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Recording Resonator Guitars Shining Examples

Not Just A Guitar
How To Capture Their Distinctive Sound Favourite Position
Mic Choice
Hardware > Microphone Recording
Mixing & Processing
By David Greeves Published July 2016 Shine Of The Times
Speaking Out

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Jimmy He ernan, with a ‘dobro’, a square-necked guitar designed to sit on your lap and be played with a slide.
Make?
Part six-string, part speaker cabinet, resonator guitars are like no other
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Part six-string, part speaker cabinet, resonator guitars are like no other Uploaded 1 month 4 days ago
instruments. Here’s how to capture their distinctive sound.

The phrase may now be more familiar to us in a digital audio context, but back in the 1920s,
musicians were engaged in a loudness war of their own, and with electronic ampli cation still a
few years away, it was acoustic volume that counted. Though it would go on to dominate
popular music in the second half of the century, the humble guitar lacked the volume to really
cut it as a lead instrument, and hard-working strummers were struggling to hold their own
alongside horns, pianos and drums. While some manufacturers experimented with larger body
sizes, when an enterprising instrument repairer named John Dopyera hit on the ingenious
solution of placing a spun aluminium cone inside the guitar to pick up and amplify the vibration
of the strings, the resonator guitar was born. Dopyera had not just given the six-string more
Behringer DeepMind 12 Synth Preview (Sound Demo)
volume; he’d created a new class of instrument, with a tone and character entirely its own.
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Though its fortunes have waxed and waned over the decades, the resonator (or, more
properly, the resophonic guitar) has been a continual presence in blues, folk, roots, country
and bluegrass music ever since, and the last 10 years have seen a dramatic revival in interest.
To help us gure out the best way of capturing the resonator on record, I’ve enlisted the help of
two experienced session player-producers, one on either side of the Atlantic. Nashville veteran
Jimmy He ernan is a well-respected country and bluegrass player, producer, and teacher who
has toured or recorded with numerous artists including Joe Di e, Brad Paisley and Charlie
Louvin. Meanwhile, Michael Messer is the UK’s foremost authority on all things slide, having
spent the last 35 years exploring the limits of the instrument, from blues, folk and Hawaiian
styles to fusion and beyond.

Michael Messer playing a round-necked ‘national’, usually played more like a regular acoustic guitar, albeit
often with a slide.

Shining Examples
The reason I’ve tracked down both exponents is to cover both sides of a clear divide, between
square-neck and round-neck instruments. Square-neck resonators (as typi ed by the output of
the Dobro guitar company and hence colloquially referred to as ‘dobros’) are designed to be
played with the guitar positioned horizontally like a lap-steel or Hawaiian guitar. Widely...

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