Official Luthiers Forum!

Lance, thanks for the great forum! I've been hankerin' to build a Reso for a few years.

I go to a fair number of Bluegrass feastivals and have noticed the last few years that reso slide players are starting to replace and outnumber fiddlers - at least here in the Northwest. Last month at a festival in Oregon, all of the hot young bands - people in there early to mid twenties- had slide players instead of fiddlers. Out in the camp that night, I found one fiddle player but at the Saturday morning workshops, there were about 10 guys at the dobro workshop.

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Scott Thompson
Port Townsend,WA

"In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room"
-Billy Bragg

The reason is because of two names:

Jerry Douglas
Mike Auldridge

These guys can really cook.
Jerry is the reason I'm building one. I used to think it was a corny instrument, now it's the best thing since sliced bread.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Scott - I have a selfish reason to have started this forum, I too have a bug to build one or more of these!

I think there are lots of folks here at the OLF that have shown interested as well.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

[QUOTE=Don Williams] The reason is because of two names:

Jerry Douglas
Mike Auldridge

These guys can really cook.
Jerry is the reason I'm building one. I used to think it was a corny instrument, now it's the best thing since sliced bread.[/QUOTE]

I have to agree. Seeing Jerry with the Alison Krauss left me speechless.

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Scott Thompson
Port Townsend,WA

"In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room"
-Billy Bragg

Jerry Douglas does things on the Dobro with a steel that I can't do with four fingers. The guys is truly amazing. But then so is Mike Auldridge too. There are those who feel these guys are not from this planet...

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I for one am glad to see the interest in the dobro now days. There was a time that it was not a very popular instrument and came close to dissappearing. When one would open the case and pull out a dobro, most everyone was scratching their heads trying to figure out what it was and how it was played.

While Jerry Douglas, Mike Auldridge, and many other modern pickers should be thanked for their contribution to the dobro revival, The pickers I am most greatfull to are Josh Graves, Pete Kirby, Tut Taylor, Clell Summey, and many other of the Old Timers that kept the fires burning.

I never thought of a dobro as being corney, I guess because I have been trying to play one for so long, and now for the past few years, build em.

Oh yeah, I also like Old Hardcore Bluegrass and Mountain Music.

D.L.Huskey38601.9925810185

Wow ,...a reso forum! I have'nt visited this forum for a while ,..but now that the reso guys have a place to come out and play ,...I will definatly be showing up more often.

I have been a player for 14 yrs and builder for 8 yrs.
If I can help any of you guys feel free to ask .

   I have two koas ,one maple ,and one walnut going right now. Getting ready to start a Madagascar Rosewood , with a Redspruce top . All are squarenecks.

      Wow a reso forum ! Im in Reso heaven.

               JD Myers
               Fishook Custom Guitars          ;  

Wow JD !   Sounds like some great projects going right now.
So here's a potentially stupid question:
Is there much of a difference between one wood species and another when it comes to squarenecks? I mean, I know that maple vs mhogany will give you a different sound, but the top adds very little to the tone if at all. I've not heard much about squareneck players liking rosewoods, so is it at all wasteful to use mad rose and red spruce? I'm just ignorant and wanting to understand, so please don't be personally offended by the question. I know it will be a gorgeous instrument for sure. I'm clueless as to how rosewood affects the sound.

Thanks!

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don

   The species used does have much to do with coloring the sound ,...just as it does on any guitar.
True ,..the top does not offer much movement ,..but the natural wood resonance of the top does add to the over all sound.

   As far as the Madagascar ,Spruce squareneck. I had the pleasure of playing one a couple months ago and I was blown away.
Sometimes you just have to build your idea ,......to prove or disprove it .
Ive also contemplated useing Hickory ,....now I know I am ,..after the reports of Tim Mc Knights hickory guitar at Heraldsburg .
    
              Thanks    JD Myers
       

Coolness! I have some cocobolo I would love to put on a reso. I'll have to try it. Thanks for the input JD!
Much appreciated. I honestly never thought about using a rosewood. I have thought about using a spruce/redwood/other top, but I really only considered maple and mahogany for the b&s due to their popularity.
Hickory eh? Makes great drumsticks too.

Now if I could get John Osthoff to part with that set of MadRose he got at the ASIA Symposium......

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

"the natural wood resonance of the top does add to the over all sound"

In the interest of balance I have to say that not everyone thinks this, and there's even some debate about whether the back wood makes much difference to the sound.

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Pete
http://www.petewoodmanguitars.com

It IS an interesting debate. I sat in on a class taught by Paul Beard at the ASIA Symposium this summer, and when asked what he thought was the best sounding model he offered, it wasn't anything with solid woods at all...it was the Mike Auldridge model. All plywood. So how the solid woods vs. plywoods etc. all compare to one another is a matter of subjective preference, and maybe, (who knows?) of less importance than we ascribe to it.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Well, I think the Auldridge model has a typical plywood dobro sound - not that that's a bad thing but it is a very distinctive sound and quite different from a Scheerhorn, for example.

As an illustration of how dobros sometimes confound your expectations, at a customer's request I just spent a couple of weeks on and off trying to get one builder's all walnut dobro to have the same depth of tone as another builder's walnut back/maple top dobro. I failed. Conventional wisdom says that maple is brighter than walnut, but not in this case.

The problem is that there are so many variations in body size, shape and construction techniques that you can only deal in generalisations when it comes to the tonal variations attributable to the wood. It's very rare to be able to compare like with like i.e. where all factors are the same apart from the wood used.

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Pete
http://www.petewoodmanguitars.com

I agree Grey ,....one reason builders build the plywood guitars is the predictable consistant sound.
Customers know exactly what sound they are getting.

Its true ,...that building the same solid wood guitar creates an almost individual signature sound ,...more challenging to reproduce .
All with different tonal traits in one way or another .
   There is a place for both ,.....but theres something about a solid wood instrument that makes it alive.