Resonator Guitar

A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar that produces sound by carrying string vibration through the bridge to one or more spun metal cones (resonators), instead of to the sound board (guitar top). Resonator guitars were originally designed to be louder than regular acoustic guitars, which were overwhelmed by horns and percussion instruments in dance orchestras. They became prized for their distinctive sound, however, and found life with several musical styles (most notably bluegrass and the blues) well after electric amplification solved the issue of inadequate guitar sound levels.

Resonator guitars are of two styles:

There are three main resonator designs:

Many variations of all these styles and designs have been produced under many brand names. The body of a resonator guitar may be made of wood, metal, or occasionally other materials. Typically there are two main sound holes, positioned on either side of the fingerboard extension. In the case of single-cone models, the sound holes are either both circular or both f-shaped, and symmetrical. The older tricone design has irregularly shaped sound holes. Cutaway body styles may truncate or omit the lower f-hole.

John Dopyera—responding to a request by the steel guitar player George Beauchamp—developed the resonator guitar to produce an instrument that could produce sufficient volume to compete with brass and reed instruments. Dopyera experimented with configurations of up to four resonator cones and with cones composed of several different metals.

In 1927, Dopyera and Beauchamp formed the National String Instrument Corporation to manufacture resonator guitars under the brand name "National". The first models were metal-bodied, and featured three conical aluminum resonators joined by a T-shaped aluminum bar that supported the bridge—a system called the tricone. National originally produced wooden-bodied Tricone models at their factory in Los Angeles, California. They called these models the Triolian, but made only 12 of them. They changed the body meant for tricones to single-cone models, but kept the name.

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