Resonator

[Tonray's Ghost]

OK..who here owns a resonator guitar (with or without pickup) and what can you offer as to your experience or opinions on said guitar ?

I'm considering a boxcar type and would love to hear opinions on its utility more for fingerstyle vs slide use. Tone and volume as compared to flatop acoustic.

Thanks in advance.

[mickey]

I had one but I gave it away. It was an SX similar to the one in your pic.
I can NOT recommend one for anything but slide.
Why? You ask.
The intonation was totally hosed with no (easy) way to fix it.
The saddle sits directly on the spider and meets the strings at 90 degrees.
Look at the saddle on any steel string acoustic guitar and you will see how the saddle needs to meet the strings.
But there is no way to get there from here.
Plug into an amp and it seems to magnify the intonation problem.
Sorry to be such a downer but until someone invents a T.O.M. type saddle system for them I cannot help but be a downer.
You do notice it less playing slide.

[Tonray's Ghost]

I had one but I gave it away. It was an SX similar to the one in your pic.
I can NOT recommend one for anything but slide.
Why? You ask.
The intonation was totally hosed with no (easy) way to fix it.
The saddle sits directly on the spider and meets the strings at 90 degrees.
Look at the saddle on any steel string acoustic guitar and you will see how the saddle needs to meet the strings.
But there is no way to get there from here.
Plug into an amp and it seems to magnify the intonation problem.
Sorry to be such a downer but until someone invents a T.O.M. type saddle system for them I cannot help but be a downer.
You do notice it less playing slide.

Thanks Mickey..exactly what I needed to hear as I already had some inklings of these issues through various Google searches but needed a 'reliable' source.

[BatUtilityBelt]

I have a full metal body Dobro (actually labeled Dobro) with spider cone and no pickup. I only play it in open tunings, and usually slide. The reason for that is absolutely centered around its voice. That's what it sounds really good doing, despite my not being very good at it.

I also have a wooden body "Faux Bro" (faked resonator with basically a hubcap mounted to a wooden top with a biscuit type bridge) from the 1920's. Again, no pickup. It gets sorta half-resonator sounding, but quite woody also. Open tuning and slide again.

I recently bought a used Eastwood Folkstar with a working humbucker and a failed piezo - that didn't go well because it was supposed to be "like new", so it's getting shipped back tomorrow.

I fully expected that one to be used for open tuning slide also.