Tag: country blues

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The Immaculate Santa Cruz H-13… My favorite all time guitar?

Introduction

National Reso-Lectric

I’ve written on this blog before that I lose patience with a guitar that no longer calls to me and as a result will consider it trade worthy for an instrument that I’d put to greater use. There’s too much financial value and physical space being occupied by an unused guitar. If you follow this blog, you may remember that I owned a National Reso-Lectric, and enjoyed it for several years, but then I subsequently acquired a National M-1, which is, in my judgement, the ultimate resonator and found afterwards that I had to force myself to pull the Reso-Lectric from it’s case!

At the time this story takes place, I was still residing in Iowa and was about a 2.5 hour drive from one of the largest guitar stores in the Midwest, Dave’s Guitars. An interesting thing about Dave’s is that they facilitate guitar trades through internet communication. Fill out an online form, send some photos and they’ll give you a trade value in very short order. I like this trade approach much more so than the tire kicking, frowning, hair pulling , hemming and hawing that can happen at a smaller Mom and Pop shop. So, I sent Dave’s the scoop on my Reso-Lectric and they got back to me with a reasonable price the same day.

Iowa countryside

Shortly thereafter on a gray December morning back in 2022, I loaded the Reso-Lectric into my vehicle and headed out to Dave’s to see what was what. I was not in the market for an electric guitar, as the one I had was all I think I would ever want or need. In fact, the differing tonal voices of electric guitars were not of interest to me, but that was not true about acoustic guitars. Varying shapes, body depths, wood compositions, bracing techniques, 12 vs 14 frets, glues, and finishes all, in my experience, contributed to the magical tonality of acoustic guitars. So, when I took off for Dave’s, it was acoustic guitars I was going to look at.

Me and Dave’s burgeoning inventory

I think because the national economy was slowing down a bit, Dave’s acoustic guitar inventory was actually accumulating for a change. The past few years there was a Covid related feeding frenzy in guitar stores. Collings guitars, for example, flew off the hooks at Dave’s making it near impossible to test out their very popular OM model. I knew as I was driving over to Wisconsin that Dave’s actually had a couple of Collings OM’s in stock and they even had a solitary Santa Cruz acoustic in stock too!

I’d been aware of Santa Cruz guitars for decades since I first saw an advertisement in a guitar mag with Tony Rice playing a Santa Cruz knock-off (even with the odd oversized sound hole) of his famous Martin D-28. I’d also sat next to Catfish Keith in his home and listened to him play his Santa Cruz signature small bodied guitar with the Catfish logo inlaid on the headstock. Keith’s guitar was awesome sounding, so I was very interested in test driving a Santa Cruz acoustic.

Acoustic Captain JR at Dave’s Guitars

When I got to the store, the acoustic guitar sales manager, JR set me up with a downstairs audition room to try out both a Collings OM and the Santa Cruz which was an H-13 model. Since the acoustic guitar sales room can be very busy and noisy, it was great to be able to quietly sit and contemplate the playability and tonality of the two guitars side by side. I switched back and forth between the two several times and stayed down there for quite some time. Both guitars were similar in that they were smaller Mahogany bodies with Spruce tops, but the similarities ended there. They looked completely different and, in the details, built differently. More on that later.

Santa Cruz H-13 in the audition room

Guitar shopping at Dave’s is a double-edged sword. As a customer, you are pretty much on your own. The guys working there are so busy that they really do not have time to chase you around to cajole you into a sale. Internet sales are the preponderance of their business so they are often preoccupied with moving product out the door. Unlike a Mom and Pop store, it’s difficult to establish much of a personal relationship with the folks in that store. I’d purchased several guitars in the store and Dave, the owner, barely acknowledged me because his customer base is so large and his attention spread so thin. This was a far different atmosphere from the very personalized Casino Guitars where I recently purchased a Lowden F-50. Nevertheless, I managed on my own to come to a conclusion as to which guitar I liked most and whether or not I would make a purchase.

The H-13 ready to roll

Both the Collings OM and the Santa Cruz were exceptionally playable, but the H-13 was a beast by comparison with greater depth and breadth of tone, possessing an expansive bottom in the bass range and some serious headroom with sparkling treble highs. It was a full spectrum cannon! The H-13’s sonic advantage during my audition may have been the combination of body depth being 3/4 of an inch deeper than the OM, Adirondack Spruce vs Sitka Spruce bracings under a European Spruce vs Sitka Spruce sound board and the 13 fret vs 14 fret neck to body join allowing ideal placement of the bridge on the body for the H-13. Both guitars were built with hot hide glue, so no advantage there. The H-13 is the lightest guitar I’ve ever held, which I think contributed to its far greater resonance as a stringed instrument. I was sold by the Santa Cruz H-13 and decided to complete its purchase with the trade of the Reso-Lectric.

Finally, I may have been recognized as a good customer during this visit to Dave’s Guitars, because JR threw in an installed K&K Mini pickup for no additional charge. After installation of the pickup, I headed back home to Iowa.

I Review the Santa Cruz H-13

General Observations

The Santa Cruz H-13, a medium sized premium guitar, was described recently by an acquaintance as a “museum piece.” This was from an accomplished musician with a long professional history, including back up and recording work with Chris Smither. Nevertheless, despite its elegant beauty, it is a simple looking instrument with just a few embellishments, including a slot head with ivoroid tuners, a sunburst finish, and an S29 top purfling, The real beauty of this guitar is how it sounds and handles.

Design Inspiration

Richard Hoover in the Santa Cruz shop

There are small scale guitar manufacturers like Santa Cruz and Collings who specialize in precision made instruments that often take their inspiration from guitars manufactured during the early to mid part of the 20th century. The old vintage Martins and Gibsons that people pay enormous sums for serve as a design jumping off point, from which boutique manufacturers copy design features but also implement modern techniques, design enhancements and small scale builder advantages with a good deal of old world handwork. Richard Hoover of Santa Cruz has made an incredibly successful run as a thoughtful and exceptionally skillful small scale guitar manufacturer, roundly regarded as one of the best in the industry. His vision is to bring the traditions of the ancient violin masters to the steel string guitar. Below you can see a video in which Hoover discusses his approach to guitar making:

Dylan and his Nick Lucas Special

Now, as I understand it, the H-13 is inspired by the 1930’s era Gibson Nick Lucas Special. The initial impetus for Santa Cruz’s decision to create the H-13, as we know today, is credited to the late, well known luthier, Paul Hostetter. The original Special was actually made in a variety of styles and shapes; some with trapeze and others with pin bridges, 12, 13 or 14 frets, and varying tone woods. It was Gibson’s first artist endorsed guitar and what made it special was its extra body depth, which Nick Lucas wanted for a more robust bass tone. I believe Santa Cruz, at the behest of Paul Hostetter, decided to use the Gibson L-00 shape with 13 frets and the deeper body as the basis for their design, which I think is also the version that Bob Dylan made so notable early in his career.

During the height of the Covid pandemic lock-down, accomplished musician, Steve Earle did a series of Youtube videos about his vast guitar collection, which serves as an excellent history of highly valued vintage Martin and Gibson guitars. In the video below, Earle gives some historic background about the Nick Lucas Special:

Here’s an actual film of Nick Lucas playing his signature Gibson:

Finally, in this clip from D.A. Pennebaker’s film Don’t Look Back, ultra badass, Blonde on Blonde era Bob Dylan plays his Special in England where he pretty much schools Donovan during that gathering… Dylan is like a wound spring watching Donovan sing one of his ditties, and he’s waiting to explode outwards with a far more sophisticated tune than Donovan could ever imagine playing. After Dylan basically rips his guitar from Donovan’s hands and starts to play, you can see Donovan sink into himself in a defensive posture… Game over man…

Notable Elements of the Santa Cruz H-13

Slotted Headstock (front)

Starting at the top end of the guitar, the H-13 is built with a slotted headstock topping off a “standard Mahogany” neck. Hoover uses the term “standard Mahogany” to note that Santa Cruz’s mahogany is responsibly harvested from a former British plantation. This he speaks to in the video I embedded above. Based on my research, standard Mahogany is Swietenia macrophylla, commonly referred to as Honduran or Big Leaf Mahogany. The face of the headstock is elegantly simple with no binding, but enhanced with an ebony veneer and a Santa Cruz script logo inlaid with ivoroid on the top front. Santa Cruz offers multiple logo types in varying locations when purchased as a custom made guitar. If you refer to the Santa Cruz website for the H-13, there are multiple features that can be chosen when ordering the guitar from scratch, which I obviously did not do having bought this item “off the rack” at Dave’s..

Slotted Headstock (side and rear)

Slotted headstocks are often used with guitars built with less than 14 frets as an aesthetic identifier, but also to alter tonality by creating a steeper break angle at the nut causing the string to exert more downward pressure, consequently driving more energy into the guitar when the string is plucked. I like how slotted headstocks look, but they are more tedious to restring.

To the right you can see a side/rear view of the headstock. You’ll note the “open back” or “open gear” Waverly nickel tuners with white ivoroid buttons, which are design consistent with the vintage guitar from which the H-13 takes its inspiration. The Waverly’s work just fine, but they are not near as buttery as the closed back Gotoh’s on my Lowden F-50, which are built onto a paddle-style headstock. What makes the closed back Gotoh’s so good is their high turning ratio, thus tuning is more smooth and precise. Gotoh does produce a slotted headstock “opened back” tuner but having never played with them, I am not sure that they are any better than the Waverly’s.

To the left, you can see a lower section of the neck and the upper bout of the body to where it is attached. The preponderance of steel string guitars are either 12 or 14 frets, but in the case of the H-13, it is 13 frets. According to the Santa Cruz website, the 13 fret neck, combined with the bridge location allows a longer string length which, combined with a deeper body, creates a very powerful small bodied guitar. I can attest to that!

The neck is a solid piece of mahogany, serving as a platform for an ivoroid bound ebony fingerboard. The V-shaped neck, attached precisely to the body with a traditional dovetail join, feels full in hand and is exceptionally comfortable to play. Finally, you’ll note the fretboard is unadorned with inlay keeping to the elegantly simplicity of the H-13.

The H-13 Soundboard

There was a time in my life when I thought that owning a fancy guitar with inlays and other adornments was a sign of musical accomplishment. I’ve since traded off my fancy guitars for those made with old school sensibilities where the emphasis is on tonality as well as playability, and for the most part they are much simpler in appearance with fewer adornments like wood bindings and inlaid Abalone. I have a fondness for old school ivoroid bindings which adorn many boutique guitars inspired by vintage instruments.

European Spruce Top

The top of the H-13 is lovely; however, it boasts no unnecessary adornments, with the possible exception of the S29 purfling, “a pattern best described as a herringbone split with line of colored-wood marquetry.” The ivoroid rosette, the tortoise pick guard and the ebony pyramid bridge are all old school simplicity. Nevertheless, the high gloss nitrocellulose finish overlaying the sunburst top makes the H-13 a glory to behold.

A good bit of the tonal magic of the H-13 lies with the soundboard itself. In the case of my H-13, the standard Sitka Spruce is substituted out with European Spruce, originating from the Italian/Swiss border. Often used to build classical guitars, European Spruce is also frequently selected by boutique builders of steel guitars. “It has a sound rich in overtones, while it offers some of the headroom of Adirondack and a quicker response than Sitka, but with a warmer, thicker tone.” All in all it is a tonality that appeals to finger style players like me.

As I understand it, the sound board is tap toned at Santa Cruz to fine tune how it’s braced. In the case of my H-13, the bracings are Adirondack spruce. Theoretically, Adirondack provides greater strength and stiffness with less weight than Sitka. It generally allows for a lighter-braced top, which makes it more responsive.

Below Tommy Sands elaborates on the nuances of European Spruce:

The back and sides of H-13 are standard Mahogany. At first glance, the use of Mahogany for the back and sides of a premium guitar may seem a poorly conceived choice. Remember, Mr. Martin used Rosewood on his top-of-the-line D-28 and reserved Mahogany for the somewhat “less than” D-18. That preconception of Mahogany being a second rate tone wood still exists today. A local luthier Rob Sharer dismisses that prejudice writing that “Where (Mahogany) really shines, though, is when it is used for the back and sides of a steel-string acoustic guitar. Less dense than the rosewood species, its medium weight and open grain produce both warmth and punch, de-emphasizing the bass register while accentuating the crucial midrange, which, after all, is the guitar’s home turf in the tonal spectrum… For the player who values a dry, crunchy, punchy sound, mahogany gets the nod over rosewood’s rum-jug bass and metallic overtones.”

In sum

The Santa Cruz H-13, built to exacting standards with first rate woods and components, is still more than the sum of its parts. The guitar is feather light, but has a huge warm voice. As expected for Mahogany back and sides, it’s punchy in the mid-tones; however, the deep body and the very responsive European Spruce top offers the player surprisingly resonant bass tones and sparkling highs for a mid-sized guitar. This guitar is an absolute delight to hold and play. It is a finger style player’s delight. During the week, I try to cycle through my guitar collection on a daily basis and always look forward to H-13 day!

If you want to dig deeper into Richard Hoover’s guitar building philosophy, where he brings to bear the skills of the ancient violin makers onto steel string guitars, here’s an inside look at Santa Cruz’s shop providing intimate detail on guitar construction philosophy. After watching this, I consider it a true blessing to own one of these marvelous instruments.

Santa Cruz H-13 Tone Samples

Elizabeth Cotton – Freight Train
Drop D Fishin’ Blues
Carl Miner of the North American Guitar rocking out on an H-13 spec’d out like mine…
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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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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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My ongoing guitar journey… I review my new Collings I-35 Deluxe Semi-hollow bodied electric…

Bill Collings: “The world is made of stuff that’s OK… just fine… but when something’s made by a group of people that really know what they’re doing, engineering, time and passion are put into it… it doubles it…”

Guitars are back, baby! Or so says the New York Times… For me, they were never gone, but according to several news articles and anecdotal information from guitar stores, the COVID 19 “lock-downs” of 2020, resulted in a sizable upward swing in guitar sales. As a result guitar shops are suffering from some inventory deprivation because the guitar manufacturers are having difficulty keeping up with demand resulting from pandemic depleted work forces. What’s driven guitar sales? To a large extent, it’s probably the quarantine produced time and space available for people to chase new pursuits and guitars apparently fit the bill.

Summertime is National time…

Since I am retired and an avid student of guitar, I did not need the added incentive of quarantine time to focus on the instrument; however, because of limited opportunities to do other things outside my home I am even more obsessed with the guitar now!

To that end, I have a very nice collection of instruments, descriptions of which can be found here… Even though I possess a nice stable of guitars I, not unlike lots of other guitarists, fall into the psychological trap of believing we are always one guitar away from completing our musical dreams… it’s a sad affliction, but also fun to indulge as long as you don’t overtax your personal finances like Johnny Depp‘s done…

What drove me to my latest purchase was the human psychological need for novelty, which is somewhat more exacerbated by the limited stimuli associated with quarantine lock down. Further, I was suffering some doubts regarding two of my Taylor electric guitars. Seen below is the T3 on the right and the Walnut Solidbody on the left… While both are lovely guitars, I decided that their controls were too gimmicky… too many pickup selection opportunities and odd tone controls that I could never quite master to suit my ears…

  • Taylor Walnut Solidbody
  • Taylor T3 Custom
Taylor Solidbody Custom (left) and Taylor T3/B (right)

The truth be known, the Taylor’s are excellent guitars and beautiful in their own right and any difficulty managing them, sound-wise, is really on me. Still… in the back of my mind, for quite a while, I considered trading them off for a different guitar. But, it was not going to be for just any run of the mill electric… For example, I was totally not interested in a Fender Strat or Tele (never liked their necks nor fretboards) or a Les Paul (too awkward and heavy for me) and I had my run with a Gretsch a few years earlier and unceremoniously dumped it. Perhaps the endlessly fascinating Gibson ES-335, but there is so much commentary out there in the guitar universe about sample to sample variability in quality and tone. That said, I just don’t believe I have the acumen to identify, nor access to enough samples to find that perfect one. So, I looked around for several months, not totally convinced I could unload the Taylors for something I would find better… It would have to be a helluva a guitar to move me forward…

Then, one day I was noodling through the Dave’s Guitars website, which I do on occasion, and found a guitar worth considering… way worth considering… It was a Collings semi-hollow bodied electric guitar… At that moment, Dave’s inventory contained four Collings electrics, two of which were semi-hollows. I’ve been aware of Collings since I first picked up a Yamaha guitar in the early 90’s… In guitar magazines of the time, Collings advertised factory produced but immaculate, boutique quality acoustic guitars that successfully replicated the highly sought after pre-war Martin aesthetic. They were top-drawer prestige guitars, reserved for the most committed players. The prices too were astronomical.

Taylor 914ce

I have a brief story, from a few years ago, about my first, in person, interaction with a Collings guitar. When I returned to serious guitar playing about 4 1/2 years ago, I took lessons in Rochester, MN while I was up there for an extended period of time receiving radiation treatment. I found a very nice re-introduction-to-the-instrument teacher at Avalon Music, a local store, which sadly no longer exists. I remember my teacher playing some nondescript beater guitar during lessons, which took place on the second floor of the store.

Downstairs the owner sold guitars, specializing in Taylors, a brand that I regarded very highly, and after several weeks, I traded in an older Taylor 700 series for a drop dead beautiful Taylor 914ce, a top of the line spruce and rosewood grand concert sized guitar… there are arguably not many guitars better than that 914 in both design and quality… The purchase was a statement to myself that I would fight through the radiation treatments and come out the other end… When I showed up at my next lesson with the new axe, my teacher was apoplectic when he saw the guitar… why, I am not totally sure, but perhaps he felt “shown-up” by this lovely instrument residing in a rusty old reentry guitar player’s hands… Well… the next week my teacher returned to the lesson room with a Collings in his hands! I suppose he wanted to show me who ruled… it was an enviable guitar, both in appearance and how it sounded… I made note…

So, back to the future… There it was on Dave’s website… A Collings guitar, but not an acoustic… this one was electric… I’d been vaguely aware of Collings’ electrics for a few years… Primarily because a recent Facebook acquaintance purchased a pre-owned solid body version called the City Limits (inspired by the Gibson Les Paul)… he made quite a public production of his purchase and was way pleased with himself…

Gibson ES-335

After my dalliance with the Taylor Solidbody and some in-shop fiddling around with a Fender Strat, I was done with planks (solid body) guitars… As a dyed-in-the-wool acoustic player, the semi-hollow electric is, in my mind, a perfect complement to my style of playing, which is largely finger-style and bottleneck country blues. A highly regarded, and prototypical semi-hollow bodied guitar is the Gibson ES-335. There are others like the Gretsch Falcon, but the ES-335 has legendary status.

If you are curious as to what a semi-hollow bodied guitar is, I borrowed a few shots off the Collings website below. You can see below that the Collings guitar body is routed out of a solid piece of mahogany where the hollowed chambers on each side of the center are visible. The hollow chamber gives this guitar its characteristic tone, which differs significantly from a plank guitar. According to the Sweetwater website, “These guitars… [offer] the tightness and focus of a solidbody electric guitar but with a hint of that more round, acoustic tone of a hollow guitar.” I would agree with that…

  • Center Block
  • Routing Out the Hollow Chambers
  • Finished Lower Body with Center Block and Adjacent Chambers

The term, semi-hollow body comes from the practice of inserting a block of wood into the center of the guitar between the hollowed chambers. The carefully designed Collings center block can be seen in the above photo on the top left. The center block reduces the propensity for feedback when the guitar is played at loud volumes. Not all center blocks are equal and can affect the tone of the guitar by how it’s designed and what it’s made out of. Design versus tone of the center block is above my pay grade, but from what I’ve read, the precision of the center block design is one of the reasons a Collings electric commands such respect and stands out with tonality.

As I dug deeper into the Collings aesthetic, I found this wonderful overview of their electric guitar production:

And here, world-class guitar player Charlie Sexton speaks to the design of Collings electrics… He is playing a SoCo, which is one of the Collings designs I was considering… it is a semi-hollow bodied guitar with a single cutaway, as opposed to the I-35, which has a double cutaway, giving it the characteristic “mouse ear” profile similar to the Gibson ES-335… Anyway, below you can hear Charlie wax poetically about Collings electric guitar design…

If you are wondering who Charlie Sexton is, one of his main gigs is lead guitarist for Bob Dylan’s touring band. Below are a couple of shots I took of Dylan and Sexton playing in Cedar Falls, IA ten years ago… a great show!

If you really want to understand what distinguishes Collings guitars from all the rest of production instruments, then you have to understand the singular drive for design and manufacturing excellence that Bill Collings demanded of himself and those who worked with him… sadly Bill Collings succumbed to cancer in 2017… here’s a brief biography of this extraordinary man:

So, after due diligence I concluded that purchase of a Collings guitar could be a real “jewel in the crown” acquisition. There were some Collings electrics available pre-owned on Reverb, but in my case I thought purchasing new would be, perhaps not least expensive, but the best route for me. Now, to those of you who read my blog this decision probably comes across as contradictory. This is because I wrote a whole blog entry on the cost-benefits of buying used; however, I’ve also been burned on used purchases mostly because I do not possess the wherewithal to identify problems with a used instrument, and they do exist, such as I’ve experienced… i.e. poor set-up, cracked lower bouts and twisted necks…

To purchase a new guitar, it made perfect sense to me to shop for a Collings at Dave’s Guitars in LaCrosse, WI which is about 2.5 hours by car from my home. Last winter, before the attack of COVID 19, I purchased a National guitar from them and it was, as I wrote on this blog, an excellent experience. Nevertheless, I was still tentative because I had two guitars to trade and there was still the overall sticker price on the Collings guitar which was a bit prohibitive… I proceeded to see what I could work out, and was pleasantly surprised… Overnight, I received two very fair offers for the Taylors and they reduced the new guitar’s price by 15% because it was a 2018 model and had been hanging around the store far longer than Dave wanted it! So it was off to Wisconsin to test the guitar and make a deal!

In Dave’s parking lot…

Because of the pandemic world we live in, Dave’s only took clients in the store by appointment, which I promptly made for the next day. The following morning I got in my car at 7:30 am to make a 10:30 appointment.

My wife was a bit anxious about me making the trip as Wisconsin was a COVID 19 hot zone, and this was my first trip out of town since the pandemic’s onset in mid-March, 2020. Undaunted, I grabbed a mask, stuck a carbon filter in it, and took off. It was good to get out and it was a pleasant drive through the late harvest farm fields and small, backwater towns of Iowa. I had a full tank of gas so I would not have to expose myself to the virus by making any unnecessary stops along the way. Making good time I arrived 30 minutes early and it was especially nice that they took me right in so I would not have to sit in a cold car for 30 minutes! To the left you can see me in the parking lot, with the iconic Dave’s sign over my shoulder.

A pair of Collings semi-hollow bodies… the SoCo in the foreground and the I-35 behind.

There was no time wasted, which suited me… The handful of floor staff are always very pleasant and were all masked up and pretty good about physical spacing. Nevertheless, I decided to get in and out as soon as practical; however, I still wanted to take my time checking out the Collings electrics.

I dragged my two Taylors in for the Sales Manager to look over, and he guided me over to the store section that had a handful of Collings guitars hanging way up high to keep the hoi polloi from pawing over them. I narrowed the choices down to the I-35 Deluxe and a SoCo. Curiously, Bill Collings decided to name his electrics after the roadways in and around Austin, Texas where his factory is located.

Inside Dave’s… dropped the mask momentarily for the photo…

Fortunately, I was able to plug into a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 amp like I have at home. I spent most of my time with the I-35, which is the guitar that initially moved me into undertaking this journey… the SoCo was nice but did not call to me. The whole process was a bit stressful… I was not warmed up, nor was I acclimated to the I-35’s fretboard and neck so my playing was not particularly admirable… no one seemed to care, but they could hear me, so I was a little rattled because I can play better than I did in the store.

Eventually, after floundering around for about 30 minutes with the I-35, I decided to acquire it because I was confident, given some more time that I’d be able to play this thing and it was sweet to my sensibilities. I was particularly taken by the capacity to separately control the volume and tone for each pick-up and to blend the two together when played simultaneously, something neither of my Taylor electrics could do… Booyakasha!

While we were closing the deal I had the great good fortune to meet the Dave, who was in an exceptionally good mood because he had just acquired a vintage “transition model” Gibson ES-335 for his extensive, museum quality guitar collection housed on the second floor of the store. They wiped my new Collings down, put fresh strings of my choice on it (NYXL’s), and then threw in a Dave’s Sweatshirt to boot! I was out the door and on the way back home in about one hour… All in all, shopping for premium guitars is a great experience at Dave’s!

Ameritage Case Damage… a Tolex tear on the top of the case

My only criticism of the purchase process was the condition of the guitar case. Collings sources out their cases for electric guitars from the Ameritage company. They are premium solid cases, but frankly, I think both Taylor and National do a better job with their cases in fit, appearance and interior appointment. In a video I recently watched, Bill Collings also expressed some dismay with sourced-out cases and in response built a line of cases for some of his high-end acoustics, but in the end dropped the case business project because it’s too expensive.

Red Bubble Collings sticker…

Further, and most irritating, the case that came with my guitar was damaged. The Tolex coating was torn about the width of a thumbnail and could be pulled back to expose white fibrous matter beneath. There was also some scuffing on the case too… Besides being ugly, I was concerned the tear would continue to propagate over time. I should have made a point about the damage, because I found out later that they had the ability to repair the case in the shop, but I wanted to get the hell out of there and get into my car away from other people. In the end, in a very nice personal touch, Steve McCreary, General Manager of Collings guided me, via telephone, through the repair process. The case, though not perfect, looks pretty good now. Even so, I decided to acquire a Collings sticker from Red Bubble and laid it over the repair so I wouldn’t be irritated by it anymore…

Collings I-35 Deluxe

Now let’s review the guitar… Holistically, it is a stunning example of industrial art. When I’d mentioned to Steve McCreary (see above) that I thought the guitar was an object of fine art, he responded saying that “we [Collings] really appreciate when someone gets what we do here…”

The guitar has a mouse eared profile/shape reminiscent of the Gibson ES-335 from which it is inspired, but Bill Collings, after thorough research, reduced the lower bout width by an inch and designed more angular curvature, making the guitar somewhat smaller and lighter thus enhancing it’s playability. I’m not a big guy, so the smaller profile had greater appeal to me, especially after coping with the larger bodied Taylor T3 and the Gretsch Falcon, which was really a beast. While I was at Dave’s playing the Collings, the sales manager brought over an ES-335 and it looked large and unwieldy by comparison. I said, “please take it away…”

Solid Honduran mahogany lower body and neck

What you pay for when you acquire a Collings is engineering, design, manufacturing precision and all around fussiness. I don’t think there’s a guitar manufacturer who puts more care into high end wood quality than Collings. Only the finest woods are selected for their instruments, considering variables such as appearance/figuring, moisture content, tensile properties, specific gravity, and most importantly acoustical responsiveness. The I-35 is comprised of a carved, solid flamed maple top, the body is routed from a solid piece of Honduran mahogany, with a single piece mahogany neck as well.

In my mind’s eye, I imagined the guitar would be red, but in reality this particular model’s color was referred to as “amber sunburst,” which does a nice job of displaying the soundboard’s flamed Maple striations underneath the multiple layers of polished lacquer. This is my first lacquer finished guitar and it is remarkably shiny and classy looking.

The lower bout, with controls, 3 way switch, F holes, and bridge area visible.

Here it is very important to point out that not all semi-hollow bodied guitars are built the same. As shown in photos earlier in this post, Collings routes out the lower body from a solid piece of mahogany and the top is carved from a single piece of solid maple. Conversely, the Gibson ES-335 is manufactured from laminated maple and poplar layers and constructed similar to an acoustic guitar where the sides, back and top are separately cut or shaped in a press and then combined with glue. The center blocks are also engineered quite differently from each other. To me the solid wood routing of the lower body, the art-carving of the top, and the precision engineering of the center block pushes the Collings I-35 to a completely different aesthetic level in construction and subsequent tonality. During roughly the same time period Gibson produced a similar “tonally carved” solid wood design in limited quantities that they designated the CS-336, which I think is available by special order through their custom shop.

On the image shown above, you can see the four tone/volume control knobs, the body binding, and the pick up rings are all manufactured from grained ivoroid. Ivoroid is a plastic-like substance that is created by dissolving cellulose in the form of short cotton fiber and then restoring it through extrusion into a solid form. The grained version is extruded to give it fine lines to simulate ivory, which was considered a luxury material since ancient times. Obviously grained ivoroid production and its use is far better than killing animals such as elephants to acquire the substance. The ivoroid knobs and pickup rings are custom made at the Collings shop. It’s very satisfying to get up close enough to the ivoroid to see the fine grain lines or to twirl the tactilely pleasing knobs. For an acoustic guitar, I prefer wood binding, but almost all electrics use some sort of manufactured substance for bindings and grained ivoroid is about as cool as you can get.

Tail piece/bridge section… note the section of grained ivoroid pickup ring.

This particular version of the I-35 uses a clean and neat appearing Kluson bridge and tail piece assembly which is fairly common hardware for Gibson semi-hollow bodies. In contrast, my Taylor T3 semi-hollow body deployed a heavy, cluttered Bigsby, which I never really used to purpose, so I don’t miss it, particularly during string changing.

The pickups are where the rubber meets the road for an electric guitar. Bill Collings selected vintage-like Low Wind Lollar Imperial humbuckers for this guitar.

The combination of “throwback” 1950’s wiring, the low wind humbuckers and the vintage pots and caps are the “pixie/fairy dust” that Collings sprinkled into the guitar to create the vintage sound he was searching for. Having never played a vintage ES-335 nor possessing the ear to recognize one, I can only take the I-35’s spec on face value for being “sonically vintage;” however, I can attest that it is a fantastic sounding electric guitar, at least to my ear, my wife’s and my friends who’ve heard it.

As to whether the I-35 Deluxe produces verifiable vintage sound, that may be open to debate. For example, the ES-335 was manufactured with a laminate top, while the I-35 is unusual in that it has a solid top. The solid, non-laminate nature of the top was really appealing to my own aesthetic, so I like it and the “unique” sound it produces… it possesses throaty, round, woody, clean and defined note definition, with excellent sustain.

My guess is some of the fussier former Gibson/Gretsch players did not like the sound palette created by the solid top because their ears were more acclimated to the tonality created by laminated wood. To that end, Collings introduced an LC (laminated top) version of the I-35 and it is very popular. Nice for them, but I’ll take the sold top baby!

  • Fretboard
  • Headstock
  • Bindings

In the images directly above you can see some of the reasons why my I-35 is also designated Deluxe. The rosewood fretboard is adorned with parallelogram inlays, the headstock tuners are sourced from Gotoh, and equipped with grained ivoroid knobs, and as I mentioned earlier grained ivoroid appointments grace the instrument throughout.

In one of the Collings marketing videos, Bill Collings describes what elements are key to excellence when manufacturing an electric guitar… He says tone is a given… the guitar must feel right and be eminently playable, and finally it has to have a look… all those elements combine to give the guitar its character… that Collings character…

It’s one thing to read the marketing materials about Collings guitars, but it’s another thing to experience it first hand. They truly are remarkable instruments… As I said earlier the I-35 is a manufactured object of art…

Below I am adding some performance examples for my I-35… you can find other jazz and arty examples for how the guitar plays by accomplished musicians on Youtube, but my sound cuts will be just a regular guy doing the best he can to make some music. My genre is country blues, which I play on acoustic guitars, resonators and also electric guitar… I am no Muddy Waters, but he played the same music on all of those same type instruments… Here goes…

First, here’s a rendering of Cocaine Blues which is a Stef Grossman arrangement of the Rev. Gary Davis tune. I am playing through a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 amp on a clean channel (which I almost always do). I am blending both pickups with the neck pickup predominating. All my pedals are disengaged except my Dunlop Echoplex, which is set for a slight slap back:

Second is a rendering of Coffee Blues which is a Happy Traum arrangement of the Mississippi John Hurt tune. Again, I am playing through a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 amp on a clean channel and I am blending both pickups with the neck pickup predominating. All my pedals are disengaged except my Dunlop Echoplex, which is set for a slight slap back, and I added my Boss RV-6 Reverb which is set on Hall:

Third is a rendering of Police and a Sergeant which is a Catfish Keith arrangement of the Reverend Robert Wilkins tune. Again, again, I am playing through a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 amp on a clean channel and I am blending both pickups with the neck pickup predominating. This time the pedals include my Dunlop Echoplex, which is set for a slight slap back, my Boss RV-6 Reverb which is set on Hall, and some light vibrato through my Boss VB-2w pedal:

Finally, here’s a partial rendering of Long Distance Call which is a Tom Feldmann arrangement of a Muddy Waters tune. This my first bottleneck tune in standard tuning. As with the above tunes, I am playing through a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 amp on a clean channel and again I am blending both pickups with the neck pickup predominating. Pedals include a Jangle Box Compressor, a Mesa Boogie Tone Burst Drive, a Boss CH-1 Super Chorus, a Boss TR-2 Tremolo, a Dunlop Echoplex, and my Boss RV-6 Reverb which is set on Hall.

Well… there it is… my review of my new Collings I-35… I’ll sum it up by saying, I think I will keep it and will hand it down to one of my kids one day… it’s a family heirloom now!

If you have any comments please leave them below… and thanks for checking in!

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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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A country blues classic…

Good Morning Little School Girl… I love this tune… it’s considered a blues standard and resides in the Blues Hall of Fame as of 1990… Sonny Boy Williamson is credited with having recorded it first in 1939, but as with many blues tunes, original authorship can be a bit foggy… Williamson’s tune is believed to be a reworking of Son Bonds’ Back and Side Blues… The melody of Bond’s tune and Williamson’s are very, very close…

Here’s Bonds’ original Back and Side Blues…

https://youtu.be/3QJYeNNJOt0

And here’s Williamson’s original 1939 Hall of Fame version of Good Morning Little School Girl…

Though backed up by a pair of guitars, Williamson’s version is dominated by his harmonica, for which is most well known… The first version I remember hearing was recorded by Muddy Waters and in this version, his guitar playing carries the tune:

What struck me besides Waters’ masterful guitar playing was the Rolling Stonesesque lecherous nature to the tune… Basically an adult male chasing after an underage girl reminiscent of Jagger and Richards’ Stray Cat Blues, which is equally nasty… Here is the opening stanza of Good Morning Little Schoolgirl:

Good morning little school girl
Good morning little school girl
Can I go home with
Can I go home with you?
Tell your mother and your father
I once was a schoolboy too

Wicked… nasty… not politically correct… but so bluesy… love it…

After hearing Muddy Waters’ version of the tune, I thought how fun it would be to learn it and I was delighted that Stef Grosman included the tab and lessons in his Bottleneck Blues Guitar DVD. Grossman based his arrangement on Fred McDowell’s interpretation of the tune. I really like McDowell’s version… his guitar playing is clean and penetrating and his slide vibrato is perfect…

I do not like to sing when I play… I am guitarist, so I tend to learn tunes that sound decent when played as an instrumental and Good Morning Little Schoolgirl fits the bill… I also tend to favor playing the tune a bit slower and “swamping” it up…

When I was shopping for my Reso-Lectric at Dave’s Guitars in LaCrosse, WI one of the store guys approached me and told me how much he likes my swampy play as compared to so many others who rip through slide pieces when trying out guitars in the store… He compared me to Ry Cooder’s Paris, Texas Soundtrack… I was a bit taken back because I am not in the same galactic dimension as Ry Cooder, but the compliment was encouraging…

Here’s my version:

There’ve been a bajillion cover recordings of this tune, like the poppy, somewhat inane version by the Yardbirds, or the long jam version by the Grateful Dead, or Taj Mahal’s own idiosyncratic take, which you can see below:

Finally in closing, I will remind all that country blues is the foundation upon which rock and roll music stands and these old tunes are often reinterpreted in a variety of way… here you can see the great Alvin Lee of Ten Years After ripping out a version of School Girl…

Thanks for dropping in!

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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…

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Reviewing My New National Resonator…

Hybrid Acoustic/Electric National Reso-Lectric is a Singular Guitar

National Reso-Lectric

A couple of weeks ago I made the trek across Iowa and Minnesota farm land to Dave’s Guitars in LaCrosse, WI and purchased a new resonator guitar. I traded in a steel bodied National NRP Black Rust for a National Reso-Lectric.

I’ve played the Reso-Lectric quite a bit during the past two weeks and have conjured up my review of the guitar. There are just a very few reviews of this guitar out there on the web probably because there are not that many Reso-Lectrics out in circulation. The only “celebrity” musician I found by googling around who’s played one publicly is Metallica’s James Hetfield and that was revealed with only a single still image and that’s it. It should be noted too that Hetfield’s Reso-Lectric is the all mahogany version referred to as the Revolver.

I’ve seen suggestions out on the web that this guitar is capable of playing in overdrive/distortion mode but that is NOT my intension. I play finger-style country blues and as far as I am concerned the Reso-Lectric is a pickup enhanced acoustic resonator designed for country blues and bottleneck/slide playing and that’s how I am going to use it.

The Reso-Lectric is not the only National Resonator I own. I also play a Reso-Rocket WB (wood body). It’s a fantastic guitar that is equipped with one of Mike Dowling’s Hot Plates as a pickup. As wonderful as the Reso-Rocket is, it does not offer the sound palette that the Reso-Lectric brings to playing the blues.

Let’s examine the physical nature of the guitar first and then explore what it sounds like in some of its various modes. Let’s follow the string-line from tailpiece to tuning posts and see what the Reso-Lectric is…

On first view, it is a combination of stunning and unusual in appearance… a remarkable and unlikely looking guitar. Enhancing the singular appearance of the guitar is the sunburst treatment of the figured maple top, upon which the polished resonator cover rests, the art deco logo on the kitchen counter plastic cover and the 1950’s era sci fi nuclear reactor pick up control dials. Finally, the headstock is treated with a mother-of-pearl veneer cap, gleaming retro Kluson tuning pegs and capped off with another art deco National logo.

Examination of the back of the guitar indicates a nice solid block of mahogany serving as the guitar’s foundation and mounted to the body is a figured maple neck, which as with the rest of the exposed wood on the guitar has received a satin finish. The necks on all my other guitars are mahogany with a gloss finish, so this neck is taking some getting used to for me. The neck appears to be attached to the body with screws, which makes me a bit anxious. I would feel more comfortable if they were bolts… perhaps they are, but I am not willing to pull one to find out. I did have to gently snug them up as they were not all-the-way tight.

Also on the back, you will note a screwed on battery cover. Six wood screws are required for removal to get into the battery compartment where two 9 volt batteries are housed to power the guitar’s Fishman preamp. My Taylor acoustics and the T5z all require 9 volt batteries but only one. The Reso-Lectric is a power hungry thing. Leaving the guitar plugged into an amp when not in use will drain the batteries, so unplug…

At the base end of the guitar the characteristic National tailpiece is locked into place with a strap mount button. On my other heavier guitars like the Taylor electrics, I have changed out the stock strap buttons for locking Schaller’s. Given the relatively beefy 8 lb (3.6 kg) weight, I think it would be prudent to have strap locks on this guitar at some time in the near future.

The base end of the guitar strings easily fit into the hole/slot at the lead end of the tailpiece. Previously, I went into some detail on how to restring this guitar.

From the end of the tailpiece the strings traverse under the polished hand rest and are then situated into appropriately sized grooves cut into the guitar’s bridge, which for National resonator’s is most commonly referred to as the biscuit. The biscuit/bridge is comprised of two pieces of wood glued together: a circular horizontal piece that is glued to the metallic resonator cone and a vertical slice of wood with grooves cut into it to guide the strings like a guitar bridge. The whole enterprise, biscuit bridge and resonator cone are covered with a shiny and elaborate hubcap-like cover, which is very characteristic for resonator guitars.

When the strings are plucked their energy is transferred to the biscuit/bridge which downwardly vibrates the spun aluminum convex shaped cone which serves as a speaker and radiates sound outward creating the characteristic bonk and splang for which resonator guitars are known. Most importantly, for this guitar there exists a piezo pickup which is mounted in the lower part of the biscuit bridge, the signal which captures the sound emanating directly from the cone is sent to a Fishman preamp located under the volume control knobs in the upper bout of the guitar. The piezo is one of two ways in which the guitars sound is amplified.

Following the string-line past the biscuit/bridge and up towards the neck of the guitar, the strings flow over another electric pick-up. Covered in black plastic is a Lollar P-90 single coil pick-up. I believe this version is referred to as a “Soap Bar.” So, in sum, this guitar has two pick-ups available to sculpt its sound. One below the biscuit/bridge and the other located at the sweet spot just below where the neck joins the body of the guitar.

Control of volume and tone knobs are located on the top of the upper bout of the guitar. There is a toggle switch to move between the two pick-ups for individual selection, or the center setting will deploy both simultaneously. Unlike a lot of electrified guitars, this one does not have a tone control; however, tone control is managed really well in my judgement by blending the volume of the two disparate pickups.

So what do we have here for controls besides the pickup toggle? Referring to the image of the controls, the one positioned lowest is overall volume control. The middle switch controls the output of the under biscuit/saddle pickup and the uppermost control does the same the P90 pickup. The sounds offered by the two different pickups are distinctly different so it is possible to create a wide array of sonic possibilities by playing the pickups individually or by blending them through control of output. I will revisit this subject a bit later with some sonic examples.

After crossing over the neck pickup the string line advance along the ebony fretboard mounted on a maple neck. The fretboard is marked with inlaid dots, is 14 jumbo frets long off from the guitar’s body, with a longish scale length of 25 21/32 inches (65.2 cm). The strings finally arrive at the headstock, passing over the bone nut with a width of 1.73 inches (4.4 cm) which is fine for both slide and finger-style playing. The strings end their journey on the posts of Kluson tuners, which are elegant appearing and smooth operating.

I’ve included below are some sound samples for the National Reso-Lectric. I play a opening section of Blind Willie McTell’s Wake Up Mama with the guitar’s pickups set three different ways:

First I play Wake Up Mama with the biscuit/bridge piezo pickup engaged alone:

Biscuit/Bridge piezo pickup alone

To me, the biscuit bridge pickup alone sounds the most acoustic. Of the two pickups, I think the one on the bridge also has the most bite, which is typically true of most bridge pickups on electric guitars. I am not inclined to play the bridge pickup alone as it comes across to me as a bit thin and tinny sounding which does not appeal to my ears.

Second, I play the same tune with the neck pick only engaged:

Neck pickup alone

The neck pickup alone demonstrates, by comparison to the bridge pickup, a warmer, rounder, fatter tone which is also consistent with other electric guitars. I like the tone of this pickup but used alone it just lacks a modicum of bite that would make it most appealing to me, especially for a resonator guitar.

In my judgment, the best way to play this guitar and to elicit from it the most lovely tones it is capable of is to mix together the output from both pickups simultaneously. What I would call the Goldilocks tone. I tend to balance the tone more towards the warmer neck pick up but dose in enough bridge sound to add some edge. Let’s take a listen:

The first time I ever played a resonator, it was one of those moderately priced Fender wooden jobs and it was fun to play finger-style, especially my genre of choice, country blues, but it did not feel like a particularly substantive, quality instrument, so I decided to go top drawer and get a National NRP Black Rust for my own.

I’ve written about this before several times on this blog, that the NRP was pretty much a fine guitar for bottleneck playing, but for me it was basically unplayable finger-style because of the way it was set-up with very high action. I am delighted to report in this review that the Reso-Lectric is mac easier to play finger-style. Below I run through one of my favorite country blues finger-style tunes, Cocaine Blues (as arranged by Stef Grossman).

In the past I’ve purchased guitars and suffered from buyer’s remorse of varying levels but no so in the case of the National Reso-Lectric! For the genre and style I like to play it is a perfect complement to my guitar collection.

As a final note… National provides as nice a guitar case as I’ve seen… solid, sturdy, well padded and the guitar fits snugly into its place. Still… even so I would not check it through an airline! I don’t know how they do it but National managed to embroider a logo onto the top of the case… so cool…

Love this axe…
Please let me know what you think of this review and hit the follow button too!

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And I didn’t know right from wrong…

To Study the background of and learn to play Rollin’ & Tumblin’ Blues…

Those who read this weblog know that a good deal of my retirement time is spent learning guitar. I play almost entirely from the country blues canon. I’ve written earlier about the allure of playing country blues. Historically those tunes were most frequently played on acoustic and resonator guitars, which I do; however, I also like to play them on electric guitars too!

By no means an expert on all things country blues, I am gradually getting up to speed and built a considerable library on the subject, though there are many of which I still need to read. I do know this… As with all forms of music, there are standards recognized by most people familiar with the genre and Rollin’ and Tumblin’ Blues (sometimes just Rollin’ and Tumblin’ or even Roll and Tumble Blues) is one of them… Like many blues tunes, Rollin’ and Tumblin’ has multiple interpretations, some of which I’ve gathered below.

For starters, most people are familiar with the Mtv series unplugged, and Eric Clapton’s segment was arguably one of the most famous… though British, Clapton built is career mining and then interpreting the blues, which was a distinctly American idiom. In fact, were it not for musicians like Eric Clapton, John Mayall and the Rolling Stones many of the blues classics we are familiar with may have in all likelihood passed by our notice!

Eric Clapton is important in Rollin’ and Tumblin’ lore because he played an incredibly rousing version of the tune during his Mtv Unplugged show, which millions of people witnessed and as a result its become one of the most recognizable interpretations… The irony is Clapton’s band and the director charged with filming the show were completely unprepared for Clapton breaking out in an unplanned, impromptu version of the tune! Nevertheless, he and the band quickly recovered and began filming; however, it is one of the reasons the song begins so abruptly on the recording… It can be seen just below:

According to what I’ve learned, Clapton was visibly delighted with his performance and shouted to the director afterwards, “did you get it?” While Clapton’s performance was a cultural milestone, I still think that famous bluesman Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) recorded one of the definitive versions of Rollin’ and Tumblin’ and the one I like best of all! You can listen below:

The earliest recorded version (1927) of Rollin’ and Tumblin’ Blues was attributed to Hambone Willie Newbern, which can be played below. It is somewhat different from the Clapton and Water’s versions and is closer to version that I am learning from Stef Grossman’s DVD Bottleneck Blues Guitar. You’ll note too that Newbern’s version was titled somewhat differently as Roll and Tumble Blues…

https://youtu.be/gOtyJs5SoSE

As you might expect Rollin’ and Tumblin’ Blues is a sad, dark tune about a man who’s woman walked out on him… the original lyrics are listed below…

Roll And Tumble Blues — Hambone Willie Newbern

And I rolled and I tumbled and I cried the whole night long
And I rolled and I tumbled and I cried the whole night long
And I rolled this mornin’, mama, and I didn’t know right from wrong

Did you ever wake up and find your dough-roller gone?
Did you ever wake up and find your dough-roller gone?
And you wring your hands and you cry the whole day long

And I told my woman, Lord, ‘fore I left the town
And I told my woman just before I left the town
“Don’t you let nobody tear the barrelhouse down”

And I fold my arms, Lord, and I walked away
And I fold my arms and I slowly walked away
Says, “That’s all right, sweet mama, your trouble gonna come some day”

Other musicians have altered the lyrics or added to them… In fact, as is his wont Bob Dylan almost completely changed the lyrics with the exception of the opening line and claimed writing credit for the tune… below you can listen to a live version the GOAT’s version, which is great:

https://youtu.be/QSx6x9VXQn0

And then there was the King of Blues, Robert Johnson, who took the tune and changed the lyrics as well as the title to Traveling Riverside Blues:

https://youtu.be/XrExBI7PtLc

As I said earlier, the version I am working on was arranged by Stef Grossman on the DVD pictured on the left. It’s is a double disc collection with bottleneck slide tunes arranged in either Open D or Open G tunings.

I play slide tunes exclusively on my National Resonators, with an NRP Steel body tuned to Open G and a Wooden Reso-Rocket kept in Open D. Frankly, I would play more plain old fingerpicking tunes on my Nationals, but the string play is set so high off the fretboard, I stick to bottleneck tunes. The Nationals are real cheese graters.

I actually like the Open D tuning more as well as the wooden bodied resonator, so that combination gets most of my attention. In fact, I came within a whisker recently of selling my NRP.

I am very fond of Grossman’s arrangements, his teaching style and his accessible tablature, though his formatting of tab takes some getting used to. Typical tab coding uses a horizontal line to represent a string, while Grossman uses the space between the lines, which is a bit disorienting to those who first see it. While preparing this blog entry, I was delighted to find a fantastic live performance of Roll and Tumble Blues performed live by Stef Grossman along with the inestimable Keb Mo:

I’ve been working on Rollin’ and Tumblin’ Blues in Open D now for a few days, and as I write, I just completed a good practice on the piece. Earlier today I recorded myself and posted it below via Vimeo… it’s rough and the phrasing is just taking form so this is a work in progress… but that’s ok… music for me takes time and effort, and this recording will be an archived stepping stone along the way. You may also notice that this arrangement uses a different opening riff to establish the tune’s groove. Grossman decided to incorporate what he defined as the Fred McDowell/Furry Lewis riff approach to the tune, which gives it a bit of a different flavor, as opposed to the Hambone Newbern/Robert Johnson groove most commonly employed. You can click below to hear Furry Lewis’s version:

My latest version of Rollin’ and Tumblin’ Blues. I swamp it up a bit:

As I said earlier, country blues tunes were originally performed on acoustic instruments in solo form; however, when the technology became available the tunes were often adapted to electric guitars and played in accompaniment with a band. Here’s a great example of Rollin’ and Tumblin’ with electric guitar. Obviously, the above shown recording by Bob Dylan’s band was an electrified version, but R.L. Burnsides below captures better the early conversion of country blues to electric guitar with a band. It’s fantastic!

Rollin’ and Tumblin‘ was one of those country blues tunes that became a foundational rock and roll tune emerging in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. Below is a recording of Johnny Winter’s energetic and rocking version of the tune which is a classic:

The tune continues to live on… here’s a another rocking version of Rollin’ and Tumblin’ by the Lovell sisters, known more commonly as Larkin Poe… when you listen you can see Johnny Winter’s fingerprints all over the sister’s version!

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