Ray wrote:
Well I think what you thunk is probably right but I dunno really. I just look at these things. I check that most of the biscuits got the f-hole type things as opposed to the strainers which I see in the Dobros and lookalikes. then there is a whole lot of difference on the inside. I took mine apart just to take a looksee how to put a pickup of sorts in it. the pot lid on the front has different designs mostly as well for the spider and biscuit bridges with the biscuits sort of got a different design. But I dont really know just from what I see so maybe why I put my foot in last time. And in fact stewmac actually sell different coverplates (potlids) for spider and biscuit though I dont know what difference it would make except for size. Maybe the amount of sound that can get out?
The holes have to be there to allow the air to move around. I always joke that my Smoothtalker is better than your guitar nyah nyah nyah because it doesn't have a hole in the middle, but actually it does have a hole, just not in the soundboard.
My first thought was that you'd want some kind of grill to stop stuff falling in. This is annoying in an acoustic guitar, but that's just full of nothing (pedants may now point out that, in fact, an acoustic guitar in Johannesburg is full of air, though less air than an identical guitar in Cape Town). Resonators have got all sorts of moving bits inside. So a plectrum falling into a resonator guitar may cause real problems.
I suspect it's to do with placement and to do with tradition. National have openings on their tri-cone guitars, and the openings have a mesh over them, but it's quite a coarse mesh. So dope pips and drool could still fall in, but a beer bottle top wouldn't.
I would bet that the original dobros had the mesh covered holes whilst National and the like went another route, so the type of hole and what you fit over it is partly to do with tradition. Even in these days of kit guitars we want to fit a 6-in-a-row headstock on a kitcaster.
Ole Jerry's dobro has the tea strainers, but the holes they are guarding are a lot closer to the resonator than on Fritz's guitar. Also f-holes are going to be less susceptible to things falling in, simply because they are narrower. I have some footage of Douglas playing an example of his usual Beard instrument but with the tea strainers removed. So maybe they make a difference to the sound, or maybe he lost them, or maybe he was peutering with the binnegoed and then got called in to do some playing.
I don't really know. This is all based on observation and whatever deducing my brain is capable of at any given time. I know that especially with spider cone instruments there are lots of different mounting rings and so on and they do make a difference to the tone.
This, BTW, is the key thing with 30s Gibson Mastertone banjos. You can get away with quite a lot of modifications and repairs but thou mayest not fiddle with the mounting ring. This, apparently, is the key to the sound of those banjos and even Gibson, so the theory goes, have never been able to reproduce those rings and their effect exactly.
I hope this tangential discussion doesn't come across as implying that there is something not so lekker about Fritz's new axe. Indeed I was at Music Connection yesterday, and they have a square-necked example there, and I heard it being played and I thought it looked and sounded very lekker indeed.
