When I posted my banjo I said I would get to my guitars. Here is my favorite. It is a Dobro (Although Gibson frowns on that name usage as they own it and don't want it to become generic) The official name is resonophonic or resonator guitar. Most people just say Dobro but it is a brand name like Allen wrench or Crescent wrench.
Dobro's come in round neck or square neck. The round necks can still be fretted and the neck joins the body at the 14th fret. The square necks are strictly for sliding and join the body at the 12th fret. A square neck is what I play. You use open tunings. Most people that play bluegrass/country use open G (GBDgbd). That is identical to the five string banjo so it makes it easier for me to double on this instrument.
Guitar players may like to look up the history of these things. Two Czechoslovakian immigrants designed them out in California to try to amplify acoustic guitars. About the time their invention came out it was made obsolete by the electric guitar. Shortly however. bluesmen discovered their incredible sustain and dirty tone (It can be clean to). After that discovery they have been a staple in blues, Hawaiian, bluegrass and country. Some had brass bodies. That is what you see on the cover of Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" album. Curtis Loew's Dobro is what Skynyrd is singing about in the Ballad of Curtis Loew. Oddly, there is no Dobro on that song (Curtis Loew), I think they are using a Les Paul and a bottle neck slide to mimic a Dobro.
From the beginning, even the best reso guitars were inexpensive laminate because the tone comes from a thin aluminum cone turned on a lathe. A "spider bridge" of cast aluminum distributes the string pressure over the cone. The cones sits on a laminate sound well inside the body. Some modern builders do use tone woods and have been able to get more earthy tones from Dobros by a redesign of the tone chamber.
Finally, mine is a cheap Pacific rim import. I think I gave $200 for it over 20 years ago. The imports have chrome plated steel components and they rusted in short order. All the components are replaced with nickel plated brass now. The original plastic keys crumbled from the Florida heat. I replaced them with metal button units and no more problems. I also installed a domestic "Quarterman cone", a National spider bridge and a bone string nut. The only thing original to this guitar is the basic body. I would have been money ahead to have bought a better Dobro to begin with, but I love to tinker with stuff anyway. You can get a Dobro in a solid or slotted headstock. If I had it to do over I would go with a solid peg head it is hard to string a .052 string down in that slot. The string sets for open G usually are from .016 at the smallest to .052 on the low end. These are high tension beasts. Sorry for the long post. Always hoping to get people turned on to Dobros.
You can see the action is slide only by the righthand picture.
The spun aluminum cone (Like a speaker cone) is the dull grey in the back ground behind the cover plate holes. You can see the legs of the spider bridge between the cover plate and the cone. The two screens are tone chamber "vents."
The neck is probably about 1 1/2" x 3." I think that along with the 12 fret neck join is to handle the high string tension.
I do my left hand slides and individual noting with a "Stevens" steel (really nickel plated brass). On the right hand it takes a thumb pick and finger picks for the index and middle fingers. You achieve a kind of banjo roll but I really miss being to be able to bounce off the banjo 5th string when playing this.
