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T O P I C R E V I E W
John Norris
Posted - 08/28/2006 : 16:45:23 When we set about adding factory presets for our latest Virtual Strobe tuner model - the StroboFlip..
one of the instruments which came to light was the Resonator guitar (sometimes called a Dobro or a National Steel). The uninitiated might recognize it from the cover of a well known 80's album...
This is a type of guitar with close to a 100 year pedigree. Invented by John Dopyera and his brothers from Slovakia in 1919.
(Dobro is Slovak for "good"), and the original idea was to "beef up" a guitar's sound to be able to compete with the louder instruments of the bands of the day, this was before electric guitar as we know it. The Dopyeras applied the same principals to violins (see above) but the resophonic guitar is a concept that has endured to the present day. The resonator guitar is a wooden or metal-bodied guitar with a resonating metal dish or dishes and a round neck (usually played with a slide) or square neck (usually played with a bar).
The most popular tuning for "Reso" is open G, followed by open D and A. From the feedback on this forum and help encouragement from people like Mike Auldridge, Bob Brozman and Jimmy Heffernan, it became apparent that many players adjust the tuning by varying degrees to sweeten the thirds. Two schools of thought exist, one uses perfect thirds, and the other uses thirds that are halfway between Equal & pure, half tempered. Due to their unparalleled accuracy and adjustability, the Virtual Strobe tuners are ideally suited to this type of "optimized" tuning, so it was one of the first new sweeteners to be added to the existing preset list when it came time to put the menu together for the StroboFlip. We asked the members of the Reso-Nation for their opinion on what the presets should be, and our neighborhood Steel & Reso expert, Paul Warnik came by with some beautiful instruments to help us out. Paul chose four instruments to use in the test...
Left to right: 1928 Model 55 Dobro (round neck), 1941 Gibson EH-275, 1929 Model 66 Dobro (square neck), 1949 Rickenbacker B7 Lap Steel (in front).
We started out with the '28 round neck played "under arm" as steel players call it which Paul tuned via the StroboFlip's built-in mic. Paul remarked on the improved sensitivity of the mic and we tried it at varying distances and angles with very encouraging results. Next came the '29 square neck played lap style, this guitar's neck and body meet at the 12th fret and the body has some beautiful designs originally sandblasted into the top, back & sides at the factory.
Paul tuned to the various presets repeatedly and tried them out remarking that the "pure third" preset sounded great, but the half tempered preset felt better for bar slants, "you don't have to slant quite as much to get two good chords" said Paul. Then we tried out the TP-2 pickup in conjunction with the StroboFlip
The results were very good attaching the pickup to various parts of the headstock.
Then we tested the "through signal". Since building the first true bypass tuner, the StroboStomp, we have made it our goal to keep this high standard with the StroboFlip. Although true bypass really only pertains to electric guitar to amp combinations using specially built switches or relays which are found in pedals and rack gear, we felt confident that we could achieve a similar effect with the StroboFlip.
To test this, Paul used a 1941 Gibson EH-275, of which only 25 were built. Paul is very familiar with the sound of this guitar, so we hooked it up and tuned it using generic cable first.
After repeat listenings including blind tests, Paul noticed a very slight difference between the sound of the guitar with the StroboFlip on and off when in-line.
We discovered that the cable that we were using was the cause, due to Mike including an ancient "curly" (spiral) cable during one of the blind tests . With a pair of good quality cables, we were not able to discern any differences with further tests using the Gibson and the Rickenbacker.
Including and removing the tuner from the signal path yielded similar results. We also made sure that with Auto-off activated, the tuner made little or no sound as it switches itself off while the player plays on.
I would like to thank everyone involved in the research especially Paul Warnik for the independant testing, Brad Harper of Harper Resophonic Guitars
which Paul tuned via the StroboFlip's built-in mic. Paul remarked on the improved sensitivity of the mic and we tried it at varying distances and angles with very encouraging results.
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