Recommend me a Dobro?

[Wade Hampton]

Gags, at those prices none of those guitars will have been built in the US, even though they're based on American designs. They're probably Chinese-made, though they might be Korean.

All of them should serve equally well for playing blues music: they're all National-style biscuit bridge instruments.

Earlier in the thread Bohemian wrote that he couldn't recall metal-bodied guitars with spider bridge cones. Well, they're not common, but they do exist. Personally I think they're kind of nasty-sounding, but some folks must like them.

By the way, here's a picture of an Epiphone Biscuit:



If you look at the peghead, you'll see it's different and has a different logo on it than the Dobro you showed us.

The resonator guitar I have is a National M2:



And my National mandolin, which I play on a more or less constant basis and helped the company design, looks like this:



There's a long, involved story behind that, but the short version is that I found an extremely rare pre-war woodbodied National mandolin in a remote Alaskan fishing town, had it restored, and when National's president Don Young found out what I had, he told me that they would like to see it once it was playable, since they were considering reintroducing a mandolin to the National product line. I ended up serving as a consultant on the project, since none of them play mandolin, and it was a happy collaboration all the way around.

Anyway, I'm a big fan of National instruments and National-style instruments. Because the bridge sits directly on the cone in this design, it's more efficient and thus louder than the spider bridge Dobro-style instruments.

Getting back to your initial question about the guitars on that page, I'd say choose the one that you think looks the coolest.

Hope this helps.


Wade Hampton Miller

[wezajammin]

Originally Posted by gags

Thanks for the link..It looks like with the value against the pound to the dollar I could get one of these imported to the UK...

Are these built in the US?

If you had to pick one on this page...http://www.republicguitars.com/singleconemodels.html

Which one would you go for that suits Blues?

As Wade posted above me, the guitars are more than likely built in China or Korea, however they are of a much higher build quality than that of the Regals and Johnsons that are in the same price range. As for the guitars on the page that you are looking at, they should all give you the sound that you are looking for, I think you should just pick the one that appeals to you the most, personally, I like the 14 fret versions as opposed to the 12 fret...but that is just me. Hope this helps!

-Dave

[gags]

Looks like I have found a UK dealer and this is more than likely the one I will be getting.





Its the same as a Republic but tweaked by a company in the UK.

Up to now he has been very helpful over email.

He knows Frank personally from Republic guitars.

[gags]

Wade thanks for all your input.

It seems that Epiphone was an error on their site!