Resonator guitar string recommendations
 

Over the weekend I picked up a little Republic 12-fret parlor-size resonator guitar off craigslist. I was looking to get a smaller, sturdy, little travel guitar and have wanted to start playing around with learning some slide techniques and thought this might fit the bill well -- mine's just 37.5" from head to tail, with a 24.5" scale length.

After getting it home and playing around a little, it seems to me that the strings may be a little light, especially for slide. I've tried contacting the guy to ask what he had on it, but haven't heard back; and the Republic site didn't offer any help or suggestions, so hoped I might get some advice here.

Google searches for "resonator guitar strings" seem to pretty consistently turn up string sets with gauges in the neighborhood of .016 .018 .026 .036 .046 .056, and of course a host of brands. So firstly, are the gauges above about what I should be looking for? And any strong preference for one brand over another? Also, at the risk of making this post a little more top-heavy... any slide recommendations? Brands? Steel vs. glass? Thanks very much!

I believe that Frank at Republic Guitars ships them out with 13-56's on them.
I also have the Republic Minolian and have experimented with different strings to find the set that works best for my playing style. Yours may of course differ.
I use D'Addario EJ-17's .13 - .56 and find them to give me a balance between being able to fret and bend easily and sufficent tone and volume. I found that the .16 string sets that I tried were producing a bit of a cone rattle and were a little to heavy to do bends and fret easy.

Slides are a whole different subject. Personaly I am not a fan of glass slides, they produce to clean a tone for my tastes. I go back and forth between a ceramic Mudslide which dirty's up the sound a bit compared to glass and a heavy bronze slide that gives me a very haunting tone.

Have fun experimenting with different strings/slides finding which works best for you.

I guess your resonator guitar is a round-neck. If so, 13-56 gauge is good to use for both fretting and slide playing. I own old Nationals and found the phosphor bronze strings to work best. I currently use John Pearse, but I also like Martin SP strings.
The great thing about sildes is, they all sound different and they are not expensive. For glass, check on Diamond Bottlenecks, I love their slides. They offer different materials, shapes and colors. I also use brass slides made by Latch Lake, the slide-rite and acoustaglide slide.

Resonator guitars rule!

newtone make a fine set

It depends on tuning. The sets with .016 for the high E are probably intended for G tuning, not standard.

For strings on my metal Dobro I use a standard light gauge set without the 1st (high E) string. I used the 2nd string (.016) as the 1st string and use a .018 as a 2nd string. The other 4 strings stay the same.

As for slides, I have quite a few. Both glass and metal. My favorites are from Diamond Bottle Necks. www.diamondbottlenecks.com

Experiment with strings and slides to find the tone and feel you like best.

Most excellent! Thanks very much for the input. Exactly the kind of information I was hoping for.

It is indeed a round neck (probably should have thought to mention that) and is the little Reso-relic Resolian. Mine's kind of cool and unique as the guy I bought it from put a little time and money into it: replaced the tuners with vintage National ones and refretted and radiused the fretboard to match National specs -- the latter of which I'll have to take his word for, as (as I said) I'm new to the whole resonator thing :) -- though he did leave an example of the original and updated fret wire in the case for me for comparison's sake.

Kirk Lorange makes a really nice brass slide: http://www.bottleneckguitar.com/slides.html

I’ve not yet tried these, but they look interesting: http://www.stoneslides.com/

Like the others have mentioned, Diamond slides are tough to beat (my fav!)

Material, length, inner diameter, wall thickness, taper, and weight. Length (1 3/4") and I.D. (18mm-19mm) are probably at the top of my list.

One of the FAQs over at National's page is "What strings does National use?" Here is their answer:

They list different sets for different models (12 string, El Trovador, baritone, etc). For the full list see here.

Thanks Brian. And which leads to a couple other rookie questions:

Should the slide fit snugly on the finger? I've found a couple of slides laying around the house -- don't know when I might have picked them up -- and they're both pretty loose on both my ring and pinky fingers. And how far down the finger do they go? Just to the knuckle? A ways past? And is there a rule of thumb for length? Long enough to cover the whole fretboard? Not so much? (or "off the shelf" are most slides available in just one or two common lengths anyway -- as you can tell, I haven't been down to the local guitar shop yet, where I suppose I may get some help as well.)

Very cool. Thanks Alex.

You're welcome.

Good luck learning slide. I have attempted to learn slide off and on ever since I got my National. So far I have had a hard time. I guess it's too frustrating to have to go from 30+ years experience of playing the reg'lar way to being a complete novice and sounding like two cats fighting. I play the National every day but I keep going back to playing it fingerstyle a la Mark Knopfler except, you know, minus all that talent.

The best I did was to compile a list of songs on iTunes that were good play along with, so I could just noodle along and get a feel for the slide technique. The songs that worked for me were not necessarily songs with slide guitar parts that I would try to learn. Instead I just found songs in a convenient key that didn't change chords too often. Bob Dylan's "Things Have Changed" is a good one, for example. I'll have to give it another go.

I run D'addario EJ42 .016-56 Resophonic strings on my National tricone, which has a 25 21/32nd scale and tune to standard and drop D all the time. I do put it away tuned to G because I am a cautious cat, but I don't hesitate tuning up to standard and playing at all.

On a parlor with 24.5? I would go at least 13-56 if you plan to do any slide at all, and I would just frankly run EJ42s on it. You'll appreciate it when you play slide, You don't have to worry about the top deforming or the bridge pulling off like with a regular guitar, and if the neck can't take it, its not a real guitar to begin with.

Standard National roundnecks ship with John Pearce 13's. They are fine but you might want to try slapping a 15 guage high E on to play silde.

Newtone offers a Michael Messer heavy core string which comes in three guages. They are rather pricey but from all accounts excellent strings.

But national single cones are 25" and tricones are 25 21/32nds. This is a 24.5 I have an inexpensive wood parlor with a 24.5 that I run with 3/32nds action and 13s and fingerpick and slide on. If I could I would run higher tension.