Category: General Musings

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Reviewing the Collings 0002H: Acoustic Guitar as Industrial Art

There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go, no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone
— The Grateful Dead

Introduction

Playing a Collings at my first official gig…

I’m not getting any younger and this past summer I entered my 7th decade. A couple of years ago when I embarked on retirement, my fund manager/guide offered me sage advice when he bade me not to wait too late to experience what I wished to (within reason).

To those who know me and others who’ve read this weblog, it is patently obvious that as a pensioner, I’ve pretty much devoted my efforts to developing myself as a musician/guitarist. While I’ve made tangible progress in my pursuit, there really is no end to the path I’m on… the guitar is an insatiable instrument with unlimited expectations for its players, and it will carry me to the end…

As a dedicated guitarist, I aspire to play the finest instruments that can be acquired within reason. In the past I’ve found that the best way to keep things within reason is to trade/sell an existing instrument(s) against the acquisition of another better one, which happens to be a common behavior among many guitar players! About a year ago, I traded two Taylor electric guitars for a Collings I-35 electric guitar (reviewed here). When evaluating the I-35, I became enchanted with the founder of the company. He was a singular, creative, precision driven engineer and world class manufacturing leader in the marketplace of guitars. As a result, I developed an interest in eventually adding a Collings acoustic guitar to my stable. Below is a brief video about this man, the late Bill Collings:

You can break down guitar building into two basic categories: factory versus luthier built. That’s not to say that some factories do not employ luthier quality builders, but the term luthier built suggests an individual who designs and assembles a guitar in a private shop from soup to nuts… i.e raw wood to finished product.

Somogyi’s excellent book on guitar design

One of the most highly regarded luthiers in the U.S. is Ervin Somogyi, whose exceptional book on acoustic guitar design I purchased and perused a couple of years ago. Most of Somogyi’s guitars are museum pieces that command staggering sums and are really built for well-financed private customers. Somogyi applies his skills to extract maximum sonic performance from wood and steel, and his embellishments often rise to high art. Somogyi is also a bit dubious about many but not all of the other independent luthiers practicing in the U.S. He pretty much says in his book that just because a person can build a guitar from scratch does not guarantee it will be a high quality instrument. Results will vary widely from builder to builder, so he says be wary of in the luthier marketplace. I simply do not trust that I have the wherewithal to distinguish a high quality luthier produced guitar from a run of the mill one. Consequently I stick with recognized factory built instruments because of their long history of essentially decent performance.

Taylor 914ce

The preponderance of guitars in the U.S. are built in factories of varying sizes with wide ranging production capacities, specifications, price points, manufacturing philosophies and subsequent qualities. In the U.S. Taylor, Martin and Gibson are excellent examples of the larger decent quality guitar producers. It’s hard to go wrong buying a guitar from those manufacturers, though it is important to be aware there is some product to product variability in performance simply because the guitars are built from wood which is a naturally variable material. In other words, these manufactures build, on average, decent instruments; however, within each companies productions some guitars may be better and some not as good.

Purchase choices are often based on taste and/or tradition-based brand loyalty. For example, I’ve owned several Taylor guitars because I liked their playability and voicing, whereas neither Martin nor Gibson ever appealed that much to me. I know other players who would never consider any guitar other than a Martin.

Besides the big companies, there are a host of smaller factory producers, such as Santa Cruz, Breedlove, Bourgeois and Collings who produce limited numbers of instruments mostly because of the care, materials, embellishments and extra labor they apply to perfect their products. Sometimes these smaller companies are referred to as “boutique” manufacturers.

Here’s a brief video that speaks to Collings manufacturing excellence:

Choosing among the small manufacturers is largely a matter of expendable income, taste and knowledge of the company’s specific products. Product accessibility may also be one of the most important variables. In fact, I’ve never actually seen a Santa Cruz, Breedlove or Bourgeois guitar in any of the stores I’ve ever frequented. I suppose I could acquire a boutique guitar online, but I would not want to spend that kind of money without trying the instrument out myself beforehand. I’ve had mixed experiences buying online. Having the ability to trade for the purchase was also a prerequisite for me, and that’s difficult to do online.

Unlike the other small builders, I’ve had some access to Collings acoustic guitars in nearby Wisconsin at Dave’s Guitars. I auditioned several of them a few months ago and thought they were decent, but still reserved judgment until I could A/B compare them to my current Taylor guitars. I still suspected that those guitars when compared to Taylors, Martins and Gibsons were a cut above, with their unique voicing (appealing to me), and build approaching the level of care and individuality claimed by independent luthiers. I intended to give Collings acoustics another visit in the future.

I Get Serious About Collings Acoustic Guitars

Taylor 812ce

Last week, I finally said to myself, “the hell with it, I’m not getting any younger” and decided to see what kind of trade-in offer I could get from Dave’s Guitars for my 5 year old Taylor 812ce. Usually what triggers me is reading about a musician, near my age, who croaks for whatever reason.

I’d special ordered the Taylor 812ce through Bob’s Guitars in my home town. You’ll note in the image on the left, I ordered the guitar without a pick guard since I play finger-style. The Taylor was a good guitar and I enjoyed playing it. A few years ago, when I was changing the strings, I inadvertently knocked a chunk of wood off the bridge. Taylor Guitars was kind enough to replace the bridge under warrantee if I paid for the shipping. After repair the guitar looked the same, but it never sounded quite like it did originally. I don’t think it was my imagination.

in Dave’s parking lot with iconic signage…

Upon inspection of the guitar via photographs, Dave’s Guitars made me a modestly reasonable offer, which they improved upon later when I arrived at the store. One issue that irritated the hell out of me was Dave’s statement that X-braced non V-Class Taylor guitars now have reduced trade-in value. A few years back, Taylor Guitars redesigned their bracing system to a V shape, supported by a massive marketing campaign. I actually think the older guitars sound better, but it’s hard to fight the extraordinary power of Taylor marketing.

So, I loaded up my car with the Taylor 812, my iPad which contains all my music and a mic stand equipped with an iPad holder. It’s a long 2.5 hour trip through the hinterlands of Iowa and Minnesota until you finally traverse the Mississippi and enter the river town of LaCrosse, WI. Dave’s guitars is within spitting distance of the river itself. Below you can see of section of the Acoustic Guitar Room at Dave’s. They have a large showroom…

I arrived early enough to get plenty of time auditioning the Collings acoustics that were available in LaCrosse. I planned to A/B my Taylor with several of the Collings with a focus on 12 fret guitars with slot-heads, since that was what I was what my Taylor was. My other acoustic guitar that I am keeping is a Grand Concert sized, 14 fret, fancy-pants, fully decked out, Taylor 914ce. I wanted to make sure the Collings I selected would be distinctly different from the Taylor 914ce.

The Collings collection at Dave’s Guitars

To the right you can see the Collings section of Dave’s Guitars, which contained three 12 fretted, slot-head guitars. Two of those can be seen on the lower row on the far left and far right. The guitar on the left was a 02H Traditional with a sitka spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides. The one on the right was a 0001 Custom made with all mahogany top and sides with a custom dog hair finish with Pearloid appointments. Not pictured is a 0002H with a sitka top and Indian rosewood back and sides. When I shot this image that guitar was being equipped with a pick-up because I intended to take it home.

playing the Collings 0002H

When I auditioned the guitars, I sat down at the wall of Collings guitars on a comfortable stool and 90 minutes disappeared. I played all three of the slot head Collings, along with the Taylor 812ce side by side over and over again. It was absorbing and a lot of fun. The acoustic guitar room at Dave’s was quiet that morning, so I was able to give the guitars a nice listen to.

The 0002H was clearly the winner to my ears. The Taylor offered up nice clean and direct notes, but the 0002H played at a different level. Each note in comparison was almost 3 dimensional… in other words the notes bloomed outward. The 0002H presented more bottom, more punch and overtone. No contest… the Taylor was going on the trading block…

02H Traditional

I gave the 02H a serious look, but it did not hold up when compared to the 0002H. I suspect there were a couple of variables at play here. First the 0002H as a larger lower bout which will make it louder and deeper sounding. Secondly, the Traditional series, as I understand it, was designed to be physically lighter and engineered to reduce overtones to give more clarity to individual notes. I can attest to the fact that the 02H was significantly lighter than the 0002H, to the point that handling it was a bit unnerving as it felt so insubstantial. In the end, I did not appreciate the individual note clarity. The guitar felt like it needed time to open up as it sounded thin and insubstantial when A/B’d with the 0002H. The 02H was far more expensive too. Move along… nothing to see here…

0002 Custom

The all mahogany 0002 custom was quite an amazing looking guitar with it’s white pearloid headstock and pick guard contrasted with the blackened dog hair finish. It would be a crowd pleasing guitar based simply on appearance. It was the most expensive guitar by a long shot that I auditioned that day. I might have stretched for it had it sounded unbelievable, but the solid mahogany body just did not have the presence of the 0002H. Perhaps in time the mahogany would open up, but I did not have the patience to wait several years for that possibility. I kept going back to the 0002H after playing all the guitars several times over and decided to acquire it.

I carried the Taylor and the Collings 0002H to my store guy friend JR and closed the deal. When queried about installing a pickup, JR was emphatic that the K&K Pure Mini, a passive device, was the best choice. The Pure Mini is a simple 3 transducer pickup that mounts on the bridge plate inside the guitar. I went with his advice and was amazed at how natural sounding it was when I finally got a chance to plug in the guitar at home later that day.

JR behind the acoustic guitar desk and Dave’s Guitars closing the deal…

Reviewing In Detail My 0002H

Below is my 0002H resting comfortably in its TKL hard case, which was sourced out by Collings because they do not make their own cases. They dabbled with producing cases at one point in the past, but it was unsustainably expensive, so they quit. The interior of the TKL case is decked out in the interior with form-fitting cushions, covered with a dark green velveteen fabric. The fit is tight and requires a light pushdown by hand to get the guitar properly seated. The case clasps function well, and one is lockable. Inside the case was the key, a Collings micro-fiber wiping cloth, the warrantee registration form (which can alternatively be done online) and a pressure sensitive Collings sticker!

Collings 0002H in TKL hard case
Collings 0002H

A different view of the 0002H out of its case is on the right. You’ll note that it has an upper bout just shy of 10 inches wide, a narrow waist, and a largish 15 inch lower bout. The body length is just a little over 20 inches. The appearance evokes and older era and should be no surprise because this shape, originated by C.F. Martin is rooted in the very early 1900’s.

The narrow waist allows the guitar to fit in the lap very comfortably while playing in the sitting position, which is what I prefer. The combined upper and lower bout size difference creates a pleasant evenly balanced volume of tones, with plenty of low end to avoid thinness in output.

Again, the guitar is a 12 fret model with a slot head. The top is sitka spruce with back and sides being East Indian rosewood.

Starting at the top of the guitar, you can see below front and rear views of the headstock.

The headstock has a very pleasant “exotic” ebony veneer with a Mother-of-Pearl Collings logo inlay. I always found the excessively shiny veneer on the Taylor 812ce incongruous and not aesthetically in tune with the rest of the guitar. The Collings headstock just looks better. You might note too at the lower portion of the rear of the headstock is an embellishing pyramidal carving referred to as a volute.

The Waverly tuners are excellent and work far better than the Taylor tuners. Their turning action is reminiscent of the excellent Gotoh tuners I have on three other guitars. I am pleased that the Collings tuners are nickel because the Taylor ivoroid tuners can fall apart when using a mechanized winder for string changing.

Proper string wrapping on the Collings Slotted Headstock

When I had the K&K Pure Mini pick-up installed in the 0002H, the shop replaced the Collings spec’d D’Addario EJ-16 (.012″- .053″) strings with Elixirs of the same gauge. I observed two things when I got home with the restrung guitar. First, the string wrap on the peghead was done in a manner such that the lowest strings (the E strings) on both sides were in contact with the headstock wood which will quickly wear away the finish. To avoid this deleterious situation, the E strings should be wound on with one wrap to the outside and the remainder towards the inside. This wind does cause the E strings to take a sharp angle inwards, but they will now avoid contacting the wood. Examination of photos on the Collings website also indicate that all the strings are wound outside-in, which is unlike the winds used by Taylor and National on their slot heads.

The second thing I noticed was that the Elixir strings were far stiffer to play on this guitar than the D’Addarios, making it far less enjoyable to play. I also found the sound of the guitar adversely affected too, so as soon as I could I restrung the guitar with the original spec’d D’Addarios! Perhaps the strings won’t last as long, but now the guitar sounds and plays like the one I auditioned in the store. This was an odd experience for me because I’ve used Elixirs on my Taylor acoustics without any difficulty. Of course, for what its worth, Taylors are spec’d to play with Elixirs

Fretboard section with inlays

The neck is Honduran Mahogany and the fretboard is stained ebony. There is no binding on the neck and the fingerboard is marked with elegant but simple Abalone short diamond and square designs.

The neck has taken some getting used too because it is a bit chunkier than a Taylor acoustic’s neck and it is the widest necked guitar I ever owned coming in at 1 & 13/16 of an inch. That’s a lot of real estate to cover and requires some readjustment of finger muscle memory. All good for finger style playing though.

Below you can see an image of the the back of the neck where it attaches to the guitar body. The neck has a lovely gloss finish that allows easy mobility of the left hand up and down the fretboard

Neck join are of guitar back

Also visible on the left is the Ivoroid binding at the seam of the back and sides of the guitar as well as the grained Ivoroid cap on the neck base. The neck is a modified V-shape and compounded in circumference, widening outwards at the 9th fret. As I understand it the neck flattens out towards the body of the guitar which makes playing the higher notes in the region easier.

Collings employs a mortise & tenon hybrid attachment of neck to body. I am assuming this form of bolt on neck makes it easier to repair or replace the guitar’s neck. There’s some belief among guitar aficionados and builders that a dovetail join is the only way to attach a neck to a guitar’s body. In my judgement Taylor guitars proved that assertion wrong a long time ago.

Sideview 0002H body

The photo above and to the right show the East Indian Rosewood that comprises the back and sides of the 0002H. Collings builds their reputation on using the choicest tone woods for their instruments. The rosewood is straight-grained and a lovely deep brown with lighter streaking. The color is so deep it almost looks purple depending upon the light. Note too above the “zipper” backstrip that runs down the center of the guitar back. It’s quite striking.

I’ve tried lots of different tone wood combinations; however, I keep coming back to sitka spruce tops with rosewood back and sides as the classic combination that is most appealing to me ears.

Upper bout

The 000 sized Collings come in 3 basic styles, not including the wide variety of custom work they also offer. My 000 has the 2H designation, which basically means that it has some fancier appointments than the style 1, including the nice zipper backstrip, the geometric fretboard inlays, and most importantly the herringbone binding, which is a classic steel string acoustic guitar appointment.

Sound hole, rosette, and pick guard

To the right, you can see the sound hole section of the 0002H, with its elegant but not overly fancy rosette, which brings me to a point about the 0002H compared to the Taylor 812ce that I traded-in when I purchased the Collings. To be perfectly frank, the Taylor possessed a fancier level of appointment, including beautiful maple wood bindings, an abalone rosette with an inner sound hole maple border, and a more intricate fretboard inlay, all of it tastefully done and costing far less. But, and this is a big but, the Collings design, tonality, playability, and its visible connection to the past origins of guitar design make it a palpably singular instrument to own and play.

I’m not a big fan of pickguards as I play strictly finger style and I suspect they have some minor tone dampening impact on the guitar’s sound board. Had I the opportunity, I would have acquired the 0002H without a pickguard. Nevertheless, the 0002H I purchased from Dave’s Guitars had a pickguard, and you cannot remove one without the high probability of damaging the finish. I did note that the pickguard was pretty scratched up. I think the guitar had been there for at least a year and tested out by a number of people, including some careless assholes with a picks. My store guy, J.R. said that was no problem because they would buff out the scratches in their shop, which they did. The pickguard looks pristine now. I do not recollect how translucent it was before buffing, but now I notice the sound hole rosette grinning through the guard. After a query on Facebook, some other Collings owners suggested to me that it was always translucent.

In the above image, you may also note the nice, even tight grain on the sitka spruce soundboard. This is what Collings brings to the marketplace: the very best available tone woods.

Beneath the sound hole is the bridge section. The 0002H uses an ebony pyramid bridge, a design that harkens back to the 1800’s and some of the earliest Martin guitars. The bridge pins are unslotted, which some argue is a more robust design. I guess that may also be a vintage appointment. Residing in the bridge is a bone saddle which complements the bone nut back up the neck.

Iconic Collings label inside the sound hole!

To sum it up, I am delighted and it is my great, good fortune that I have the opportunity to play a guitar of such character and build!

Add-ons

K&K Pure Mini pick-up

I needed a pick-up installed to be able to plug my guitar into my portable PA (Bose L1 Pro 32) and into other sound systems around town. This is because I host Open Mic Night once per month at a Coffee Shop, sometimes play other Open Mic Nights in town and do a rare coffee shop gig on my own.

The best time to install the pick-up was at point of sale because they do not charge for shop labor at Dave’s when a new guitar is sold.

Dave’s had available the L.R. Baggs Anthem and Lyric pick-ups, but as I said earlier, my guitar guy J.R. was emphatic that the simplest, passive pick-up like the K&K Pure Mini would be the best choice to avoid sound balance and feedback issues. I was dubious at first but agreed. It was a quick install because the three transducers shown above simply glue onto the bridge plate within the guitar’s body. When I got home and plugged the guitar into my Fishman Loudbox Artist, the 0002H sounded very natural, so I was please that I followed J.R.’s advice.

L.R. Baggs Venue DI/Pre-amp/Tuner

Because the K&K Pure Mini is passive, it does not come with a pre-amp built into the installation, which is nice in that there are no added dials or buttons involved. While I like the Taylor Expression system, I was never a big fan of the rubbery dial/buttons protruding from the guitars body. On the other hand, without a pre-amp the ability to tone shape your guitar’s output is absent which could be a problem when interacting with a PA out around town.

To remedy this situation, I acquired an L.R. Baggs Venue DI/Pre-amp/Tuner. It’s a very nice portable device capable of precise tone shaping. I used it during a recent gig along with the Bose L1 Pro 32 PA and it worked just fine. The additional Notch filter for dialing out feedback frequencies is very cool and works great.

If you’d like to learn more about the L.R. Baggs Venue/DI and to listen to sound samples from my 0002H, I suggest you click on the link to another one of my blog articles below. The sound samples are at the bottom of the entry.

On Building a Pedalboard for My Acoustic Guitars
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On Bottleneck Blues and Selecting a Proper Slide for Resonator Guitar Play…

Introduction

The Second of the Four Great Records

When I was an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina in the early 1970’s, the Rolling Stones were in the midst of putting together an unparalleled run of four extraordinary record albums, including Beggar’s Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Mainstreet. This was not your everyday British Invasion band, but something new and powerfully different. Yes, it was the Rolling Stones, still largely blues influenced, but now exhibiting a richer, deeper, more expansive and more expressive music.

To my ear, there was something distinctly different about their guitar sounds too… at the time, I was unsure what it was exactly, but eventually realized it was the liberal use of bottleneck slide guitar. A sound so expressive to my sensibilities. Below you can see one of the Stones’ hard rockers from Exile on Mainstreet played live in 1972 in Texas. I saw the same show in Charlotte, NC that year. Note the characteristic rhythm riff driving the tune played by Keith Richards with the Mick Taylor’s bottleneck slide adding important textures over the top!

Besides adding sonic textures, the slide can be used to add important emotional context to a tune, which is even more appealing to me. Note, below for example, another video from the 1972 Texas concerts. This one of the Stones covering Robert Johnson’s classic Love in Vain from their album Let it Bleed. Mick Taylor’s slide work pulls at the heart. Suffice it to say I became enamored by the tones of bottleneck slide guitar listening to the Stones in my youth.

If you take the time to watch the above two videos closely, you will note that Mick Taylor plays two different kinds of slides to get two different tonalities, one metal in the All Down the Line, and a glass one in Love in Vain. Note too, that he plays with his slide like I do on his little finger, with the slide located above the middle knuckle of that finger. I will return to those observations later.

Where Did Slide Playing Come From?

Muddy Waters with slide on his little finger

This post is not a music history lesson, but I’ve read a lot about the blues. If my memory serves me well, the bottleneck slide playing that influenced early 20th century U.S. blues players originated among Hawaiian Islands Slack Key musicians and eventually migrated to the North American continent. Slack Keys are alternate tunings such as Open D and Open G, which are most common for bottleneck blues guitar play. What’s nice about open tunings is that the guitar is set up to play a rich chord with a strum across the open strings. In addition to popularizing Slack Key tunings, it’s also believed that Hawaiians introduced the use of a metal bar for sliding across the strings to smear (glissando) the notes and to create a wavering vibrato. It’s said that W.C. Handy, the man who first documented blues music was dozing at a railway station in the Delta region of Tutwiler, Mississippi. when he was awakened by an elderly African American man playing a haunting blues tune with smeared notes throughout. The old guitarist was using a pocket knife to create the glissandos. This apocryphal story might be the first recognition of bottleneck blues playing in the South.

My First Run with a Bottleneck Slide

My first slide…

I was taking finger-style country blues lessons some years ago in Cedar Falls, Iowa and had just purchased my first electric guitar, a fancy-pants Gretsch Falcon. About that same time, I ran into this bewhiskered old codger at the guitar shop where I studied. He was not capable of driving so his family would drop him off for lessons and later pick him up. I got to know him a bit, and at some point he told me he was learning to play bottleneck slide. I thought to myself, since I have this awesome electric guitar now, why not do the same and subsequently discussed it with my teacher. Shortly thereafter we went out on the shop floor and selected a glass slide off the rack and then I spent a few weeks futzing around with a slide on my guitar.

After a spell, I decided that slide playing was not a rabbit hole I wished to go down. I was just not adept enough at guitar playing yet, and the slide itself was an ill-fitting affair, being too large for me, thus difficult to control. Despite my initial lack of success at slide playing, I did conclude that I was most comfortable playing with a slide on my little finger, with the slide located above the middle knuckle. The middle knuckle location allowed me to properly position the slide on the fretboard without a lot of stress on my wrist, since I could simply bend my finger. Of course the Mo-Jo Slide would not work in the manner I wished as it swam all over my finger and the strings. I still have it and it makes a wonderful knick-knack on my music table.

Another Run with the Bottleneck Slide

National NRP Black Rust

Some months later with little to no intention of playing bottleneck slide again any time soon, I purchased a National Resonator (NRP Black Rust) from Reverb to play finger-style blues. This was based on my brief experience noodling around with a wooden Fender resonator in my local shop. The two guitars could not be any more different from each other. Whereas the Fender was set up to play finger-style with low action, the National had very high action, and I was distraught when I quickly ascertained that it would be next to impossible to play straight finger-style. It did not occur to me have have the guitar set up for finger-style.

Considering the substantial investment I made in the National, I decided then and there to return to bottleneck slide, since that was how it was set-up to be played. I was now committed to making a more serious run at mastering (take this term with a grain of salt) the slide.

Dunlop Ceramic Joe Perry Slide

Of course, the first order of business was to find a slide that would work for me and that ended up being an iterative process that still continues to this day. I needed to find a slide size and substance (i.e. material) that would meet my needs when playing my National. Since I like to play the slide on my little finger and above the middle knuckle, I needed a relatively small slide. So I went back to the store rack and searched for a smallish slide that would fit to my little finger above the knuckle. In this case I purchased a Dunlop Joe Perry ceramic slide, which was 50 mm in length. It’s worth a digression now to consider slide substances.

What Are the Most Common Slide Substances?

While there are lots of exceptions to the rule, slides are available in three common substances:

  1. Glass – lots of different types of glass tubes can be used for slides. Even though I was interested in playing a glass slide, I could not find one that would properly fit me… more about that later. Glass is the warmer sounding of slide materials with good sustain.
  2. Metal – lots of different metals are used, including but not limited to steel, nickel coated brass, titanium and solid brass. The metals give a harsher, biting sound, with somewhat diminished sustain and is favored by some hardcore country blues players.
  3. Ceramic – a non-metallic mineral that is said to fall somewhere in between metal and glass in its sonic properties. As indicated above, my Joe Perry slide is ceramic.
  4. Other – Taylor Guitars produces an ebony slide. It is a creative use of raw materials. I own one, but because of its somewhat muted sonic properties I hardly every use it. Their are other contraptions out there too that are claimed to take the place of original tubular slide designs. I have not tried any of them as of this writing.

Choosing a slide material is a very personal choice based on taste, your ear, and the type of tonality you are seeking. There is plenty of discussion about tonality of slide substances available on YouTube. There is no consensus on right or wrong choices. For example, despite my antipathy with the ebony slide, a quick survey of YouTube will yield a number of players who like it.

Getting a Slide to Fit Properly

Moleskin packed slide

I want a slide to fit my little finger snugly and I have yet to find one “off the rack” that does so. My method for customizing the fit is to pack the inside circumference of the slide with moleskin, a product typically used by hikers to prevent hotspots from turning into full blown blisters. The surface side of the the moleskin is a soft plush fabric and the back side is pressure sensitive adhesive. It requires patience and a good pair of forceps to get the moleskin properly positioned. If the slide is reasonabley close to fit, the moleskin will snug it up to my finger as you can see in the image on the left.

I’ve heard of other players who pack their slides with the fuzzy portion of velcro (too harsh) or with adhesive backed foam (durable?), but moleskin seems to me to be the best of the choices.

I Try A Variety of Slides and Resonators

Over the past few years my bottleneck playing has progressed nicely. My repertoire has grown in both Open D and Open G tunes. People love bottleneck playing. I’ve played frequently at Open Mic Nights to audience approval and have bought and sold several National resonators over the recent past. I currently play a National Reso-Lectric and an M1 Tricone. It is certainly possible to play bottleneck on electric and acoustic guitars as well; however, I myself prefer to play on a resonator. Nevertheless, I do play a nice Muddy Waters tune (Long Distance Call) on my Collings I-35 electric while in standard tuning and it is a lot of fun. Along the way I’ve worked with a variety of slides too:

  • I was not that big a fan of the Joe Perry ceramic slide. It was too bulky and did not sound that good to my ear. Slide wall thickness and mass affects weight, tonality and comfort/accuracy while playing, so that element of slide design is an important consideration. As Ben Powell says, “mass equals tone.” Because of the wide variety of slide design choices, I found myself constantly shopping around. To that end, during my wanderings around the internet, I discovered Ben Powell’s fascinating Tone Dome slide. Below you can see Ben discussing his innovative slide design:

As Ben illuminates, the Tone Dome is designed for the little finger and to fit above the middle knuckle. There’s a cut out to enable easy finger bending too. At the time I purchased one, what was available was a nickel-plated brass version and I played it for a long, long time. The Tone Dome was relatively light and easy to manipulate on the fretboard. The tonality was a typical metallic bite with reasonable sustain. My only quibble was the slide did not cover the full width of my fretboard, which was problematic for full chord slides. Ben is such as accomplished slide player, he does not seem bothered by the shortness of the slide, but I was. To reduce this problem but not eliminate it completely I positioned the slide reversed from the way Powell intended it to be. In addition, I added a bit of moleskin within the slide to adjust the fit.

Tone Done with Cut Out (Left) and Tone Dome Positioned Backwards (Right) to Enhance Coverage Across the Fretboard
Ceramic Star Singer Slide
  • Even playing the Tone Dome reversed on my guitar, I became frustrated with it’s lack of fretboard width coverage for certain full chord tunes like Spoonful and went back out into the marketplace. To that end, I found a web-based seller of elegantly designed ceramic slides out of the UK (Star Singer) that looked more useable than the Dunlop Joe Perry version I had tried earlier. I purchased a 57 mm length version as can be seen on the right. I liked the Star Singer just fine and for tunes that required full fretboard width coverage I used it. Nevertheless, my workhouse slide remained the nickel-plated brass Tone Dome because I preferred its tonality more than every other slide I’d used to date. Finally, the Star Singer is a bit fragile and I tend to be a bit clumsy sometimes and after a drop or two, it has a micro crack on one side, so I have to be intentional when positioning it on my finger. For that reason, I rarely use the Star Singer anymore and just tough out the full width chords with the Tone Dome by faking it!
  • While noodling around the National Reso-phonic website, I stumbled across the fact that they now sell Ben Powell Tone Domes. Besides a stainless steel version, they also offer a beefy solid brass one too, which I immediately acquired. The increased mass of the new solid brass slide gave it a more present, warmer and rounder tonality such that it completely displaced my original Tone Dome, which is now retired.
Solid Brass Tone Dome (left); Stainless Steel (right)

To the left you can see both of the Ben Powell Tone Domes that are offered by National Reso-Phonic on their website. I really like the solid brass version and have used it with success for several years now. As with my other slides, I’ve inserted some moleskin to tighten the fit around my little finger. I’ve used this slide on all my resonators, and my Collings electric guitar with nice effect and tonality. My only quibble is that on cold, low humidity winter days, the brass slide creates a static crackle when I play it on my National Reso-Lectric!

  • I was pretty enamored by my solid brass Tone Dome for a long time and used it at Open Mic Nights and during my lessons at the guitar shop. Sometimes during lessons, my teacher would demonstrate a point he was making about phrasing or slide technique on his own electric guitar and he would use a simple clear glass slide on his ring finger. His enviable tone always amazed me. The notes rang like a bell and sustained far longer than I was achieving with my resonator and brass slide combination. When I commented on his tone, he would strongly suggest I revisit using a glass slide. If it was good enough for Duane Allman, it should be good enough for me. My usual response was that I could never find a glass slide that would fit my little finger properly and then we’d drop the subject.

Then one day, scrolling through my Facebook feed, I noticed Blues/Americana aficionado and online teacher Tom Feldmann extolling the virtues of Diamond Bottleneck’s glass slides. Sometime thereafter I explored their website and discovered that a host of luminaries like Mike Dowling and Mark Knopfler also used Diamond Bottlenecks. Good enough for them… good enough for me, so I decided that I would purchase one! I then began a back and forth correspondence with head/lead consultant Ian McWee of Diamond Bottlenecks, which took place over several days. Ian was a combination of cordial, patient and very responsive.

If you peruse the Diamond Bottleneck’s website, you will see that they offer glass slides in a wide variety. From sawn of necks of actual former bottles, to hand blown soda ash or leaded crystal and more. Using old school, British, precision, hand skilled craftsmenship rooted in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, Ian and his team manufacture their slides onsite in a small factory. Below you can see a brief video of Ian fashioning a glass slide.

Ultimate Diamond Bottlenecks

I decided to order a slide from their Ultimate collection, which is comprised of leaded crystal. The lead crystal process produces a high density glass with unusual visual clarity. Theoretically, the higher density glass should enhance tone and and sonic sustain. Ian sent me images of the leaded crystal glass that he had in his inventory, which can affect what you can order at any given time. As I understand it, the slides are cut from long glass tubes and then finished to customer specification. In the end, I determined that ordering three slides would be the most economical route, since there would then be no shipping fee with an order that size. All three slides were to come in around 50 mm length, with inner diameters close to the size of my little finger. Two were open ended with copper and ruby red colors and wall thicknesses of 6 & 8mm, and the other was a double-walled affair with a dome. We thought this variety would allow me to find a slide “sweet-spot.”

It took a while for the package to arrive from the UK, mostly because the USPS quarantined the shipment in Chicago for over a week! I was told it was some kind of new safety protocol causing the delay. The slides were well packaged arriving in their own individual velveteen bags in pristine condition. Both my wife and I were delighted with how beautiful the glass was!

I post below a sound sampler of the three new glass slides from Diamond Bottlenecks and for reference, I’ve also included a sample of my National (Ben Powell) Solid Brass Tone Dome. You’ll note that I am playing a 2021 National Reso-phonic M1 Tricone. The tune is the first verse of Blind Willie McTell’s Wake Up Mama. The samples are ordered as follows:

  1. Diamond Bottleneck Ultimate – 50mm (Plus) Double walled with dome; Dark Blue Colored
  2. Diamond Bottleneck Ultimate – 50mm Open Ended 8mm thick Wall; Ruby Red Colored
  3. Diamond Bottleneck Ultimate – 50mm Open Ended 6mm thick Wall; Copper Colored
  4. National Reso-phonic/Ben Powell Solid Brass Tone Dome

Truth is I like all four of the slides sampled; however, I am really fascinated by the glass slide tones. Both my wife and I noticed right away the bell-like chimes and longer sustain of the new Diamond Bottlenecks. I think the most “present” tone comes from the large domed slide, which is not surprising as it is the most massive of the bunch, which is also a problem as the slide is really heavy and causes me some reluctance to play it. I did apply some moleskin to the interior of the glass dome so it stays well put on my finger… but it’s weight could be a deterrent to my using it very often!

I am very happy with both of the open-ended glass slides, though if pressed I would probably choose the thicker walled ruby red slide because its tone is just a bit thicker than the copper colored slide. Both open-ended slides are easily playable though they do not fit snugly to my little finger. As a result, I am concerned with dropping and breaking the slides, but am also reluctant to apply moleskin to the interior of these translucent slides adversely affecting their appearance… still weighing this decision as I write.

Thanks for tuning in… leave a comment if you wish…

Post Script:

I added a thin band of moleskin to the lower opening of the Ruby Red slide and it now locks onto my finger much more effectively. Hopefully this will minimize the potential for dropping off my finger! This small band of moleskin has not adversely affected the beauty of the slide, nor has it affected it’s lovely tone.

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The Refined Resonator: Reviewing National’s M1 Tricone

“The Mississippi Delta Was Shining Like a National Guitar” – Paul Simon, Graceland

Introduction and Background

When I first picked up a guitar, I wanted to be a flat-picking bluegrass player. Sometime thereafter, I concluded that I did not possess the speed or accuracy to play that style, and adopted fingerstyle guitar with Travis picking as my basic playing approach. It was the best decision I ever made regarding the instrument. When I took a quantum leap in focus and interest in guitar playing my pathway to achievement was to learn Acoustic Country Blues, which happens to be huge body of music with many different sub-styles to choose from. The structure of Country Blues was appealing to me because it speaks to my sensibilities as a musician, is distinctly American and it serves as the foundation for a large swath of the music I grew up with in the 1960’s and ’70s.

Fender Resonator…

After one of my ongoing lessons at my local guitar shop some years back, I walked by a Fender resonator guitar hanging on the wall and it occurred to me that a resonator might broaden my Country Blues sound palette. I responded instantly to the distinct sound that a resonator cone makes when the guitar string is plucked and merrily played a couple of Mississippi John Hurt tunes that I’d been working on. The Fender string action was supple and easy to play, sounded good too, but it felt insubstantial in construction. I decided at that moment that I would pursue the acquisition of a resonator, but guitar snob that I am, I wanted to acquire a fine instrument. Of course, what’s “fine” is open to debate and a matter of taste, but with my limited knowledge at the time I referred to Paul Simon’s lyric from “Graceland” and decided to chase after a National guitar.

Catfish Keith and a National Tricone

I found myself on Iowa’s legendary bluesman Catfish Keith’s website whilst doing research on resonators. At that moment, I was a bit overwhelmed by the numerous models and resonator types to select from. In correspondence, Catfish was kind enough to write me a brief dissertation about Nationals and recommended that I consider a single cone guitar for starters. In short, resonators are typically manufactured with a single large, spun aluminum cone, or three similar but smaller cones, referred to as tricones.

Catfish and Penny wintering in Mexico in happier times before the pandemic…

As a side-note, both Catfish and his wife Penny are incredibly gracious and generous people and I had the great, good fortune of taking a private lesson with him at his home in small town Iowa. He taught me the nuances of playing his arrangement of “Police and a Sergeant,” a variation of an old Robert Wilkins tune.

Catfish is a representative/distributor for National guitars and sells them new from his website. At that moment I was ready to take up Catfish’s advice by acquiring a single cone resonator, but I decided to go on the used market to save some money. I’ve written before about the savings that can be made by purchasing used guitars online from Reverb… there’s quite a drop in value when you drive a new guitar off the lot. I’ve subsequently revised my opinion on buying used versus new, as I’ve experienced set-up issues, cracked bodies, sketchy electronics and twisted necks when buying used. In fact, all 6 of my current and varying style guitars were purchased new, because I’ve traded off my pre-owned ones.

National NRP B Single Cone Resonator

Nevertheless, my first National resonator, was a mint conditioned and bargain priced NRP B steel, single coned guitar. I was delighted when the NRP arrived but was astonished at how difficult it was to play, compared to the Fender resonator that I tested in my local guitar store. I subsequently realized that the action was set-up pretty high for slide playing, rather than finger picking, which was not clearly elaborated on the Reverb website. This high action play was initially viewed by myself as a disaster of biblical proportions, but then I decided to make lemonade from lemons and go down the bottle-neck slide rabbit hole and never looked back!

National Resorocket WB

Metal resonators have their own distinct sound and vary somewhat depending upon the type of metal from which they are constructed. My NRP was steel so it had a bold and present sound. To my ear, you could even say it was a bit harsh sounding, which is actually appealing to a lot of blues players. Overtime, I wondered if a wood bodied resonator might be more appealing to my sensibilities and returned to the marketplace for a used wooden body resonator. I subsequently, through Reverb again, found a sweet deal on a wood bodied National Reso Rocket (WB model), which I subsequently equipped with a Hotplate electronic pick-up system so I could run it through an amp. When the WB arrived, I quickly discerned that the guitar was also set up with high action to facilitate slide playing. Even though I would have preferred to have had a resonator that I could easily fingerpick, I was loathe to have my local shop grind away at the nut or biscuit bridge to lower the play, so I resigned to playing slide on both resonators. You’d think by then that I would have learned not to buy resonators, used online…

At a workshop with Mike Dowling… I am holding my WB

I played my wooden body in Open D and the steel body in Open G for a couple of years or so, and then it occurred to me that I was not playing the steel body near as much as the WB, mostly because it was super heavy and I found it unappealing to my ears. It was time to put the steel NRP on the trading block, which I did and the complete story of my acquisition of a National Resolectric can be found here. In my review I don’t think that I mentioned that while testing out the Resolectric I was also interested in auditioning an M1 Tricone; however, the one that had been in the store had sold the day before my arrival. I had seen and heard an M1 Tricone when I attended a guitar workshop taught by Mike Dowling in Minnesota a couple of years earlier. I thought it was an interesting guitar and never forgot about it.

Me and the WB…

I played a lot of hours with the WB on my lap, but became increasingly frustrated that I could not play the guitar fingerstyle, which was always my original intent when I set out to own a resonator. At Mike Dowling’s suggestion, I investigated the use of the new National Revolution aluminum biscuit to adjust the WB’s play, which I installed but eventually removed. I wrote about that experience here and here. At some point thereafter, the notion of trading the WB for an M1 that would be initially set-up for fingerstyle arose from my subconscious. In fact, I asked Dave’s Guitarshop for a trade quote on the WB when I saw an M1 for sale at the store, I got a very nice trade deal, but the M1 sold before I could arrange an appointment to visit the store. The National M1’s don’t collect dust at Dave’s Guitars, but move very fast out the door. That was February 2021. My contact at the store told me that they had another one on order and that I should check the store’s website for its arrival, which I did almost everyday since February. I also kept the correspondence that documented the trade-in value of my WB.

I Purchase a National M1 Tricone

When I was considering the acquisition of an M1, I did my due diligence and researched the Youtube universe for reviews and tone examples. One of the best videos I found was a direct comparison between three of National’s wooden bodied resonators: The El Trovador, a deep bodied single cone guitar, an M1 Tricone, and finally a Resorocket WB, like I owned. This really excellent comparison was produced by Organic Sounds:

In the video, the El Travador is bold, rich sounding, loud and offers clean highs with great bottom end low frequency tonality, with the mid-range tones taking a back seat. It’s little wonder that recording artist Mike Dowling favors the El Trovador among all the wooden bodied Nationals. I like the El Trovador, but the deep body would be sure to cause me shoulder pain. On the other extreme is the Resorocket, which by comparison, sounds most metallic, more twangy and perhaps even a little pointed/shrill sounding. Furthermore, the Resorocket, which I am intimately familiar with, has some sort of frequently occurring overtone that sounds like a cat yowling. That overtone I do not like and experienced far too often when I played mine. Finally, the M1 sounds refined, sweet, balanced, very clean and musical, with individual notes clearly differentiating from each other. The tonality is also nice and even from high to low end frequencies with the mid ranges well represented.

Tricone resonator
Single Cone Resonator

It is not surprising that the John Dopyera, who created National Guitars with the introduction of tricone technology was reluctant to start producing less expensive, larger single cone variants at the urging of his partner George Beauchamp. He revered the “fine instrument” sound of the tricone. In fact, Dopyera quit National and founded Dobro with his brothers in part because of the tricone vs single cone controversy. Still today, the three smaller cones of the Tricone design are considered by many listeners to be more refined and balanced sounding and I tend to agree with that assessment. While the terms “refined and balanced” are positive sounding terms, the more forward, in your face, perhaps brash sound of the single coned resonators are favored by many, particularly blues musicians.

Here again we can see a different take on the M1 versus the El Trovador as played by Mike Dowling. Dowling has a long connection with National, and I believe he prevailed up them to reintroduce the El Trovador into their product line. Dowling is arguably one of the finest resonator players walking the earth:

By Dowling’s description, the El Trovador is “more pointed” and “dryer” sounding than the M1, while the tricone offers more complex coloration. The differences between the two instruments are a function of cone size, cone number and chamber size caused by the 4 versus 3 inch body width. As I watch Dowling’s body language and commentary closely, I think he prefers his beloved El Trovador, but I like the M1 and decided to chase one down if I could.

For me, the easiest place to acquire an M1 would be Dave’s Guitar shop in LaCrosse, WI. It’s 2.5 hours away from my home by car and they make trade-ins absolutely painless. The challenge is to move quickly when Dave’s gets an M1 in stock because they move out very rapidly. So, for four months, I would routinely check Dave’s website for M1 availability.

Dave’s vintage guitar collection

Then, Friday night a couple of weeks ago as my wife was calling me for dinner, I did a quick check at Dave’s, which I had not done for a day or so and, low and behold, they had a new delivery of an M1 showing on their website. Knowing the M1’s don’t last long, I grabbed it and paid for it immediately and planned to head over to LaCrosse the next Saturday morning! I invited my wife to come along and we made a fun day of it. It was a beautiful day for a drive and we stopped in the nice Iowa town of Decorah to eat lunch at a bagel bakery, whose owner we knew.

After lunch we headed over to Dave’s in LaCrosse. During these late pandemic days you still need to visit by appointment. I called early that Saturday morning and Dave himself answered and set things up for our visit.

When we arrived, Annette and I were ushered in. I dropped off my Reso-Rocket WB and it was accepted with no fuss whatsoever. Before I could say Jumpin’ Jack Flash they had a new price tag on the WB and by Monday it was advertised online. I think it sold by Wednesday. Wooden bodied Nationals move quickly and that’s why I was given an excellent trade-in value and they subtracted it from the online price that I paid out the night before. No muss, no fuss and that’s why in my experience Dave’s is one of the smoothest operations in the U.S.

Me and my new M1 getting acquainted at Dave’s

The new M1 was sitting by the front desk waiting for me. I popped open the case, pulled it out and looked it over. It was a stunning piece of industrial artwork. As a new guitar should be, it was immaculate. One of the standout features of the M1 is the lack of the silver/chrome hubcap like cover over the resonator cones. Instead there is a metal cover that is painted the color of the mahogany wood that comprises the body. It is a unique appearing resonator unlike any other in the National product line.

I sauntered over to a quiet corner of the store to try the M1 out. I wanted to make sure there were no problems before I walked out of the store. I threw my iPad, which contains my tune charts on an amp, grabbed a stool and tried to play, but the guitar was woefully out of tune because the new factory strings on it had never been stretched, so it took me a few minutes to get the tuning stabilized. I played through a few charts in standard tuning with fingerstyle technique (I never use a plectrum ever) and realized quickly that the set-up was to factory specs, meaning that both slide and fingerstyle play were easily and effectively possible! One of the store techs who visited me to discuss installation of a pickup confirmed my conclusion about the guitar’s set-up.

I find a 1950 Fender Broadcaster!

I stretched the strings again and then re-tuned the guitar to Open D and pulled out my National solid brass Tonedome slide and played a couple of bottleneck tunes too. There was a young fellow wailing away across the store on a Stratocaster which made listening to the M1 a bit challenging; however, sometimes good enough is good enough and I concluded the axe was definitely a keeper.

Me in front of Dave’s Guitars iconic street signage

Annette and I concluded our visit by visiting Dave’s famous and extensive vintage guitar collection where I was delighted to identify Leo Fender’s first electric guitar model, the Broadcaster, a truly historic instrument. Next to it was a “Nocaster” and finally the first Telecaster, which was the Broadcaster renamed because of a trade name dispute with the Gretsch Company.

On the way out, we stopped so Annette could photograph me in front of Dave’s Guitars iconic street sign. As you can see I posed with my new axe. Afterwards, I stowed the guitar in the rear of my hatchback and headed home across the Mississippi River back to Iowa. A good day indeed was had by all…

I Review My New National M1 Tricone Guitar

To the right you can see the National Reso-Phonic M1 that I purchased from Dave’s Guitars and brought home to Iowa. It’s a slot-headed, 12 Fret, bound mahogany neck, ebony fretboard, layered mahogany body, tricone resonator, with grained ivoroid binding. The appearance is unique as compared to other National Reso-Phonic guitars in that it is wooden constructed, but most conspicuously lacks the “hub cap” type cover that is typical with single cone resonators. The fact that the metallic tricone cover is the same color as the body gives the belly of the guitar a more uniform appearance. The design of the sound porous screens that protect the resonator cones, combined with the slanted grid openings in the upper bout of the sound board give the guitar a distinct art deco sensibility. It is a stunningly singular appearing acoustic guitar.

M1 Tricone Slotted Headstock

Let’s consider the M1 from the top at the headstock and follow the string line down to the tail piece. Again, you’ll note that the guitar is equipped with a traditional appearing slotted headstock. Unlike the Reso Rocket WB that I traded for the M1, the headstock does not have a pearloid veneer, but is instead stained wood embellished with a traditional product logo decal. This is similar to the Martin guitar approach where for many of their beloved models they stick a decal on the headstock. For the cost of this M1, an inlaid logo would have been a nice and expected adornment. On the other hand, I like the overall look of the guitar, so I’ll stop complaining.

The tuning machines, with exposed gear works, are clustered in groups of three and equipped with attractive ivoroid knobs. All tuner actions are smooth and precise, unlike my old Reso Rocket which had a very stiff and difficult to use D-string (standard tuning) tuner. Finally, you’ll note that the outer strings on the fretboard (E & e) are strung into their respective tuners from the outside to the inside of the headstock, while the remaining strings (A, D, G & B) go from the inside to the outside. This stringing technique which can elude guitar store guys, prevents the outer strings from chafing the headstock wood. Finally, the strings enter the fretboard by passing over a bone nut.

M1 Fretboard

To the right you can see the M1’s fretboard, an ebony strip of wood bound to the mahogany neck. The ebony is black with blond striations, which is the sustainable fashion begun by Bob Taylor several years ago when he bucked tradition and refused to toss aside ebony wood that was not perfectly black. I like the blond hints on today’s ebony fretboards. The comfortably wide neck is bound with grained ivoroid. Finally, the guitar was strung with John Pearse 13’s spec’d for resonator guitars.

The neck attaches to the guitar at the 12th fret. This particular model has no cutaway, which is one of the features I miss when comparing the M1 to the Reso Rocket WB. When playing bottleneck it’s nice not to have to be crowded by the body at the 12th and 13th frets.

The M1’s upper bout

To the left you can see the M1’s upper bout, with its rounded shoulders, the art deco sound port grills, and the inlaid Mother of Pearl dots that adorn the fretboard. The soundboard, like the guitar’s sides and back are manufactured from layered mahogany. There are some very rare exceptions when National makes a guitar body from solid wood, with the preponderance being layered. The layered body and its shape serve the role of imparting a woody tonality that colors the sound produced primarily by the three small resonator cones.

The top’s mahogany veneer does a great job of revealing the wood’s grain and reflecting the rich reddish brown stain that gives the wooden Nationals their distinctive appearance.

The M1’s lower bout

The M1’s lower bout is where the rubber meets the road. You can see on the right where the triangular-shaped metallic cover sits above the three resonator cones. The metallic cover is cut with art deco shaped openings that allow the resonator tones to escape. A silvered metallic grill protects the cones.

The guitar strings each rest in a groove cut into a wooden saddle that is glued to an aluminum t-shaped bridge, the ends of which each contact a resonator cone. The t-bridge transmits the vibration of the strings to the cones. The metallic cover has a raised t-shaped shield to protect the saddle and bridge. The strings then exit the saddle/bridge area and are bound down to a standard National tailpiece which is held in place by a combo screw/strap button located in the bottom of the guitar.

Examining the t-bridge indicates that the heavier strings are biased towards two of the cones, whereas the lighter strings are handled primarily by one cone, although all the strings in some way affect all three cones. This relationship of string locations, t-bridge and distribution of vibration to the resonator cones is what gives the M1 its balanced and sweet tonality.

Above left you can see the neck join to the body. The neck is held in place by a “stick” that runs the length of the body’s interior. As with most modern, premium guitars the neck is equipped with a truss rod to adjust play variations that might result as response to humidity in the ambient environment. Also visible are the grained ivoroid bindings on the body. The M1 is a neat, precision constructed, manufactured product that benefits from competent highly trained builders along with the use of numerical, computer controlled machine tools.

You will note the absence of a guitar strap button at the base of the neck. I intend to have one placed by my local guitar shop; however, I plan to order a Waverly white ivoroid button and felt washer from Stewmac, because my guitar shop offers only prosaic silver and/or black metal buttons, or high end Schaller strap lock buttons, which I don’t want to use with this guitar.

Also, above right you can see a shot of the M1’s back. The stained veneer of the layered wood back shows off the beautiful straight grain of the mahogany from which it is constructed.

Finally, as with all premium guitars, the instrument is supplied with a custom-made hardshell case. The guitar fits in snuggly and the outer side of the upper lid has the National logo embroidered into it, which is quite stunning. A word of caution about the logo though… it is easy to muss up if it comes into frictional contact with another object like an adjacent guitar case while traveling in the back area of a car.

To close out this review, I am sharing some sound bite examples of the M1. These were recorded with amplification through a Fishman Loudbox Artist with a Shure SM-58 mic. The actual recording was done with an iPhone 11 equipped with a Shure MV-88 and processed through Apple iMovie.

I would prefer to have a pickup on the guitar but that’s been more challenging than I anticipated. The go-to pickup on resonators, in my judgement, is made by Highlander. I had one put into my steel NRP and it worked well, though you had to haul around a battery powered preamp. Sadly, it appears that Highlander is no longer in business. Further, I was not sure I wanted a guitar tech drilling holes in the M1. Now it seems that the go-to pickup are those made by Jason Krivo Flores out in Portland, OR… I have one on order. The tone samples online sound great; however, the pickup is a bit idiosyncratic in that it attaches to the guitar with blue tack. I will probably write a blog entry about the Krivo after I’ve worked with it for a while.

Anyway… below are two bottleneck tunes recorded in Open D followed by a fingerstyle piece in standard tuning…

In conclusion, I feel fortunate to own a National M1 Tricone. The wait time on a new M1 is currently 6 to 8 months and I’m not getting any younger. The instrument itself is a beautiful example of industrial art and with its balanced tonality plays well, as currently set up in either bottleneck or fingerstyle mode. Highly recommended.

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Open Mic Night at Cup of Joe; May 7, 2021

Cup of Joe, Cedar Falls, Iowa…

With mass vaccinations of Iowans occurring daily, by most visible measures life is slowly returning to pre-pandemic normal. Though masking is still a prevalent and required, people are involving themselves in old routine behaviors like eating at restaurants, visiting coffee shops, and in the case of this posting, attending musical events such as Open Mic Night! We had the great good fortune of access to a most excellent coffee shop, Cup of Joe in Cedar Falls, to host such an event.

The Conditts perform at Open Mic Night

My friend Grant Tracey and I hosted our first Open Mic Night together this past Friday evening, May 7, 2021. In a previous blog posting I wrote in some detail about the technical aspects of hosting an Open Mic scenario, particularly the use of a Bose L1 Pro 32 PA system.

To the left you can see the general set-up situated in the rear of the coffee shop. Between the two performers, on the floor, you will note the Bose subwoofer, the line array speaker tower and hidden behind the singer a T4s mixer that all comprise the PA system. The Bose 32 is spec’d for a larger space than the coffee shop so it easily performed admirably without stress and filled the room with a pleasant level of performance sound. Audio level adjustments of volume, bass, treble and reverb were easily executed. Audience members commented positively on the quality of the sound, which was a relief to me since I personally invested in all the PA hardware. You’ll also notice guitar and mic cables everywhere, stools, mic stands, guitar pedal boards, guitars, and guitar and music stands.

The fact is, there was a great deal of schlepping to get the performance space properly set up. Even though the Bose PA is valued for its portability, by the time you pack in the PA, cables, stools, mic stands, guitars, guitar stands, and guitar pedal boards, its quite an effort! You can see below, in the image of me performing, all the surrounding support hardware required to pull off the event. At first glance, it might not seem like a lot, but it was a lot to haul from home, and then get from the parking lot into the coffee shop. I am grateful that we planned to take 90 minutes to get set up for our first time, and we needed every minute, considering that Grant had to make an emergency run back to my home to fetch a music stand and my iPhone which contained a Bose app to remotely control PA sound quality.

Me and my Collings I-35 knocking out my first set…

I would make the following preliminary conclusions regarding the Open Mic set up to consider before Grant and I do it again:

  • Get to the Coffee Shop early, because set up takes time. I still think we need 90 minutes. Perhaps we will be able to streamline matters in the future, but we’re not there yet.
  • Contrary to my above assertion, as advertised, the Bose L1 Pro 32 snaps together very quickly and gives solid performance. Its the routing of mics, guitars and pedal boards that take extra time.
  • It seems to me easiest to use the 3 channels available on the Bose L1 power stand because the sound quality can be easily manipulated using the Bose app on my iPhone. The app allows me to wander anywhere in the coffee shop to check sound level and tonality and easily adjust it where I stand. With a variety of performers using different guitar types and styles, quick and easy adjustments of sound are of great value.
  • That first night we set up three mics, but I think two is enough. Dropping to two will save time, space, and reduce cables.
  • The two guitar channels and a mic will run off the power stand. An additional mic can be routed through the T4s. This set-up is not written in stone.
  • I do not think we need 2 stools and am thinking one is enough.
  • It is my understanding that there are music stands in the basement of the Coffee Shop, so we do not need to haul one in on Open Mic night.
Grant Tracey and his Les Paul playing his set…

All in all, it was a good night. I’ve seen the coffee shop more crowded on previous Open Mic nights, but there are still some residual pandemic fears keeping people away, and there was an outdoor music venue in operation around the corner, down the street, which was drawing people in. Nevertheless, we had a respectable audience for our initial First Friday Open Mic night.

To the right, you can see fellow host Grant Tracey playing through his set. One of the perks of hosting Open Mic is the chance to play your self and depending on the number of performers who sign up, you may get to play even more.

Playing my National Reso_Lectric in a second set…

In the end, both Grant and I squeezed in two sets each. Anticipating that I might have the opportunity to play more than the standard 15 minute open mic set, I brought along two guitars, both of which made their first public appearances: my Collings I-35 Semi-Hollow bodied electric and my National Reso-Lectric, as seen with me on the left. In addition to the guitars, making a first public appearance, I, for the first time sang publicly. Ever since, Mrs. Silliman, in the 3rd grade, tossed me onto the “inadequate singer” refuse heap when sorting students for participation in grade school chorus, I’ve believed my singing voice somewhat suspect; however, with the encouragement of my wife, Annette, and others I decided to give it a go. Playing finger-style Travis picking technique is also a challenge when trying to sing simultaneously; however, after 5 years of concentrated dedication to guitar playing, I finally broke through this Spring and was able to play and sing simultaneously, which is no mean feat for me!

Here was my playlist:

Set One

  • If I Needed You – Townes Van Zandt
  • Long Distance Call – Muddy Waters
  • Pancho and Lefty – Muddy Waters
  • Vigilante Man – Woody Guthrie (arranged by Ry Cooder)

Set Two

  • Paris, Texas – Ry Cooder
  • You Got to Move – Mississippi Fred McDowell
  • Railroad Bill – traditional (arranged by Tom Feldmann)
  • Corrina, Corrina – traditional (arranged by Stephen Grossman)
  • Baby, Please Don’t Go – Big Joe Williams

Annette was kind enough to film a couple of my tunes… you can view one below, warts and all… I dropped a few notes along the way. This was my rendition of Muddy Waters’ “Long Distance Call.” A bottleneck tune played in standard tuning… You will note that the Coffee Shop was quite noisy and I found it a bit of a distraction, but powered through…

Steve Surles, waiting his turn to play at the Open Mic

If all goes as planned, I will be hosting First Friday Open Mic in June on the 4th. My regular co-host Grant, to my chagrin, is tied up with a local theater engagement, so Steve Surles, who also played the open mic with us on the first night, has volunteered to guest co-host in June. Hopefully too, my son Parker will come back from college in Iowa City to help haul equipment and listen-in which will be a great delight for me! See you then!

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Hosting Open Mic Night with the Bose L1 Pro 32…

Introduction

What to do? What to do with yourself in retirement that continues personal development? What do I like to do? I love the road and photography… Seeing live music is always fun too, but it’s even more fun to make music. Nevertheless, I’m not ready, nor interested in solo gigging at this time nor playing in a band… what is realistic for me is 15 minutes behind the open mic… I’ve missed the open mic as much as anything during the pandemic “lockdowns.”

Cup of Joe on Main in Cedar Falls, IA

Now consider this… What could be more fun than playing at an open mic night? Not only playing open mic night, but also hosting it! You get to play, organize the event, and operate the sound tech, and I’ve always loved tech. For example, I had a ball building a proper pedal board.

In my experience, the best existing open mic night in the Cedar Falls/Waterloo area is hosted by Rick Vanderwall and Bill Guernsey at the excellent coffee shop, Cup of Joe on Main Street. Yet it only happened (pre-pandemic) once per month on the third Friday.

It occurred to me a couple of months ago, as the pandemic began to wane somewhat, and I finished out my two Pfizer vaccinations, that it might be possible to add another open mic night at Cup of Joe on the first Friday of the month. I believed the interest would be there for an additional open mic session. This is especially true when you consider the sizable increase in guitar sales during the “lockdown.” My guess is there is now a more-than-modest increase in the number of live-performance aspirants with new guitars and open mic night is the place to start!

So… I asked Dawn, the proprietor of the coffee shop, if she would be interested in providing the space for an additional open mic night. Along with the request, I promised her that I would provide a “world-class” PA system to support the event… and, to my great, good fortune she said YES! Her only request was that I apply energy to make it a success by marketing the event in the community… fair enough!

A World-Class PA for Open Mic Night

Grant (left) and me (right) checking out axes at Bob’s Guitars in the days before COVID. I love the optical illusion in this photo. In real life Grant towers over me, but in this shot he looks like my little buddy…

I should note that before I embarked on this project, I enlisted my longtime-Iowa-best-friend and guitar playing partner in crime, Grant Tracey, as a cohost for open mic night with me. Running one of those events is really at least a two person operation. Without reservation he agreed to participate. Like me, he saw this as a routine way of getting to play publicly in an easily manageable way.

With Grant on the team, the next step was to acquire a sound system. Cup of Joe does not own a sound system, so a portable one is required to schlep in on the night of the event. A functional small venue sound system would offer multiple channels permitting a few microphones and two to three instruments, which are almost always guitars. Gigging performers at Cup of Joe often use multiple amplifiers; however, a multi-channel portable PA (short for public address system) is also commonly used. In fact, Rick Vanderwall, who hosts the third Friday open mic night has used a Bose portable PA system successfully for several years.

Rick Vanderwall (center) and his PA (seen arrayed behind him)

To the right, you can see Rick’s Cup of Joe open mic set up, with his early model, Bose portable line array in the background. Note in this image that he has three microphones and two instruments “plugged-in.” The Bose system is referred to as a “line array” because it uses a narrow vertical tower containing multiple two inch speakers alternatively angled left and right. In addition to the tower, which handles the mid and high ranges, there is a sub woofer to provide coverage for the lower sound frequencies. Sitting on a chair behind Rick you can just see a section of a mixer used to add extra channels to the PA and to manage tonal balances. I’m not sure about Rick’s, but some mixers, like Bose’s T4s also provide effects such as delay and reverb.

As I said earlier, I promised Dawn (of Cup of Joe) that Grant and I would deliver a quality sound system for our open mic nights. I did not want to beg or borrow a system, nor did I want to chase anyone around for funds. This project was initially my idea… I wanted to make it happen quickly and without complication, so I made the personal commitment to invest in a good PA. In the event that I ever do a solo gig, I would also be set up with a personal PA. These systems can be pricey, but I saw it as an investment in my primary retirement avocation. My retirement counselor at TIAA stated bluntly that if you want to do something that’s important for yourself, then do it now if it’s within reason and resources… don’t wait! So there it is… I went shopping for a PA.

I did some initial shopping at the local guitar shop and googled around on the internet, but I must admit I was predisposed towards Bose primarily because Rick Vanderwall’s system worked so well and reliably during the many open mics I played at Cup of Joe. Further, I’ve owned several Bose products, including floor standing speakers, bluetooth speakers, Wave radios and earphones. They were all solid products. In the end, if Bose was good enough for Rick, it was good enough for me!

Selecting a Bose PA for Purchase

Bose L1 Pro line of portable array PA’s. From left to right: Models 8, 16 & 32 (with two choices of subwoofer)

It so happened that Bose just introduced a whole new line of vertical array portable PA’s in late 2020, so I had available to me the latest Bose technology to select from. Referred to as the L1 Pro Systems, they came in with three different models. The diminutive Pro 8, the middle size Pro 16 and the full sized Pro 32. The numeral refers to the number of speakers in the vertical array.

I must admit that I was a bit astonished when I first saw Rick Vanderwall’s Bose with the narrow vertical tower. The vertical array of smallish speakers accompanied with a sub woofer is relatively new technology, but it’s been widely accepted (and copied) since its introduction some years ago. Following is a Bose PA introduction from Youtube:

I spent a good deal of time studying reviews of the various Bose L1 Pros. Many of the reviews were simply regurgitations of Bose marketing literature; however, out in YouTube world were several independent reviews which helped clarify my final decision as to which model to purchase.

Interior layout of Cup of Joe

First a word on the space in which the PA must perform for open mic night. As you can see in the image of Cup of Joe, it is a long, relatively narrow space. The performers are located way down at the far end of the facility, so a PA system would have to possess the power to project along the entire length and width of the space. The music should project evenly so that sitting and standing people get roughly the same sound level, as well as from front to back of the room. Fortunately, Bose claims a properly spec’d and set-up L1 system meets those requirements.

The disassembled L1 Pro 16, with small plastic spacer (center) that locates between the subwoofer and the speaker array.

In sum, my conclusion was the Pro 8 was underpowered for the venue in which Cup of Joe is located. The Pro 16 appeared to be a logical choice as it had the power to cover the space adequately, was reasonably priced and did not appear to be particularly cumbersome to move around. As you can see on the right, the Pro 16 comes in three pieces: the subwoofer, the longer array of sixteen two inch speakers and a 8 inch blank spacer that resides between the woofer and the speaker array. The purpose of the spacer is to raise the height of the sixteen two inch speakers to get a proper sound distribution. Unfortunately, the decision by Bose designers to use a “plastic” spacer has raised some criticism. Some reviewers claimed the spacer was insubstantially engineered resulting in wobbling of the tower. Other reviewers complained of a high pitched hiss emanating from the speakers. As I understand it, PA’s do come with a built in “noise floor” that varies by speaker design and system wattage; however, a high-pitched hiss is not what I wanted to contend with… period. I contacted Bose technical staff, but they were either evasive or oblivious to the critiques of the Pro 16. No help there…

Though it was more money than I initially wanted to spend, I decided to acquire the L1 Pro 32 because of the issues raised about the Pro 16. Bose offers either a very large Sub 2 or a smaller, (but big enough) Sub 1 woofer to pair with a two part vertical, floor standing tower. I chose the smaller Sub 1 because of its more manageable size and the low frequency sound profile was more in tune with live music, rather than DJ bass thumping that the Sub 2 is best designed for. Because both sections of the vertical array are substantial metal columns that lock into each other and because the column sinks several inches into the floor power stand, there is very little, if any, wobble.

L1 Pro 32 power stand into which vertical array is mounted.

The power stand offers a chunky, substantial, and stable base from which the vertical array arises. The stand connects to and powers the subwoofer with a proprietary cable, which is nice as only one 120 volt AC receptacle is required to power the entire rig. The stand also contains jack access to three channels. Two are 1/4″/XLR combo jacks, and the other is a 1/4″ jack with various other auxiliary possibilities, including bluetooth access. Lots of flexibility with channel tonal controls are available. The tonal controls are also remotely adjustable through an iPhone/Android app, which is super convenient. Finally, Bose has a baked-in library of tone profiles for various instruments and brands that can be deployed to fine tune the mix.

Here’s a Bose summary review of the L1 Pro 32:

Bose T4s

Because the L1 Pro 32 power stand offers only 3 channels, I decided to acquire the Bose Tonematch T4s mixer to provide an additional 4 channels. The mixer attaches to the power stand with a ruggedized LAN cable, which transmits digital instruction to the L1 and receives power from the L1, thus keeping power needs simple. The T4s offers deep functionality in terms of sculpting sound profiles and will take me some time to master to its best advantage.

Experience to date with the L1 Pro 32

The Bose system arrived a day later than expected because of a freak snow storm that prevented UPS from getting to my home, so I was delighted when it finally arrived. I set up the L1 tower first, which went together easily and quickly. The connection to the Sub 1 also was rapidly accomplished. Sadly, I could not use the T4s because Bose recommended a firmware update and I had to order a cable from Amazon to connect my computer to the mixer.

Sub 1 with race track speaker (left) and section of vertical array of two inch speakers (right)

Without the T4s attached, I still had three channels and was able to test my Collings I 35 electric, my Taylor 812ce, my National Resolectric and a Shure SM 58 microphone all in my living room. In fact, via Bose software, I saved individual tonal setting in the system’s memory for each guitar. The system played clean as country water and interacted nicely with my pedalboard. The combination of the racetrack subwoofer and the 32 neodymium 2 inch drivers offered a consistent ear pleasing sound.

32 speaker vertical array

According to Bose literature, the speaker tower offers a floor to 7 foot high vertical sound spread outwards that also arrays itself 180 degrees, side to side. My experience was that you could sit anywhere in the living room of my house as long as you were not behind the tower and hear the music perfectly well. I made this test by bluetoothing my iPhone to the system and then playing the Beatles’ Revolver. When I disassembled the system and moved it up to my garage, the sound produced by the L1 could be heard across my yard quite easily when either Grant or I played guitar and sang.

Initial Disappointment and Concerns with the PA/Tonematch Combination

LAN cable to Connect T4s to L1 Pro

I will cut to the chase. After I updated the firmware on the T4s Tonematch mixer, I had intermittant success connecting it to the L1 Pro 32. In short, the instruments or mics channeled into the T4s received the signal as evidenced by a green flashing light, but failed to make it to the L1. It actually worked for a while in my living room, but when I disassembled the L1 and moved it to the garage, the T4s was a total fail! No matter what I tried, I could not get it to work.

Bose L1, T4s, my pedal board, an SM 58 mic and my Collings in my garage.

The fail was on a Saturday, and on Monday Bose frontline technical help in the Philippines had no suggestions to remediate my problem of connectivity, but agreed to replace the entire system including the L1 and the T4s. The new L1 came the next day, but the T4s took almost two weeks to arrive. Even then, after replacement I had some initial difficulty making the connection between the two devices. I concluded that the weak link is the LAN cable and unless it is solidly connected, signal failure will occur. When queried about this shortcoming the Bose people were evasive. This time around though I was able to get the device to work in my living room, and after disassembly and reassembly up in my garage. So we’re good to go, but I do have some remaining qualms about connectivity issues between the two devices.

To be prudent, I plan to run another garage set-up to calm my nerves and make sure the system is functional.

We are Good to Go!

My son Parker who is a dual major at the University of Iowa, including Graphic Design put this poster together for us, so in a month we will be at Cup of Joe!

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Flip your tablature/music page with a smirk!

Piles of paper charts replaced by tech…

A year or so ago, I posted a blog article about replacing paper with electronic charts using an Apple iPad, combined with the forScore app bluetoothed to a PageFlip DragonFly foot pedal. The pedal enabled page flipping for a multi-page tune. I use all this tech because I play a lot of country blues tunes, but simply cannot memorize them. While I develop finger-muscle memory for the tunes, it is necessary for me to have the chart as a cue when playing.

Smallish iPad Air in my practice zone…

In sum, with an iPad Air, a mic stand, a Hercules tablet holder, and finally, a DragonFly foot pedal, I replaced an ungainly, non portable music stand and sloppy, wrinkly, taped together hard paper music charts that flopped all over the place. How did it work out over time? Good, but after a while, I wished I’d purchased the larger, more expensive iPad Pro to make reading the music easier (the Pro screen actually projects a size equivalent to single standard 8×10″ page in a paper chart). Still, I made the investment in the smallish iPad Air and was initially loath to waste money by trading it in, much as I wanted to.

PageFlip Dragonfly foot pedal…

It’s important to note too that while the foot pedal functioned properly most of the time, I found it a challenge sometimes to stay focused on the music and simultaneously stab my foot out to find the proper forward shift pedal and avoid going accidentally backwards. Furthermore, the pedal would go to sleep when not in use for an extended period of time, and required multiple stomps to wake it back up, which was frustrating when immersed in the middle of a tune. Finally, the “in-screen” keyboard on the iPad was disabled by the pedal when active, which made typing annotations onto the music chart impossible.

Then, one day I was annotating a country blues chart and did a web search to see if it was possible to cut and paste lyrics or move a music bar to another location while using forScore. After finding online instructions for how to execute that capability and then fumbling around for an extended period of time trying to accomplish a simple cut and paste, I finally discovered that you had to be a member of forScore Pro to access that feature!

forScore Pro is similar to one of those patreon accounts that are so popular now for financially supporting online activities. For an additional small annual fee, you get added features like cut and paste and also support future improvements for the app. I joined because cut and paste is a very, very useful feature to arrange and annotate a chart. You also get occasional new update notes from forScore as a Pro member.

Apple True Depth Camera tech…

What I soon discovered after joining forScore Pro was that the 2020 iPad Pro equipped with their True Depth Camera technology, combined with the latest iOS 14 operating system would allow page changing within forScore with facial gestures! This is the same highly sophisticated technology that allows a person to log into an iPhone or iPad with facial recognition.

12.9 inch iPad Pro

The enhancements offered by the new iPad Pro were enough to push me over the edge. I wanted a larger surface area to see the charts and I was really interested in using facial gestures to replace the foot pedal! So, easy as pie, I arranged a trade-in for my year-old iPad Air and ordered a 12.9 inch iPad Pro. When the new iPad arrived, I transferred forScore and my music library over to it in short order.

I found out right away that my existing iPad mic stand holder no longer worked with the 12.9″ iPad. I owned a Hercules holder (lower right) and really liked it as it was very stable and easy to get the iPad in and out of the holder, but sadly it does not open wide enough to easily get the larger iPad Pro into the grips. So, after searching around I found a “decent” holder manufactured by Caddy Buddy (lower left). It’s good enough, but I still would prefer the Hercules device for ease of getting the iPad in and out of it and it’s more robust in construction. It would be a relatively easy design change to fix the Hercules device, but I see no evidence that the manufacturer is planning to do so.

  • Caddy Buddy iPad Holder
  • Hercules iPad Holder

Once the iPad is mounted in the mic stand at roughly the same level as your face, it can then be set-up via forScore to activate facial gestures to turn pages in a musical chart. As a reminder, you cannot access this feature in the settings menu unless you are a Pro subscription member (lower left). Inside the Pro settings (lower center) you can access Face Gestures and activate a calibration procedure for facial recognition purposes.

  • Settings Menu
  • Facial Gesture Calibration
  • Fine tune Facial Gesture

You have two face gesture choices, which are “turning your head” or “moving your mouth” in a kind of smirk to the left or right. I hoped that one of the gestures would have been a head tilt, but that was not available, and when I queried the forScore people about adding that feature they demurred. Head turning made little sense to me because you have to take your eyes off the music, and to be frank, I could never get it to work reliably.

Lip movement to change page

On the other hand, lip/mouth movement does work! After calibrating the iPad to recognize you with 1) a relaxed face, 2) lips moved right, and 3) lips moved left the device will flip pages on command. In the upper right image you can see that there are sliders also available to fine tune sensitivity. There’s also a test protocol to see how well you’ve tuned sensitivity by ease of moving small blue dots on the screen by shifting your lips.

So… How does it work???

For the most part it works pretty well; however, I do have some concerns with over sensitivity of the device. Sometimes, for reasons unknown to me, the page will flip without command. If you reduce sensitivity with the calibration slider to much to avoid phantom page flips, then you must really wrench your face to flip a page, which is distracting to you and an audience. Consequently, it takes time to fine tune the system’s sensitivity to your facial movements. I have some concern that changes in ambient lighting may also affect the reliability of the page flip. Also, I play sitting down and am concerned about seat height variation from home to perhaps a coffee shop open mic stage seat also affecting page flip accuracy. Finally, on occasion when I am playing for someone I will miss a note, then grimace at the pain of musical failure, and at that moment the device will sometimes respond to my dismay by flipping the page on its own, which makes matters all the worse.

Cut and paste option for moving lyrics to the chart…

In conclusion, the iPad Pro combined with forScore Pro is a keeper… I really like the larger surface area for viewing a musical chart and the cut and paste option for annotation is a great addition to the app. As far as page flipping goes, I am intent on working with the facial gesture feature, but will probably keep the foot pedal on standby to reverse unwanted spontaneously flips. There you have it…

Thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment if you wish to… you can also subscribe above too…

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National Guitar’s New Bridge Installed…

Flipboard Online Magazine Logo

I believe it was on Flipboard, the online, choose your own content magazine, that I first learned that National Guitar Company had redesigned it’s bridge and biscuit, which they referred to as the Revolution Biscuit-Bridge. Having owned 3 National Resonators and still possessing two of them, I was naturally interested in the innovation, but decided at first glance that it looked a bit too complicated to install and it was expensive… still, I remained interested and would occasionally look for a review… when I queried one of the National Guitar Facebook groups about the new bridge all I heard was crickets… So, I pretty much forgot about the subject…

Mike Dowling on Zoom…

Earlier in the Summer of 2020, I had the great, good fortune of spending several Zoom sessions with recording artist and highly accomplished performer, Mike Dowling. Being prevented from doing his usual summer festival and workshop gigs because of the COVID pandemic, he was recruiting guitar enthusiasts to study with him via Zoom from his home in Mexico. So, I spent several hours with him over the course of a month.

My favorite Mike Dowling recording…

If you’re not familiar with Mike Dowling he is a guitar virtuoso and I discovered him because of his particular artistry with National Resonator guitars. He’s made a couple of excellent educational DVD’s for Happy Traum’s Homespun Music Instruction enterprise. That’s how I found him as I was looking for some basics about how to play bottleneck guitar.

After working with his DVD’s, I was delighted to learn that Mike was performing at the Creek House venue in Minneapolis in May 2018 on a Friday Night and the other two days he would host a guitar workshop. Having never done a workshop before, I decided to attend! The concert was sublime and the workshop was great fun though I was in over my head, surrounded by guitarists far more accomplished then me.

Me and Mike Dowling at Creek House Workshop

To the right you can see a shot of me and Mike at the Creek House Workshop. You will also note I am holding, what was at the time, my recently acquired National Reso-Rocket WB (wood body). Mike is holding the metal version of the same guitar.

I involved myself with resonator guitars because of my interest in playing country blues. I tried out an inexpensive Fender resonator at my local guitar shop and really liked it; however, I thought it was a little under-built and decided to go with the gold standard and purchased a National NRP Steel resonator online through Reverb. I liked the NRP but thought a wood bodied guitar might be even more to my liking so I subsequently purchased the WB from Dream Guitars near Asheville, NC via Reverb. I remember sitting at a concert in the balcony of the Englert Theater with my wife in Iowa City, and covertly communicating via text with Dream Guitar’s owner Paul Heumiller. He made me a great offer and we closed the deal right there… I was stoked! The short Youtube segment below gives more detail about the WB and it’s developer Steve James:

Reso-Rocket WB with Hot Plate

On the left, you can see that my WB has two knurled knobs for tone and volume control when the guitar is plugged into an amp. The sound pickup is a single coil design located between the guitar’s bridge and finger board. This whole arrangement is referred to as a Hot Plate and was actually designed by Mike Dowling. In fact, Mike sold me mine. In addition to performing and teaching, Mike also is an agent for National Guitars. You might be interested to know that Mike also worked with National Guitars to resurrect the deeper wooden bodied El Trovador model.

All this brings me to the fact that during our time on Zoom, Mike brought up the new Revolution Biscuit-Bridge, which he had installed on two of his resonators. He enthused about the flexibility of the bridge, particularly that it could be raised or lowered with set screws while the standard one could not. As he described it, he would lower the bridge when playing finger-style and raise it when he planned to play bottleneck. I became interested because the action was very high on my WB and it made playing anything other than bottleneck-style difficult, which was not really a monumental problem because I had plenty of other guitars that would serve for finger-style, but I was intrigued anyway.

Screen shot of Revolution Biscuit from National Guitar website…

Mike also mentioned that the new biscuit was machined aluminum, thus appearing shiny and metallic, which was very different from the black painted wood of traditional National biscuit/bridge combinations. I inferred from his discussion that traditionalists might be put off by the shiny metallic appearance of the new bridge. He informed me that National was considering selling painted black versions of the new bridge in the future and that I might want to wait. I was not particularly bothered by the shiny appearance of the new bridge and actually like it a lot.

Screen shot of National resonator cone…

About a week or so later I ordered a Revolution Biscuit bridge from Mike. He said he would be happy to consult with me during the installation, and strongly recommended that I purchase a new cone along with the bridge. The traditional biscuit is both screwed and glued into the cone and removing it leaves a dimple that can prevent the new bridge from seating properly unless the dimple is sculpted out, which is difficult given the fragility of the cone. Since I wanted to DIY this conversion, I purchased a new cone with the Revolution bridge to avoid sculpting the older cone.

Various Bridge saddle woods available from National Guitars… another website screenshot…

In addition to the newly machined biscuit, National now offers a choice of bridge saddle woods, including, maple, ebony, rosewood, walnut and holly. I was under the impression that I would receive the full set of saddle woods with my order, but only received the traditional maple one, which is just as well because it was a bit of a stressful effort to “fit” it out for the biscuit. I do remember Mike recommending the maple saddle wood and I like the way it eventually came out in both appearance and sound. Just today in a note to me, Mike wrote that in a “blind” sound test he cannot tell much difference in the various woods or between old and new biscuits. To him the real value of the Revolution Biscuit is the ease of string height adjustment.

So, the package arrived from National about a week or so later. Contained therein was the cone, the aluminum biscuit, a single maple bridge saddle, a length of synthetic sandpaper, and two small Allen wrenches… Why the sandpaper? Because the saddle wood must be shaved down to achieve the proper string to fretboard action…

Measuring string height bridge to biscuit…

For starters Mike had me measure the string height off of the original biscuit and from there he recommended that I shave one 1/8th of an inch off of the bottom of the new maple saddle. Below you can see an image sent to me from Mike Dowling illustrating how to mark the saddle wood for trimming. You will note that he angled his where-to- sand-to mark so that the saddle is slanted, which would allow for the treble string to be closer to the fret board than the bass string. He recommended, in the end, for the bass string to be 7/64 of an inch off of the twelfth fret and for the treble string 6/64 of an inch off of the twelfth fret for a good nominal setting. I had to do quite a bit of sanding in stages, fitting the saddle into the bridge and then measuring before the process was completed.

Before (left) and after (right) images of saddle wood as a result of trimming.
Reso-Rocket sound cavity exposed…

To the right you can see the Reso-Rocket with the original cone and bridge removed. To avoid having to restring the guitar, I controlled the strings on the neck with a capo and used electrical tape to hold the string balls within the tail piece. This way after setting the new cone and biscuit in place it was easy to refasten the tailpiece and tune the guitar back up.

As I said earlier, I went through several stages of sanding the saddle, placing it in the biscuit and mounting the biscuit on the cone. Then I would drop the cone into the guitar, replace the coverplate, remount the tailpiece, retune the guitar and then make my string measurements. The bridge guard was also removed and stayed off throughout the fitting process. During one iteration of fitting, I realized I had to make sure that there was more of a slant sanded into the base of the bridge. I think I did this three, maybe four times… it was a tedious process and not for anyone in a hurry.

Above you can see the two cones, side by side with the new one on the left. If you’re not familiar with resonator technology, the string vibration is intercepted by the bridge, then transferred down to the cone via the biscuit. The cone then amplifies the string vibration giving the characteristic resonator sound back outwards to the listener. The original biscuits were wood, so the transition to an aluminum biscuit makes some traditionalists uncomfortable. Some posters on FaceBook do not like the new biscuit, either on face value or after they’ve tried it out. There are others who have adopted the new approach.

To the left you can see a close-up of the new aluminum bridge and maple saddle mounted onto the cone. You will note that there are three holes set into the saddle that are located in between the carve-outs where the guitar strings traverse. The holes allow access to set screws that are located below in the biscuit itself. Adjusting the set screws can raise the height of the saddle and consequently the height of the strings off of the fret board.

The saddle fits very firmly in the biscuit. The biscuit is machined with a slight zig-zag shaped channel and the saddle is shaped to fit snuggly in the aforementioned channel so that there is only one way for the two to combine together. I really had to press firmly to get the saddle into the channel and the only way I could get the saddle back out was to raise it with the set screws and then pry it out with a small flat head screwdriver, being mindful that the Maple bridge was pretty delicate and kind of expensive.

I was not prepared to make a wood vs aluminum biscuit comparison after completion of the project; however, below you can see a quick A/B comparison made by Steve James:

I do have below a couple of short videos of my WB with the new Biscuit installed. Just below is a short clip of me playing Muddy Waters’ I Can’t Be Satisfied in Open G tuning, bottleneck style. I am using a brass Tone Dome slide purchased from National:

I Can’t Be Satisfied… McKinley Morganfield

I am also presenting a brief finger-style tune on the same guitar. Before I installed the new bridge, it was very difficult to play finger-style on this guitar because the action was so high. Here now I am able to do it, but I must admit because I followed Steve James advice on Youtube and installed a heavy set of Newtone Archtop strings, it was more difficult for me than it should have been… those strings are fine for bottleneck playing but a bit heavy for me to play finger-style… another lesson for me in the school of hard knocks and dirty socks! This is a Stef Grossman arrangement of the Rev. Gary Davis’s Cocaine Blues in standard tuning.

In sum, I am pleased with the biscuit conversion… I believe the saddle as currently located is in a sweet spot where I can play it bottleneck or finger-style without adjustment; however I think I will eventually migrate to the lighter string gauge I was using before following Steve James’s advice.

I like the sound of the guitar too; however, I just noticed during this writing that National Guitars is now recommending placing a wooden gasket between the aluminum biscuit and the cone which probably alters the sound somewhat… According to Mike Dowling, in correspondence while writing this blog, the gasket may be most important for people mounting the Revolution biscuit on an older cone… While the folks at National believe the tone may be mellowed out with the wooden gasket, that remains to be assessed… I may explore this wooden gasket further…

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Nehemiah…

The soundtrack from the Coen Brother’s film O Brother, Where Art Thou? is one of my longtime favorites in my CD collection… I practically wore the bits and bytes off the disc it was played so many times… The film was great too… The tunes on the soundtrack are a broad sampling of old time American music, mostly sung by contemporary musicians… My favorite recording was an old country blues tune performed by Chris Thomas King… it was a haunting rendition and I searched King’s other recordings to find more tunes just like the one he sang; however, I did not have very good luck and gave up… most of his other body of work was very different, so far as I could tell…

click for Amazon link…

It wasn’t until just this summer 2020 that I tumbled onto what Chris Thomas King was singing in the film. I had the great good fortune to take a few online guitar lessons with a highly accomplished performing musician/recording artist and he pushed me, after hearing some of my video recordings, to listen more closely to the original tunes that I was playing and listed several 8 bar blues tunes as starter examples, one of which was a Skip James tune called Crow Jane. Suddenly, I remembered reading about Skip James in Zeke Schein’s excellent book, Portrait of a Phantom. Schein’s book actually inspired me to dig deeper into roots music and I eventually committed to learning and playing country blues. Back at the time of reading Schein’s book the connection of Skip James to O Brother! went completely over my head, other than to note that Schein had a very high regard for the musician, and that he was somewhat obscure except to country blues aficionados.

After purchasing and listening to a Skip James CD to study Crow Jane, it finally occurred to me that Chris Thomas King was playing a Skip James tune in O Brother! I was awestruck by James’s precision finger-style guitar playing and his haunting and unique, for that genre, falsetto voice. It was at that point that I decided to try to learn to play some Skip James tunes, which I thought might be difficult but would be a great summer challenge!

click on image for link to Guitar Workshop

Having had excellent experience with DVD lessons sold on Stefan Grossman’s Guitar Workshop website, I went shopping for Skip James material and found this wonderful set of lessons including tabbed tunes of some of James’s most memorable tunes. Similar to the way in which Grossman teaches a tune, Tom Feldmann breaks down the song section by section and then plays it slowly with a split screen showing both hands in action. This approach works great for me.

Nehemiah Curtis “Skip” James, was born in the very early 1900’s in Bentonia, Mississippi, and died after a lengthy battle with cancer the year I graduated high school in 1969. For the most part, he was obscure much of his life and today is barely mentioned in books about country blues in comparison to other genre musicians like Lonnie Johnson or Blind Lemon Jefferson. He recorded a few sides in the early 1900’s and drew some notice, but the depression of the 1930’s drove him into obscurity, so he quit performing and entered into the ministry. Years later while languishing in a hospital room, dealing with the onset of cancer, he was discovered by country blues aficionado John Fahey, and in 1964 Fahey brought him to the public’s attention at venues such as the Newport Folk Festival. As a result, he was re-recorded so there are two sets of James recordings that can be found either from his early days or later in the 1960’s. Below you can listen to an early recording of Hard Times Killing Floor Blues, the tune that initially beguiled me when I saw O Brother!

According to the introduction of my Guitar Workshop DVD, Tom Feldmann explains that James wrote and played songs in standard tuning (EADGBE) and also in what’s referred to as Cross-tuning or D Minor tuning (DADFAD) which is somewhat similar to Open D/Vastapol tuning except the F# string is flatted to F. I like D Minor tuning and the somewhat unusual haunting tone it creates. I currently have my Taylor 914ce tuned to D Minor all of the time.

Well, I dove right into Skip James tunes. I began with the standard tuned 8 bar, Crow Jane, although my tabbed transcription varies from 8 to eleven bars from verse to verse depending on how James played it when he recorded. The source of Crow Jane is unknown; however, it is believed to have emanated originally in the Piedmont region of Virginia, North and South Carolina. My online teacher found James’s approach “crooked” because of the verse/bar variation, and it annoyed him as well as my use Feldmann’s tablature, which actually ended with us parting ways, even though I liked him a lot. Below you can see my rendering of a few versus of Crow Jane on my Taylor 812ce piped through a Fishman Artist amp, some compression, octaver, and reverb.

There are country blues fans who believe that the tunes should ONLY be played on acoustic guitars, which, in truth, has never constrained me. I like playing the tunes on both acoustic and electric platforms. Occasionally, I have a posting kicked off a FaceBook group for violating that sanctity, but if it was good enough for Muddy Waters, it’s good enough for me. So in that regard below I am posting a more complete version of Crow Jane played on my Taylor T3z acoustic/electric hybrid piped through a Mesa Boogie Filmont 50 amplifier on a clean channel, and pedal effects including octaver, compression, tremolo, delay, and reverb:

I will note that for me, a tune, is a work in progress for weeks, months, and even years until I have it nailed down to where I am totally happy with its rendering. I will also point out the obvious that I choose not to sing these tunes, though there are lyrics for them. To quote Stefan Grossman, “I am a guitar player, not a singer.” Consequently, the tunes I choose to play must stand on their own as instrumentals, at least in my judgement. My James tunes are early in the process, but I have them functional enough and absolutely love playing them. After getting Crow Jane through its initial paces I moved onto a the D Minor tuning, Hard Time Killing Floor Blues, the tune that initially attracted me to James’s work.

There are a few other James tunes that sound good as instrumentals that I intend to add to my repertoire in the future. In fact, I am currently working on another D Minor tune Four O’Clock Blues… until then, thanks for looking in… comments are welcome…

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In Corona Isolation… Might as well learn a new bottleneck blues tune…

Butterfly shot on the banks of the Cape Fear River…

We have a longstanding tradition in my family to visit one of my grown daughters during Spring Break. In year’s past we’ve travelled either to Jacksonville, FL or Wilmington, NC for our brief escape from the typically raw, cold, dreary Iowa late Winter/early Spring.

Sadly, for us and many more fellow inhabitants of the U.S. travel plans were kiboshed because of the volatile circumstances revolving around the dreaded Covid19 Corona virus. Being of retired age, I’ve been repeatedly warned by the media and government that I’m flying in the danger zone, so I, along with my wife, college age son and Brittany dog are hunkered down in our home waiting for the Angel of Death to passover…

Here’s an interesting mini-documentary elaborating on key factors leading to the Angel of Death’s most recent origin…

In addition to packing for my cancelled Spring Break trip, I was also in preparation mode for my first official gig along with my pal Grant at our local coffee shop in Cedar Falls, IA, so rather than learning any new tunes, I was focused on refining those in my repertoire. I planned on playing a country blues bottleneck/fingerpicking guitar set and Grant plays his original folk/punk/Americana tunes. The gig was scheduled for April 3 and it does not take a lot of imagination to conclude that our national virus drama will not be over by then, and our show will be postponed until another time. Hopefully, Cup of Joe weathers the storm…

  • Cup of Joe exterior
  • Cup of Joe interior
  • Pre-Covid (PC), Grant and me (standing) hanging out at Bob’s Guitars

So, what to do? Take walks, read, cook, make tea, watch the tube, obsess over the stock market collapse and look on in dismay at the latest word on community spread of the virus… Learning a new tune might take my mind elsewhere to a more constructive space… So that’s what I decided to do…

National Reso-Lectric…

Because I so enjoy playing my new hybrid acoustic/electric National Reso-Lectric, which is tuned to Open D, I decided to learn another bottleneck tune on that particular guitar. I own an educational DVD with instruction and tablature available from Stef Grossman with tunes still unlearned in Open D, so I dug in and decided to study the last tune on his set list called Guitar Rag.

Stef Grossman Bottleneck DVD

Stef Grossman is an extraordinarily excellent teacher in video format and the included tablature’s are accessible and easy to follow, though the tab arrangement is a little idiosyncratic. Rather than placing the fretting instructions on the lines of the tab which is the usual format, they are in-between the lines… i.e., the spacing between the lines symbolizes the six guitar strings instead of the lines themselves. It takes a little getting used to and I like it now.

Typically, Grossman introduces a tune and gives some brief historical background, then he plays through it at speed, following that he breaks down the key elements to playing the piece and finally does a slow split screen playback showing both hands in motion.

Stef Grossman at work on my MacBook…

To the right you can see Stef Grossman at work on my MacBook. The pair of DVD’s that come with this instructional are packed with country blues to learn, as well as film and recorded examples of the tunes in their original form, pulled straight off the 78 rpm platters. One DVD focuses on Open G while the other on Open D bottleneck tunes.

Weaver and Martin…

Upon first pass, I did not listen too closely to Grossman’s introduction, but on second review I learned that Guitar Rag was a tune played/recorded originally by Sylvester Weaver in the early 1920’s, and written by Weaver with blues singer Sara Martin. Even more interesting, Guitar Rag was the first solo blues tune ever recorded! Consequently, this tune is exceptionally important in country blues history. Weaver was one of the first guitarists to accompany blues singers like Martin. Before then, larger bands backed the singers.

Below I include a link to Weaver’s recording of Guitar Rag. He first recorded this tune in 1923 and later re-recorded it in 1927, which sounded much better. Known also as The Man with the Talking Guitar, he spent most of his life in Louisville, KY. It’s written that he played slide-style with the guitar flat on his lap and used a knife as the slide. After recording about 50 tunes, he retired from music in 1929 and chauffeured a wealthy family for years afterwards. This is his 1927 version of Guitar Rag:

Not only was Guitar Rag an historically important tune, it was also popular and covered by other artists, including Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys playing it as Steel Guitar Rag. The YouTube recording I share below suggests that the Bob Wills’s pedal steel guitar player Leon McCauliffe claimed to have written the tune in 1936, which I hope is not true, but if it is, seems all wrong and exploitative… Steel Guitar Rag was immensely popular and introduced the archetypal pedal steel guitar to country music.

https://youtu.be/hxzxH6wIPCY
Guitar and associated amp with pedal board…

As I wrote earlier in this piece, my go-to guitar for this tune is my acoustic/electric hybrid National Reso-Lectric. I run it through a Black Faced Fender Princeton Reverb Amp, as well as an Octaver, Compressor, a bit of boost, Tremelo, Delay and Reverb. The pedals fatten the sound and enhance the natural sustain of the resonator cone. I use mostly, the P90 neck pick up, with a dash of the piezo that resides on the biscuit bridge to get a warmer tone.

Guitar Slides…

I own a variety of slides though I have never tried using a knife like they say Sylvester Weaver used. My favorite slide now is the solid brass one located second from the left. It gives me a nice, fat, warm tone that I am partial to. That particular slide I purchased from National and it is a Tone Dome design created originally by master slide guitar player Ben Powell.

I’ve been working on this piece just a few days; however, it is coming along enough to generate an excerpt recording of part of the tune, which I decided is necessary to end this blog entry properly. There are still some rough spots as I lack full familiarity with the piece. I’ve attached an image of the first page of Stef Grossman’s arrangement of Guitar Rag. If you’re interested in acquiring the DVD’s you can find them here at this link.

Grossman tablature…

Recording at home is a bit of a challenge when my wife and son are both sequestered here with me, but here is my latest version of this classic piece. For information about how I record, follow this link.

Final notes: Guitar Strap by El Dorado. Hat by Carlos Santana. If you can’t play like him, look like him… Sweatshirt logo: Tar Heel Bred, Tar Heel Dead…

Thanks for looking in… Subscribe to follow me in the upper right corner of the blog, and/or leave a note… thanks…

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In the stack… current reading about blues, guitars, pedals, etc.

Grant and me at the local guitar shop…

I have the great, good fortune now in my retirement to spend as much time as I wish focused on all things guitars. After a harrowing visit to the Mayo Clinic for an annual physical, I was eventually declared good to go, so when I returned home I felt even more fortunate to have time to develop my musical sensibilities and skills.

To that end, I scheduled my first “gig” at the local coffee shop for early April. Along with my friend Grant, we will perform for a couple of hours on a Friday night. Cup of Joe is a pleasant, low pressure venue to perform… the coffee, tea and snacks are great and the people are kind…

Cup of Joe in Cedar Fall, IA

Grant and I will take turns alternating at the mic during the evening. He plays his original Folk-Punk-Americana on acoustic guitar, while I play finger-style and bottleneck country blues on a couple of resonators and a Taylor hybrid acoustic/electric guitar. So we are both feverishly sharpening our chops for the performance next month.

I am not particularly anxious about this gig, as I’ve performed at Cup of Joe numerous times at Open Mic Night… This time it should be more pleasant for me, as I won’t feel the time pressure that you do when all you have is fifteen minutes at the mic and there are people lined up to play after you…

In addition to working on my chops, I also have the freedom to read as much as I can abut all things guitars and blues… Here are some the books, on my short stack that I am either reading, have read, or intend to get to in the short term:

I just finished reading this wonderful book. Compiled by Jas Obrecht a lifelong musical journalist for journals like Guitar Player Magazine. Of the dozens and dozens of guitarists he’s interviewed over the years, he offers in this book some of the very best. It was fascinating to read what some of the best players think about their music and how they approach the instrument. Included are interviews with Neil Young, Jerry Garcia, Tom Petty, Carlos Santana, Ben Harper and Johnny Winter. Highly recommended if you love all things guitars! Published by the University of North Carolina Press, so it’s a classy binding.

I was so pleased with Obrecht’s Talking Guitar, I went ahead and picked up two of his other books that fall right into my wheelhouse of interest. Both new books are about blues players. The first about the early pre-electric country blues players and the second about the players who led the transition to Chicago/Detroit style electric blues. Reading these books should add to my knowledge base when I banter with an audience about the music I play…

Pedal Crush is a monumental tome about anything you could possibly want to know about the pedals that are used to augment and enhance the sound of a guitar. Published by Bjooks, I had to order this one out of Denmark. It’s coffee table book big and pricey, and I am just about 1/4 of the way into it. Including interviews with various pedal builders and guitar players who use pedals, it is a comprehensive and wonderful journey through this particular world of technology.

If you’re wondering why I am so fascinated by pedals, here’s my latest board iteration. It’s great fun to sculpt sound with a pedal board. For more details about most of my pedals, check here…

Until later…