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Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
I've had multiple attempts at mando but have always given up in the end because it would appear that I am the world's greatest mandolin tone snob and only the sound of a high end mando in the hands of a master is pleasing to mine ear and everything else is like someone pouring ammonia mixed with pins directly into my brain.
Banjo - I got the basics of clawhammer/frailing/old time banjo together, and still have a fairly decent open back banjo knocking around. Having a good grounding in open G tuning made that come along quite quickly and being really into old rural blues I felt it gave me a more fundamental understanding of the mutation of blues from banjo to guitar music. Sadly the curse of my paper thin nails meant that I struggled to get a good strong tone for long before my nail just wore away to nothing. Never tried Scruggs style bluegrass banjo. During a CW Stoneking phase I also got a short scale 4 string tenor banjo, which I tuned to "chicago" tuning, which is basically the top four strings of standard guitar. That was fun.
Reso - extensive explorations in matters resophonic.
CBG - I have a 3 string one which is currently sitting next to a 1920s one string PhonoFiddle as part of a little curio arrangement in my downstairs bog, which is about where it belongs.
Weisenborn - such a lovely sound, but the cheap ones don't achieve it. You're better off getting a decent standard acoustic (something like an all solid Recording King) set up as a lap style guitar a la Kelly Joe Phelps imo than spending the same money on one of the cheap Weiss's you see on ebay etc. It's really just a case of having a nice high bone nut fitted. You can get metal nut risers but they don't sound as good and are usually too high.
Don't over look the noble (but albeit horribly hipsterfied) ukulele. There is so much chord inversion vocab you can learn on uke that then translates straight back over onto guitar - you'll never struggle to find triads on the top strings ever again.
Whatever it is it sounds good.
I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
They're the ideal compromise between percussion and stringed instruments.
Have a listen to what Kaki King does with the big brother of that ^^^^^
I will get a resonator again one day
Feedback
The guy in the vid sounds great but he’s not really playing anything that would replace a flat top in a bluegrass setting.
Dobros are resos that are common in bluegrass of course, but again they don’t replace the flat top guitar.
Fun fact: Bill Monroe was the architect of the sound that would come to be known as bluegrass. He had several guitar players over the years but whoever played guitar in his band played Bill's D28 on records and nothing else. That's the sound he wanted to hear and so that is what they played.