Dobro is an American resonator guitar brand, currently owned by Gibson Guitar Corporation. In popular use, the term is also used as a common trademark for single-winged, wooden resonator guitar.
Dobro was originally created by the Dopyera brothers when they formed the Dobro Manufacturing Company . Their design, with a single inverted resonator, was introduced to compete with the Tricone design and the patented biscuits produced by the National String Instrument Corporation. Dobro's name appears in other instruments, especially electric wipes electric guitars and solid body electric guitars and other resonator instruments such as Safari resonator mandolin.
Video Dobro
Histori
The name originated in 1928 when the brothers Dopyera, John and Emil (Ed), formed the Dobro Manufacturing Company. Dobro is a contraction of "Dopyera brothers" and a word which means 'good' in their native Slovak language. An early motto of the company is "Dobro means good in any language."
Dobro is the third guitar resonator design by John Dopyera, inventor of the resonator guitar, but the second to enter production. Unlike previous tricone designs, Dobro has a single resonator cone and it's upside down, with a sunken surface facing up. The Dobro company describes this as a bowl-shaped resonator.
Dobro is louder than tricone and less expensive to produce. In Dopyera's opinion, the cost of making a guitar has given the price of a resonator guitar beyond the reach of many players. His failure to convince his directors at the National String Instrument Corporation to produce a single-cone version is a motivating factor to go.
Since the National has applied for a patent on a single cone ( US Patent 1,808,756 ), Dopyera should develop an alternative design. He did this by turning the cones so that, instead of having a rope break at the top of the cone as a National method, they rested on a cast aluminum spider that had eight legs sitting on a conical perimeter that led downwards ( US Pat. 1,896,484 ).
In the following years Dobro and the National built a variety of metal and wooden single-cone guitars, while National also continued with Tricone for a while. Both companies are sourced by components from National director Adolph Rickenbacher, and John Dopyera remains a major shareholder in the National. In 1934, the Dopyera brothers had mastered National and Dobro, and they merged the company to form the National-Dobro Corporation.
From the very beginning, the wooden body has been sourced from existing guitar producers, especially the body of plywood student guitars created by the Regal Musical Instrument Company. Dobro has given Regal a license to produce resonator instruments. By 1937, it was the only manufacturer, and the license was officially made exclusive. Regal continues to produce and sell resonator instruments under many names, including Regal, Dobro, Old Kraftsman, and Ward. However, they stopped all production of the resonator guitar after the entry of the United States into World War II in 1941.
Emil Dopyera (also known as Ed Dopera) produced Dobros from 1959 under the brand name Dopera's Original before selling the company and named Semie Moseley. Moseley combines it with the company's Mosrite guitar and produces Dobros for a while. Meanwhile, in 1967, Rudy and Emil Dopyera formed the Original Musical Instrument Company (OMI) to produce the resonator guitar, which they originally branded Hound Dog. However, in 1970, they re-acquired the name Dobro - Mosrite has gone into temporary liquidation.
The Gibson Guitar Corporation acquired OMI in 1993, along with the name Dobro. They renamed the Original Acoustic Instrument Company and transferred production to Nashville. Gibson now uses the name Dobro only for models with an inverted cone design used by the original Dobro Trade Company. Gibson also carries a single-resonator biscuit guitar, but sells it under a name like "Hound Dog" (through its subsidiary Epiphone). Dobro was first introduced to country music by Roy Acuff.
Maps Dobro
General use
Dobro's name is generally associated with any and all resonator designs.
Gibson, as the trademark owner, reserves the use of the Dobro name as a registered trademark for its own product line.
Nevertheless, this name is sometimes used in general for every guitar resonator, as shown in songs like The Ballad of Curtis Loew by Lynyrd Skynyrd, Valium Waltz by Old 97's,
Products
Modern instruments
In 2006, many makers, including Gibson, produced a resonator guitar similar to an inverted cone-shaped design. Gibson also produced a biscuit-style resonator guitar, but kept Dobro's name for his cone-shaped model. This "biscuit" guitar is often used for blues and is played vertically and not horizontally like a "spider" bridge.
Contemporary manufacturers of reverse cone guitar resonator designs besides Gibson include Tim Scheerhorn and Paul Beard. Virtuoso resonator guitarist Jerry Douglas has been using guitars from this builder for almost three decades. Both Scheerhorn and Beard produce structural design instruments that are very different from the original Dobro instruments, while retaining an inverted cone and spider bridge.
References
External links
- Dobro's products on the Epiphone website
- "Dobro Pre-War History" by Randy Getz
- Dobro Valpro (1997) at Elderly.com
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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