hawaiian guitar

In the 1890's people on Hawaii started playing the guitar in a different way, laying it flat on their lap, and not fingering chords, but shortening the strings with a straight (steel) object. As they used an open tuning, it was not difficult to play like this.
In the early 1910's Hawaiian music became a craze in USA and the hawaiian guitar became very popular, together with the acompanying small guitar : the ukulele.

In fact any guitar can be used as an hawaiian guitar (although often it was a dreadnought model) as long as it has steel strings, which are tuned to an open tuning. The main difference with a normal guitar is a slightly raised nut, so the sliding steel does not touch the frets. Some were made of the beautiful koa wood.

The tuning is usually open, like : E A e a c#' e' or G B d g b d'.

The sound of the (acoustic) hawaiian guitar is not so strong, compared with resophonic guitars.

weissenborn guitar

During the craze of the hawaiian music, the USA maker Weissenborn designed a special type of hawaiian guitar.

As a hawaiian guitar does not need a roundneck, his design has a square hollow neck, as an extention of the body. His instruments became rather popular among hawaiian musicians. Although many of his instruments were quite plain (type nr.1), the usual decoration was a black/white rope binding around the edge of the body and the fingerboard (type nr.4).

The sound is not so strong, compared with resophonic guitars.

an original Weissenborn nr 4, from Frets.com

dobro              

A resophonic or resonator guitar is different from a resonator banjo, where the name refers to the round wooden back to increase the sound volume. Inside the body of a resonator guitar is a special thin aluminium cone to get more volume out of the guitar.

The dobro is a type of resonator guitar and was designed in the 1930's by the Dopyera Brothers in USA - hence the name "dobro".

The resonator cone is covered by a round metal plate with many cut-outs in 4 halfround patterns. The bridge rests on the cone via a spider-like construction. Above this big coverplate are two separate round soundholes, which are covered with small grills. Between those grills are 3 small open soundholes.

The neck is square and the frets are only for orientation because the nut is heightened so that the strings are quite high off the fingerboard, to make it easy to play the dobro laying flat, with a steel. The tuning machines are turned around (to the front) to make tuning easier. Some dobros are made with a normal halfround guitar neck and a low nut, to be played like an ordinary guitar.

Tuning is nowadays often : G B d g b d'.

The sound is a bit nasal. The dobro is mainly used in Bluegrass Music.

tricone

A tricone is a type of resonator guitar made in the 1930's by the National factory in USA, of thin shiny metal (nickel plated bellbrass), in a stylish art deco design. Tricones were made with different amounts of decoration : from style 1, which was plain, up to style 4, which had chrysantimums etched around the front, sides and back.

Inside the body are 3 round aluminium cones, on which the bridge rests via a tripod. The 3 cones are covered with diamond shaped grilles. In the top of the body are 2 large sound holes covered with thin metal strips (usually part of the body). Pity the neck end does not follow the lines of the grills, but stops squarely.

The tricone was popular with both hawaiian players (played flat on the lap with a steel) as with (Delta-)bluesplayers (played normal, often with a bottleneck). The guitar therefore was available with either a square neck or a round neck (see dobro).

You have to play quite strongly to get the proper sound out of it, so the use of finger picks is necessary.

For lots of information about these instruments see Nationalguitars.

Around 2000 the bellbrass tricones became popular again, but the original factories did not have the moulds anymore to make them. So small firms started making copies, and finally the National and Dobro factories started up their own production lines again. The Continental is a small workshop in Germany.

triolian

The triolian (or style 0) is a type of resonator guitar made in the 1930's by the National facory in USA.

This type has only one big round cone. The cover plate has a decoration of "chickenfeet", and is sometimes called a "biscuit". On the top of the body are two f-holes, like on a violin.

The triolian is in fact a style 0 with a wooden body.

This instrument is a quite hard to play and sounds a bit like a banjo.

The example picture is a style 0, which has a gold colour coverplate, but usually this was silver coloured like the rest of the instrument. It is a modern electric version.

delvecchio

In Brazil the guitar factory of DelVecchio (or "Del Vecchio") made a local version of the dobro. This instrument was officially called the Dinamico, but players often refer to it just by the factory name. The factory in São Paulo has stopped (officially) making these instruments (it still has a website : DelVecchio).

It is quite rare, but players like Chet Atkins played on one. The fretting was usually not very well done, so they are known to be slightly out of tune on some notes.

Inside a DelVecchio guitar is a dobro-type aluminium cone with a wooden cylinder on which the bridge rests. The cone is covered with a round thin wooden plate, wherein usually 5 small round soundholes, covered with metal grilles. Some instruments have 6 and up to 10 can be found. The type of the grilles varies, and sometimes they are made of plastic. In the top of the body are two (usually bigger) soundholes with similar grilles. Often beautiful Brazilian woods are used for the body.

The sound is quite dark (not at all like the sound of Chet Atkins' instrument), but marvellous for single-note jazz picking.

A similar looking guitar, but with 5 double metal string courses is called a viola sertaneja and used for Brazilian country music (see Brazil).

A similar resonator instrument is nowadays also made by McGill.

The wood used for the example is quite dark, making the instrument look like it is made of bakelite. Probably there was a shortage of grilles at the time of building, as the 5th hole (on the top of the circle) is missing.

frypan

Probably the earliest production electric guitar was a 6 string steel guitar, made in the 1930's by Rickenbacher from solid aluminium. As the shape (and material) resembled a fry(ing) pan, it got its nickname.

It has a horseshoe pickup, by which the strings go directly through the magnetic field.

It was played laying on the lap, that is why these steelguitars are often called lap steels.

Since the 1990's Jerry Byrd designed a remake of the aluminium frypan, with some models made with 8 strings.

See for more info on this frypan : Fuzzy.

The lapsteel is just a big plank of wood with strings on it (6, 7, 8 and sometimes even 10) with some decoration to show the "frets" for orientation, and the sound comes via the electric amplifier.

The shape often is indeed just like a plank, but you can also find vague (solid body) guitar shapes or an art-deco type body.

Often the steel guitars are not played on the lap, but mounted on 3 or more legs, and sometimes 2 or 3 steel guitars are joined together, each one tuned in a different tuning, so the player can easily change from one tuning to another.

An important part of the lapsteel (and even more so for the pedalsteel guitar) is the volume pedal. By lowering the volume at the moment of picking the strings, and then - when the sound of the strings decreased - the volume pedal is pressed in such a way that the resulting sound stays on a more or less even level - often giving the impression of an organ.

On a normal steel guitar it is hard to play in tune while trying to make chords with a slanting steel, so people devised a way of retuning the strings during playing in such a way that chords would fall in a straight line under the steel. Eventually this lead to quite complicated machine-like instruments : by using a number of floorpedals (pressed with the left foot) and some knee pedals (moved by the left or right knee : up, left or right) one or more strings are raised or lowered in such a way that plucking a full chord in a straight line under the steel is possible. The mechanism works via cables or via rods, invisible (for the public) underneath the (usually) metal body. The volumepedal is worked with the right foot.

Soon players discovered that it was fun picking the strings just when they were pressing pedals, which gave the pedalsteel guitar (together with the use of the volume pedal) its unique sound.
A particular playing technique is "blocking" : immediately after picking a string, the side of the right hand blocks the string, giving a short guitar-like string picking sound.

The pedalsteel guitar usually has 10 (sometimes only 8) strings and is tuned in E9 or C6. Some players use a double neck pedalsteel guitar, so they can use both types of tuning during the same session.
To combine both tunings nowadays also 12-string instruments are made, with 7 floor- and 5 kneepedals. The "copedants" (the set-up of tuning and specially which pedal moves which string) can be quite different between players.

E9 tuning for 10 strings : B d e f# g# b e' g#' eb' f#'
C6 tuning for 10 strings : C F A c e g a c' e' g'
Universal tuning for 12 strings : Bb Eb G Bb d f g bb d' f' g' e'

For more info see steelguitar.com.

Strings on the examples :

France : épinette des vosges
2 melody strings, 3 bourdons

Hungary : cetera
5 melodystrings, 3 long bourdons, 3x2 shorter bourdons

USA : (Apallachian) dulcimer
2 melody strings, 2 bourdons

On some East-European instruments there is a second row of frets between the main frets, giving the full chromatic range (like on the cetera).

For some information on the dulcimer see Dulcimer or Folknotes, and for lots of different German instruments, see Museum (in German).

Left : the USA mountain dulcimers often have the shape of an ellips (or teardrop) or a double eight (or hourglass). The example is a triangular dulcimer.