❌SOLD❌ Dobro Dobrolektric Thinline Electric Ebony, 2001

The Dobro Dobrolektric was built from 1996 to 2005, and blends two concepts- the resophonic created by National in the late 1920’s with the modern thinline electric.

Intended to bring the unmistakable tone of the resonator guitar to more – and louder – stages, the Dobro Dobrolektric features a heavily-routed Mahogany body with a Maple top. This contains the resonator’s sound well and space for pickups and electronics. A bolt-on Mahogany neck carries an un-bound Indian Rosewood fingerboard with dot markers. Some versions of the Dobrolectric feature flamed maple tops and red-shaded sunburst finshes. With this example, the entire guitar has a gloss ‘Ebony’ black finish. There are two pickups, a ‘soapbar’ covered P-90 at the neck position leading to the first control, and an under-saddle piezo element on the single cone; the signal from this leads to a small preamp attached to the middle control, powered by a single 9v battery. The third control is a master tone. The scale length is 25 inches, or 635mm. Some Dobro Dobrolektric models had 24.5 inch, 622.3mm scale lengths.   The tuners are Grover mini Roto-Matic models.  

Overall, this Dobro Dobrolektric is in good condition, with some play wear to the finish particularly on the back and a couple of small compression marks on the front of the head. Fret wear is very light.

Built in the Gibson Nashville plant likely during January 2001, this Dobro Dobrolektric is sold with its original hard shell case. It’s a very cool, fun to play guitar with the unmistakable reso-phonic tone.

Other builders have used this concept, for example the National Pioneer and Reso-Lectric, and the Beard Reso-Luxe.

The Dobro brand has been owned by Gibson since 1993 following the purchase of OMI (Original Musical Instrument Company), and at the present time Dobro models are built and marketed by Epiphone. But the brand goes all the way back to the Dopyera Brothers, who were responsible for building the very first resonator guitars for the National String Instrument Corporation.

National, which is not related to the modern National Reso Phonic Guitars Inc., began producing Resophonic instruments in 1927, as a partnership between luthier John Dopyera and artist George Beauchamp. The original design was for the famous three-resonator “tricone” in an effort to enhance instrument volume in the days before electric amplification. However, the partnership fell apart in 1928, with Dopyera forming the DoBro company with his brothers. A part of the conflict was over the production cost of the tricone, with Dopyera wanting to make less expensive single-resonator designs with larger cones.

These early instruments were built in the Los Angeles area, and many of the metal parts were made in a local metal shop run by an expatriate Swiss engineer, Adolph Rickenbacker. He went on to form his own guitar company, with National’s George Beauchamp as a partner. Ultimately the name was anglicised to Rickenbacker.

Following the split, Dobro continued to make many single-cone models and ultimately re-merged with National in 1934. Production was moved to Chicago for the Eastern US, with Regal contracted to build for the Western US.

However, materials restrictions during WW2 made the metal parts unavailable and guitar production was halted after 1941. Instead, the companies generally made aircraft components. After the war ended, some resophonic models were built with leftover parts. However, electric instruments began appearing and addressed the same practical issues that led to the creation of the resophonic guitar and offered almost unlimited volume, restricted only by the size of the amplifier.