the sound signal and allow you to use an amplifier. Fishman makes a well-reviewed resonator pickup, as does Schatten.
The dobro in blues music
The dobro is also significant to the world of blues music, particularly the Southern style of country blues that grew out of the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana. Unlike country and bluegrass dobro players, blues players play the dobro 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 Son House, 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. The instrument is still used by some blues players, notably Taj Mahal and Alvin Hart.
Dobro/resonator players
- Duane Allman
- Mike Auldridge
- Bob Brozman
- John Butler
- Billy Cardine
- Cindy Cashdollar
- Eric Clapton
- Bruce Cockburn
- Jerry Douglas
- Garrett Dutton
- Blind Boy Fuller
- Rory Gallagher
- Josh Graves of the Foggy Mountain Boys
- Andy Hall
- Brad Harper
- Alvin Hart
- Corey Harris
- Bill Homans (aka "Watermelon Slim")
- Sol Hoopii
- Son House
- Rob Ickes
- Glenn Kaiser
- Chris Thomas King
- Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits
- Randy Kohrs
- Phil Leadbetter
- Taj Mahal
- Michael Messer
- Keb' Mo'
- Stacy Phillips
- Tampa Red
- David Richey of the everybodyfields
- Ivan Rosenberg
- Emily Robison
- Eric Sardinas
- Tut Taylor
- Derek Trucks
- Sally Van Meter
- Bukka White
- Johnny Winter
- Gene Wooten
- Ernie Power
Trivia
- Often used in a clichéd manner, a dobro will be heard as soon as the scene in a movie or television show switches to a Southern American landscape, whether wilderness or a run-down town (usually in the summer). When this happens, it's playing a note that lazily slides upward a perfect fourth, generally followed by a few plucked chords descending to the original note.de:Dobro