Review: 2013 Gibson Hound Dog Dobro

Review: 2013 Gibson Hound Dog Dobro

The Gibson Hound Dog is intended to be a starter dobro for the beginner, although at around 1300.00 street price it may not seem like it. To understand the price, you have to understand the history of the Hound Dog. 

Back in the 1920s, a distant ancestor of this guitar was manufactured by the Original Musical Instrument Company, founded by the Dopyera family, inventors of the Dobro in 1928. Back then, it was, and still is, a fierce competitor to the National Resophonic company, which made the now legendary metal-bodied guitars. 

Back then, the “Dobro” wasn't a generic term. You had a Dobro, or a Resophonic (National), and it virtually always meant a product from the respective companies. The Dobro was intended to be a high-quality, but lower-cost alternative to the National. 

Essentially, a Dobro is like a National, with its sound produced by an aluminum cone that vibrates and amplifies sound, but with a wood body. The combination of resophonic type volume, warmer sound due to the wood body, and its lower cost made the Dobro a staple in the Bluegrass and Country genres. 

That same warmer, almost slinky sound, made it less of a force in Blues and Hawaiian slide music. However, players from all genres used Dobros if that's what they could afford or preferred. Like all slide-oriented guitars, it came in a square or round-neck configuration. The square necks were exactly that. Guitars with square-shaped, heavy necks that were intended to be played on your lap, or face up. 

Roundnecks were played pretty much like regular guitars. Gibson bought out the company in 1993 and moved production to Nashville in 1998 and added the Dobro, to the mandolin and banjo lines into what they called their new Original Acoustic Instruments division.

The Hound Dog is a direct descendant of the old Dobros but sports some modern touches. The round neck has Fishman electronics and a radiused fretboard. The neck is relatively short, like most old Dobros (and Gibsons for that matter), but the new rounded fretboard does force the player to make a choice. Keep the action low, but have a harder time executing full chords with the slide, or raise string height and have your bass and treble strings further away (and harder to fret).

Old slide guitars generally had flat fretboards for that reason. Adding a radius just adds cost, really. The best compromise is to adjust the nut so that the strings are lower in the first position, and let the action run high from there to the bridge for slide work. In my case, I tend to adjust it down for finger-style playing and use a lighter glass slide (giving up some tone in the process). Keep in mind we're talking about the round neck here.

Some players will find the Fishman's lack of tone and volume controls annoying. One can adjust it at the amp (and most guitars sound better that way) but it can be a dealbreaker for many. The Hound Dog is an acoustic though, and its pickup system isn't out of line with the way most pickups for that kind of guitar function.

It's an attractive guitar, with clean lines. It has a figured, and laminated maple top, which helps reduce feedback. Also, for those not familiar with Dobros and Nationals, body resonance is virtually irrelevant. The sound is made at the cone and spider bridge, the body material mainly needs to be rigid and provide a good sound chamber.

That's why you can replace the stock cones in a cheaper dobro-type guitar with a high-quality one, and transform it into a passable pro-quality guitar. You can pay for higher quality wood, but after a point, it's mainly for looks. There'll be those who'll disagree, but my point is essentially the truth.

Getting back to it's price. Its Epiphone equivalent is the Biscuit, named after its biscuit-style bridge (a simple slab of wood). If you compare the two, there's a noticeable difference in wood quality in terms of appearance, but the mahogany Biscuit is a bit warmer, especially if you change out the cone.

Where the Hound Dog is better is in the volume department. Its tone is brighter and projects well. It clearly has a better-quality aluminum cone that's thinner and better machined. This translates to a better slide sound in the genres it's made for, Bluegrass and Country. The Biscuit has a sound better suited for folk blues, Hawaiian, and fingerpicking.

The other noticeable difference is that the Biscuit is around 350.00. Add a 75.00 cone upgrade, and you have 90% of the Hound Dog in terms of sound. Obviously the latter is wired for sound, has better hardware, etc., but as a starter, it's for those who want the name. This is an ideal guitar to find used.

It's 1300.00 or so price tag is quite competitive with the average National Resophonic guitar, which averages 2500.00, and it's a price battle that's been going on since the '20s. 

However, both styles of resonators have been targeted by a lot of companies determined to sell lower-cost versions. The early ones were mediocre, but lately, companies like Saga (who bought the classic Regal name) are dominating the starter category with models in the 400.00 range. 

Many of them, particularly the Regal, become excellent guitars when the cone is upgraded. It becomes harder to tell the difference between brands also, because of all the types of acoustic instruments, resonator-type guitars are the most dependent on who's playing it (well, maybe except for the banjo). You can take a 2500.00 National, and easily make it sound like a 350.00 Johnson without breaking a sweat. That's the key element for a guitar that was designed first to be loud above all else. 

The original intent of both guitars was to provide affordable (though pricier than regular acoustics), tough, and very loud instruments that could stand up to extensive playing in rough establishments. Their competition up to the sale of Dobro to Gibson was fierce and at times marked by lawsuits.

The Gibson Hound Dog in a sense has ended that fight. National is now a boutique manufacturer that can't duke it out with a company like Gibson. Gibson in turn, has created a Dobro without the pressure of competition. It's been modernized and given a Gibson pricetag for a guitar that's been crafted with its philosophy of using good woods and expert workmanship. None of these will influence the sound much unless the cone is good, and the Hound Dog has a decent but not an excellent one.

The cone is the secret of any good Dobro, and now everyone who makes one knows that, and manufactures cheaper resonator-type guitars knowing that many buyers will simply change out the cone or not even know the sound difference. 

The Hound Dog is a pretty good dobro. If you get one, you'll like it. However, due to its price, you'll like it even better if someone gives you one for Christmas. If you're using your own money, make sure to play it alongside an Epiphone Biscuit first. 

The competition between the Dobro and National was both epic and beneficial. This is one case where I'm sorry that one side finally won. 

-Al Handa

 2013

Note: This review first appeared on the ePinions.com site in 2013. This and other reviews were short takes that accompanied the link to a business that sold the guitar. As a rule, the guitar had to be at least examined and played by the reviewer (and ideally owned). In my case, a severe case of GAS made it possible to have at least owned the reviewed instrument for a short while. I'm reprinting these as having another source on a guitar never hurts, even if the reviews aren't definitive. Other than minor corrections, these short takes are unchanged from the original text. I figure that it might be helpful to keep the older perspective.

 Also by Al Handa:

Please check out and listen to my music on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music and other music sites. Please add any cuts you like to your playlists!

Podcast Episode 3 now live on Spotify and Apple. 

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/alhanda/episodes/On-The-Road-With-Al--Ivy-Episode-3-e2k5k0q

Topics:

The Godfather by Mario Puzo, Three Musketeers by Dumas, and the Robin Hood myth.

Some thoughts on Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck, On The Road by Kerouac Scroll Version, and The Road by Jack London.

Music:

My Dog Dreams And Becomes A Mermaid Techno Mix, Sunday's Moon and Nigel Raga by Handa-McGraw International.

Taylor's Blues by Mark McGraw

Review: Fender Reso-Telecaster

I was actually in the local guitar store looking for something else and ran across this new variation on the Fender telecaster.

I'm not going to go too deeply into the specs on the thing, it's obviously a very new model and made in China, which accounts for it's reasonable price (for a resonator of this quality).

From what specs I can find, what you basically have here is a telecaster shape semisolid (though not a heavily built type), with a pick up under the biscuit style bridge and a standard telecaster neck pick up. Both the body and neck are maple, artificial bone nut, and plated brass tailpiece.

The most important difference is that this resonator has a C shaped telecaster neck. This is different than normal resonators, which generally have shorter scale mahogany neck and rosewood or similar fretboards boards. The main difference is the telecaster maple neck will bring out more highs in the sound, and have more attack. Having a bit of the traditional fender spank might change the way the player normally approaches slide guitar playing.

The Fender seems lighter then either the metal body resonator or most wood body dobros. Most are built heavily because the rigidness of the body, including the top (which on an acoustic guitar would normally be expected to vibrate) is what makes the resonator cone effective. 

In other words you don't want the guitar body vibrating and absorbing sound. I think Fender figures that the use of maple makes it less necessary to use a lot of wood, or more specifically mahogany, which is the traditional wood for a dobro.

Less wood and semisolid construction also mean that acoustically will have less volume. It's clearly a guitar designed to be used with an amp, but with more than enough volume to be used acoustically.

Telecaster tradition is also continued with the iconic two plain knobs, one a master volume control, the other using a Fishman chip that controls the balance between the bridge and neck pickup instead of a standard tone control. 

Resonators were actually quite popular in the 20s in the Hawaiian music scene, and later with the blues. It got a little more popular with the introduction of an electric model that was endorsed by Joe Perry of Aerosmith, but electric versions of this type of guitar been around for a while.

Being someone who's played a telecaster all his life, and knowing that one of the most popular categories of Teles are the hollow body type, I couldn't resist trying it.

The thing about a resonator guitar, as opposed to a standard acoustic, it has that aluminum cone designed to naturally amplify the sound.

I've owned a couple of electric Resophonic guitars, and found that they had the same characteristics.

Almost all are very loud without any electric assistance, and so the feature you'll end up using most often is the piezo pickup that essentially amplifies the acoustic sound from the bridge. Anything more powerful than that and you'll just get a lot of feedback.

Also unless you're playing at a loud volume, the acoustic sound of the guitar will be so loud that you can't hear what's coming out of the amplifier very well.

The other pick up  (if there is one) is almost always placed at the neck, and is generally a lipstick type. In this case they use a standard telecaster neck pick up, which is virtually the same thing.

These pickups normally have the same problem, it has to be played at fairly loud volume to be heard out the amp, and you have to be careful about your own positioning, as the guitar will feed back easily.

In other words the same problem as any acoustic guitar that has a pick up installed on it.

In this case, the feedback problem seemed less noticeable, Fender's bridge pickup seems less sensitive and microphonic. There's less acoustic volume, so the neck PU is less prone to feedback here. Which is helpful, as I like the option of having an overdriven sound, particularly for recording where volume is less important.

The key question when considering this guitar is where you intend to use it. A good quality resonator guitar frankly doesn't need an amplifier to be heard in a house, and I mean the whole house.

If you intend to mainly play it at home, then the important point is, do you like the looks, and do you like how it sounds acoustically. Also when it comes to guitars, does it have a very high cool factor. In this case it does, it looks like a very nice telecaster that happens to be converted to a resophonic system.

If you like how it sounds acoustically, and as it's priced lower than a lot of more well known guitars of this type, it's a purchase you should definitely consider.

It was a guitar developed in earlier times to be played in noisy rooms and bars and still be heard above the noise. Also it doesn't sound like a regular acoustic guitar, kind of more like a higher pitched guitar blasting out of an old cheap microphone when picked hard. Which is perfect for Hawaiian music and blues.

If you pick it softly, it can give you an excellent alternative to the usual acoustic guitar sound. That's because this Fender is not the metal body type, but closer to a dobro which has a wood body (and popular in country and bluegrass). The sound is resonant at lower volume, and the sound changes as it's picked harder.

The main reason is that Fender went with a hybrid electric .10 gauge string with bronze wrapped bass strings (like an acoustic string set). So if you pick lightly it doesn't drive the resonator cone much and the sound is more acoustic, pick harder and it begins to sound like a dobro.

It's a good sound, particularly if you use fingernails and not metal finger picks. I used an Epiphone biscuit model for years as my regular acoustic guitar, because I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of the standard acoustic six string.

Heavier strings will bring out a more traditional sound, Even moving up to a light acoustic gauge (.12 set ) will noticeably drive the cone more and give you a more standard Resophonic sound.

In fact, it's resonator sound is more similar to a metal body type than a dobro. This could be due to the maple wood body and neck, maybe a good cone, but it's an extra dimension to take into account. If I want more of a National style resonator sound, I can get it by putting on heavier strings.

Fender's use of a .10 set isn't some random decision. It's part of a different way to approach the resonator and it sound. People used to the more traditional types might find the sound almost alien at first. 

I certainly did, But decided to give it some playing time before permanently switching the thicker strings for a more standard sound.

I found that I liked the new sound. Once my ears adjusted, or more specifically, got rid of preconceived expectations about the guitar, I found myself with a new sound to play with and explore in a world where dobros and metal bodies as a rule sound pretty much the same.

If you're primarily a home player, the pickup is an added dimension in case you have to play in a larger venue like a church or club. It can also give you a distinctive new set of sounds for recording, especially if the guitar's plugged directly into the board.

It's lighter than a standard Tele, which in it's solid body form can often give a Les Paul a run for it's money in terms of weight.

The key thing to remember is that it's not your normal hollow body telecaster, it only looks like one. The reality is that it's really more of a dobro or resonator variant, though I find that due to it not being overbuilt, it's more responsive to finger style play and doesn't tend to be muddy sounding like the lower and mid priced models.

Also, if you're looking for more of a regular amplified acoustic, it's a good idea to try the Fender along with some standard acoustics that have on-board amplification. You'll be able to hear the difference, and really decide what acoustic sound you want.

It's a classic eye candy guitar that has a high remorse potential, that is to say, maybe a month later you'll find yourself regretting that you bought it.

As far as the small but very dedicated cult of guitar players who prefer this type, they just might find it a revelation. It's tone is lighter, very bright, and works well with a glass slide. 

A real world example would be that it has more of the thinner tone of Blind Willie Johnson, rather than the powerful mids and bass of a Bukka White (using the stock .10 set strings).

Fender chose exactly the right kind of guitar to convert to this type. The thick squarish body of a telecaster is ideal for mounting a resonator cone.

This is more a guitar for those who already like the old-time sound of a resonator, who wants a look that gives the person something that really stands out from the normal crowd, and wants a sound thats closer to an acoustic guitar, and perhaps, a bit like a hollow body telecaster.

In that respect, I think Fender has a success on its hands. It's on a smaller scale, but it's definitely a homerun. I had been looking for a resonator with a pickup, and wasn't liking the basic similar sound of all the alternatives, and found this one to my liking.

It's a guitar that made me want one when I saw it, it just might have that effect on you.