How do you use your resonator?

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by nbs2005

. . . I thought I'd ask how you use your resonators. Mine is set up with ~2.5 mm action across the board at the 12th fret so works with both slide and fingerstyle. Do you find you use yours only of certain styles or even certain songs? Or have you incorporated it more generally in your playing. . . .

I have two: a roundneck and a squareneck. I incorporate them into my playing.

I mostly use them in an acoustic duo I'm in, along with a flattop, mandolin, and blues harps.

There's no dedicated style. My music is heavily cosmic Americana. But every song does have a favored instrument — e.g. for "The Boxer" it's mando, for "For What It's Worth" it's roundneck, for "Angel From Montgomery" it's squareneck, and for "Just My Imagination" it's drop-D flattop.

More generally, of course, the roundneck is heavenly for synchopated bottleneck blues sounds, so I have a string of fingerstyle slide tunes I play on it. As you know, the reso sound is so cool and distinctive, especially backed up by someone with a flattop playing rhythm. Really perks up pub crawlers.

You're also right that a flattop tuned to open tuning sounds great. So if I were to sell a guitar, it would probably be the roundneck.

I've never measured the action of any of my guitars. They're all pretty flow — aside from the squareneck, of course.

[Steve DeRosa]

There's a local hot picker who has his National biscuit set up with 12's for acoustic lead work, cuts like a Ginzu knife at open jams - been considering a (more-affordable) tricone of my own for a good few years, for similar reasons...

[nbs2005]

Really appreciate the feedback. I played with some friends this week and had the reso in standard with 1st string dropped to D. Liked how that was working; regular chord shapes available for fretted notes and all the open G stuff on 1-4. Going to keep experimenting.