Gretsch Boxcar or Honey Dipper for Xmas?

[thefsb]

I want a resonator. I played a couple of Recording Kings at Guitar Center. They were fun but not entirely convincing. That's the limit of my experience with resonators so far. It seems like Gretsch has a good rep in this market and Sweetwater has both of these models.

Honey Dipper is brass and weighs more than some Les Paul's. But it looks like so much fun.

Boxcar is lovely mahogany and costs and weighs a lot less.

Waddya think?

[Jackson T]

I have a Honey Dipper and yes, it is very heavy. One of my pickin' buddy's has a Boxcar, much lighter. Tone is another factor. The Boxcar a mellower tone. The Honey Dipper, bright and loud. Personally I wish I had gotten the Boxcar.

[Dave Hicks]

I've got a Boxcar when they first came out and have used it a fair amount. I like the fact that it's comparatively light and warmer sounding. It's fairly small, more like a parlor than a dreadnaught. It's the only guitar I have with a V-shaped neck, which I like more than I thought I would.

If you want the cutting resonator tone a la Son House et al. it doesn't really do that.

D.H.

[thefsb]

Sounds like 2 votes for the Boxcar. It sure looks lovely with that natural finish on the mahogany.

[Bob Womack]

I have a Honey Dipper Special (special Swamp Green color) but tried out all the Gretsch resos.

The difference mostly comes down to the tone you are looking for. The Boxcar has a thinner, brighter tone that puts out more bar chatter. The Honey Dipper has a more upper-midrange focused tone that de-emphasizes chatter. You can hear it in THIS clip and THIS one from a scoring session about the Underground Railroad I used it on. I was looking for the sound of a steel National and this was as close as I could get in the sub-$1000 range. My review is HERE.

Bob

[thefsb]

Thank you for the info and those recordings.

What is bar chatter? I'm experienced with and somewhat skilled at a certain kind of bar chatter but I think you mean something else.

[Kitkatjoe]

It depends on the type of music your wanting to play.

[Wardo]

Edit -Double post deleted.

[Wardo]

I would think that bar chatter is noise from the slide.

The gold tone steel body Paul Beard resonators are well made and worth a look. The honey dipper has more overtones going on in the Cone than the gold tone/beard guitars do. The Gretsch is well made good fit and finish. Gold Tone / Beard is well set up out of the box and the Grover tuners are nice. I find that the gold tone hooks with my voice better but that’s just my experience.

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by thefsb

Thank you for the info and those recordings.

What is bar chatter? I'm experienced with and somewhat skilled at a certain kind of bar chatter but I think you mean something else.

Bar chatter is the scraping noise you get from sliding the ergo bar or slide on the wound strings.

Bob

[Kitkatjoe]

Honey Dipper biscuit bridge
Boxcar spider bridge
These are two completely different sounding guitars. Do you want to play blues or bluegrass or something else? Go test the guitars before you make the big plunge.

[thefsb]

Originally Posted by Kitkatjoe

Honey Dipper biscuit bridge
Boxcar spider bridge
These are two completely different sounding guitars. Do you want to play blues or bluegrass or something else? Go test the guitars before you make the big plunge.

I have a somewhat unconventional personal style of improvisation. I'm interested in what the peculiarities of an given instrument can do to me when I play it, i.e. how I respond to it, i.e. inspiration. When I played the RK guitars at GC it seemed that a resonator would provoke some novelty out of me.

Of course I want to try before I buy but finding them in shops isn't so easy.

[Murphy Slaw]

Originally Posted by Kitkatjoe

Go test the guitars before you make the big plunge.

Words of wisdom!

I own a square neck Fender resonator. It wasn't expensive. It sounds like heaven.

But, as I only use it on a few songs, got to thinking that a round neck I could fret some would be way more versatile for gigging and I could fret some, chord some but still get that big sound, not like just using a slide on an acoustic guitar.

So I got on youtube and the little Gretch boxcar looked like the answer, had some good reviews, some good videos and such.

I drove over an hour one day, a few weeks ago, to put my hands on one, actually a few, and simply could NOT pull the trigger. They would have matched Sweetwaters price, and I was standing there. Couldn't do it.

It felt small, cheap, didn't intonate well and had nowhere NEAR the tone of my Fender.

My search continues, but I highly recommend test driving a boxcar before you buy one...

[westview]

Definitely try them out. I got a boxcar.
Wanted to learn slide (still learning).
But also wanted to use it for singing songs.
It's kind of niche guitar for me. A change of pace that's fun to play.

[savannahmay]

Hello all,

This is bit a long so the short is honey dipper is good playability, but has a sharp V (not like luscious eric johnson strat or custom shop tele / MIM custom shop designed tele), and it has that brittle, jangly metal, in your face banjo delta ish raw sound.

Steel bobtail (spider) vs honey dipper brass (single cone), the bobtail sounds more like a regular acoustic, the BF says its Taylor-ish with a bit of jangle. To me it lacks that metal / delta / banjo raw sound that the honey dipper has.

Both have a hard V neck. Both are heavy (compared to acoustics).





Long:


I have played the Gretsch honey dipper (brass / single cone resonator) and the bobtail (steel / spider cone reso). The bf is big into resonators and they are his main acoustic (he doesn't have wooden ones but pwns most of the import ones).


He got a early recording king (tricone polished nickel over brass with 1.85 in nut and dims mirror National Style 0 and a set of good cones), that a GC manager gave him after he placed an order (but the first RK was stolen and rest were accounted for in the first batch) but the GC manager talked to their RK rep and RK rep sent this one over. Then six months later the RK brass tricone started showing up in GC's in LA.

It sounds closer to our mutual friend's (he's a big reso fan but has a huge wallet, so he's multi-national and pwns several mules) national style 1 brass tricone. OF course the national kicks it to the curb but friend is is very surprised tonewise. The newer recording kings have the 1.75 in nuts and maybe coned diff and slight changes, as they don't sound as great as bf's. The main problem is the recording king probably needs a neck rest (first 5 frets are go from US quarter to triple quarter thick, then by the body join its two thumb thickness high. Saddles been shaved down. We took it to a guy and he said a full repair its more than what we paid for ($500), plus the saddle will need to be replaced and possibly could be T bar (connects the cones) the saddle is bent extra high and may need that replaced too.

note: gretsch (as well as recording king) do make square or round neck ones . . . bf has round neck ones.

Metal Resos weigh alot. I play these sitting down . . . (on occasion) So Bobtail sounds more like a regular acoustic, Bf swears its like my 2001 taylor (now far away in PA a gift to my sister). I think it sounds halfway but with its own metal jangles.

They both have that hard V. So we thought the "soft V" in the description would be like the Eric Johnson Strat V (best V for me) or Vintera, where its like the cusps of the web between your thumb and index and gently goes into a near C the closer you get to the body. But no, its a hard V that for me aches my thumb and jabs the palm web.

The weight . . . I mean I could stand, with it, but prefer not to.


Other than that, the action is standard fender acoustic (again we thought it'd be set to the gretsch / fender electrics), it could use some lowering. OUt of the box didn't really need any set up (came from Sw33tw4ter), but needed tuning. It holds tune, even after capoing it.

The honey dipper's tone is that raw metal semi twang, jangle / delta / banjo. Compared to the recording king (the king has a more brassy, creamy / smooth warm tone, loud national tricone tone with age long sustain), the tone is more on the trebly / higher end. But compared to a standard wooden acoustic its louder and definitely unique.

The build quality is good (in fact the higher priced bobtail metal reso finish is some type of polyurethane spray, and wasn't as good as the honey dipper as it has some rough semi sand papery spots)

IF you want the raw bluesy delta thing this delivers, Justin Johnson (youtuber) has a couple of jams using the honey dipper, so you can look that up for good examples.


Haven't tried a boxcar. (GC in our area and local ships don't have them)

The best metal resonator . . . if possible, go for lutheir made ones . . . the factory import ones pale as they either have tone but hard to play or easy to play but the tone is decent to meh . . . whilst nationals / mules / lewis have both (our republics play well and set up and tone is not bad, bordering good but isn't standout or nationalistic, but that recording king tricone just beats the republics tonewise), for import, I'd go with republic (bf has two, coppy over brass and nickel over brass tricones) or royall (multinational guy owns 3 and says if he couldn't afford the nationals royall would be his go to and at least one royall joins the nationals on stage) as they play well and tone is decent to good. Both republic and royall do a set up and make sure the cones are good. Bf and I love the tricone sound as it sustains more, louder, projects, and has warmer, creamy, and balanced), we also like brass / german silver as metal of choice (steel is more tinner and stronger treble).


Also the cones can make a diff. Import (most are CHinese, infact one can go to alibaba and find the factory metal resonators offered by brands) have cones made there and they aren't as spun as thin and resonant as US or European ones. Newer recording king resonators now use ones from europe. I think the early reso we got has the higher end cones found in US made resos and might have been RK's best example coming out from the Chinese Factory with a reso luthier watching them make it to National specifics for Recording King, because the others don't sound as good as it.

Pro tip: We used to think resos had to have heavy strings to sound good, 14 - 16's but one can go 12's and 13's and they work fine and sound better than expected.

If you want a wooden one resos, recording king might have some good ones, but you have to play them as sometimes quality varies. Beard makes excellent / great ones but they are beyond import $$'s.