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RESONATOR (DOBRO) AND STEEL GUITAR LINKS |
| I'm now playing
my third dobro, a Beard 6-string "Mike Auldridge" guitar. What started as "something to play whilst my banjo is being built" has turned into my favourite instrument these days. In a fit of madness I bought an 8-string lap steel recently and am now toying with the idea of trying out a pedal steel too. So far I've had dobro lessons from Sally van Meter, Ivan Rosenberg and Doug Cox, all at the annual Sore Fingers bash. You can read about Sore Fingers and the dobro classes on the "Photo Gallery" page. Dobro General Interest Resonatorguitarist.com - A very well thought out site mostly of interest to Bluegrass players. Packed with just about everything you need - lessons for beginners, play-along MP3s, interviews with top players and lots more. Brad's Page Of Steel - is THE definitive steel guitar site, packed with info about dobros, lap steels, pedal steels, Hawaiians, tunings and LOTS more. The Squareneck Dobro Pages site is about, well, squarenecks! Some tab, links, pictures. The Steel/Slide page - includes charts showing "How to play the slanted bar" Frank Maxfield has compiled a list of about 1,400 reso tunes, available on the Resoguit site. Artists Doug Cox is also a Colonial (he's Canadian really). He is very much into Blues and plays slide & conventional guitar too. Lots of good music and instruction CDs. Sally van Meter has a good site with lots of interesting info. Check out her Solo Transcriptions Book - CD with tab for some good learning and practise tunes. Ivan Rosenberg is a good player and writes most of his own material. Great sense of humor too. Cindy Cashdollar is probably best known as a steel guitar player but is hot stuff on the dobro too. Tut Taylors official homepage - Tut has lots of interesting stories to tell. Rob Ickes Jerry Douglas Mike Auldridge and Stacy Phillips all have good sites. Pete Grant has some really interesting historical stuff to tell about the Zephyr Dobro from the OMI Company days. Fun graphics too! Dobro makers Beard guitars make good quality instruments. My current instrument is his "Mike Auldridge" model, very impressive. Pete Woodman (custom builder and erstwhile classmate on the Isle Of Man) I've seen some of his stuff - good work. Clinesmith Guitars Ivan Rosenberg's favourite (he had two last time I talked to him). I've heard one, they are LOUD! Jiri Lebeda is a well-known maker of mandolins & resos. I also own a customized Lebeda squareneck. Don Morisson is an Australian maker whose specialty is metal-bodied roundneck Donmo guitars. He also does wood bodies & squarenecks. An acquaintance in Stockholm "hotted up" his cheap Korean squareneck with a Donmo resonator. What a difference! Allen Guitars - National Resophonics - Gibson - Crafters of Tennessee - Liberty Guitars. Holoubeck have no web site but you can see a picture of a guitar I once owned here. Steels and Capos I use a chrome-plated bronze Dunlop Lap Dawg steel and also have a Scheerhorn Flux capo for the dobro. For the steel a bullet-nosed Stevens bar seems to work a lot better. Shubb-Pierce and Stevens are other very popular bar makers. Gary Swallows makes custom made-to-measure steels with non-slip wooden tops. Dobro Mailing Lists Resoguit is the homepage for the Resoguit mailing list. Lots of Europeans on this list, lots of famous artists on this list. ResoUK is the local UK/European mailing list. Learning Get to Sore Fingers if you can, it just can't be beat! But if you have to/want to sit at home and learn on your own then - Specifically for Bluegrass: -Ivan Rosenberg's new DVD on www.learnrootsmusic.com -Rob Ickes two-video series Essential Dobro Techniques General: - Doug Cox has several very good instruction packages, one with lots of Blues licks. - Cindy Cashdollar's videos & DVDs on playing steel guitar and dobro are extremely good. - Jay Buckey's Dobro series will give you lots of bluegrass & swing tunes to practise along with. |
