Resonator Guitars

Resonator Guitars

Resonator guitars are used in the blues, bluegrass, and other types of acoustic folk music. Their most distinctive feature is a large round aluminum plate that surrounds the bridge. This plate covers the resonator itself, which is a speaker-shaped cone of thin aluminum that projects the tinny, metallic sound that resonator guitars are known for. There are also resonator banjos and basses, but they’re less common than guitars.

Playing styles

Resonators can be played the same way as other guitars, but they really excel as “slide” guitars. Players can use a bottleneck slide over one finger, interspersing slides with fretted notes. It’s also common to modify a resonator with a nut that raises the action extremely high to create a “dobro” guitar, which is laid flat on a player’s lap and played only with a slide.

Materials

Apart from the aluminum resonator parts, most resonator guitars have wood bodies. However, some have fully steel bodies, which increases the nasally, jingly tone of the instrument.

Strings and tuning

Resonator guitars benefit from heavier-gauge strings than other acoustic guitars, both for sound and to stand up to the pressures of a slide. Bronze or nickel-wound strings with a high E gauge of .016 are common. While most resonators are tuned to standard guitar tuning, players who use them exclusively for slide playing prefer multiple open-chorded tuning.

Sound holes

Although sound from the instrument’s body is projected through the resonator, there are additional sound holes at the neck-end of the guitar’s body. These are typically violin-shaped f-holes, or simple round holes with screen covering.