❌SOLD❌ National Tricone Style 1 12-Fret Neck Black, 2000

Here’s an interesting piece: a National Tricone Style 1 with 12-fret neck, used by Colin Linden on various projects including Blackie and the Rodeo Kings!

The National Tricone is based on the very first resophonic guitars invented in 1927 by George Beauchamp and built by luthier John Dopyera – with the spun cones and metal bodies made by Adolf Richenbacher. Beauchamp had been performing in vaudeville, and the seemingly eternal quest for higher volumes had already begun, particularly to allow guitars to keep up with the ubiquitous banjo. Without benefit of electric amplification (which Beauchamp was also working on), the aluminum cones provided significantly more volume and projection.

Colin Linden has been active on the music scene for decades, and has worked with many top artists from Bruce Cockburn to Bob Dylan, played on over 500 albums and produced over 100. In 1996, he formed Blackie and the Rodeo Kings with Tom Wilson and Stephen Fearing, and they have toured, performed and produced 10 albums.

This National Tricone Style 1 was used as a working guitar with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. It uses a black-coated metal body, and a Mahogany neck with unbound Indian Rosewood fingerboard and slotted peghead. The guitar is in rather good, original condition with only light wear. Visible on the sides of the heel are some small whitish areas, which are the result of loss of adhesion, possibly caused by the un-finished inside of the heel against the metal body. Fret wear is very light, and the guitar plays well. It’s got the unmistakable sound of a Tricone – loud and warm, with excellent projection, just as Beauchamp and Dopyera intended.

On current National guitars, there’s a label visible through the bass-side sound holes, which contains model, serial and date information. This example is early enough to not have that label, so its exact age is uncertain. We are informed by Colin that this was purchased in the early 2000’s.

The original hard shell case is included with this National Tricone.