trusty g - Posted - 07/16/2009:  01:33:59

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g'day blokes,
just a quick question if i may?
as im making my way into deeper water with crazy reso stuff. i'm thinking i'm wanting to change the nut and bridge/biscuit to make my round neck (china made)dobro play a little more like a square neck guitar in order to allow me to learn lap style.

you may already have read some of my preavious exploits in (the wrong thread!) called "don't fear your reso"? if you havn't.... i basically bought a nice copy dobro for a good price.thinking i was gonna be some kinda blues man sittin on the door step!

decided i didn't like the colour/stain, so pulled it apart, sanded it back/cleanned up the internals etc. got impaitiant. put it back together whilst waiting for my spray-painting-brother-inlaw to come back from os. all the while watching this website!and buying all the cds i could get my hands on(commute 1400 km's each week with nothin but a stereo to keep me from going insane!!!) and am now addicted to this music/style!! went out and bought my first steel (a dunlop long dawg) and claws etc. and quickly worked out that the current set up on my reso is not right for what im wanting to do! unfortunatly not made of money so cant afford another reso atm.OOHHH but i would!! so with all that said, i wonder if there is any info on sizing nut and biscuit hieghts in order to raise string hieght on the guitar. i've read another thread on here addressing kind of the same thing but am not worried too much by the possabilities of neck warpageas this guitar is constructed sturdy. i run reasonably heavy gauge strings anyway and it sounds awsome!! well by my standards anyway i dont have any other meter to gauge from at the mo.
any info much appreaciated

regards trusty.

Alan Walker - Posted - 07/16/2009:  04:30:07

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Hi,

As far as I know, you can't tune a roundneck dobro to conventional dobro tuning (GBDGBD) because the neck won't take the tension. Take a look at a squareneck dobro where the neck meets the body and then compare it to a roundneck and you'll see why.

Someone with more technical knowledge than me will hopefully advise you on what modifications you can make to a roundneck to get you as close as possible to a squareneck set-up. As far as I know, it's a case of raising the nut to give you sufficient clearance. Try the Paul Beard website beardguitars.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?
as they sell all the parts necessary to upgrade your dobro.

I hope this helps

Alan

trusty g - Posted - 07/16/2009:  05:33:28

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hey there alan,
as far as tuning open G on a round neck goes.to me, it seems fine.
been tuning an playing all my guitars open for the last few weeks now.
as for tension on the neck ,as you know (most)modern guitars have a truss rod in the neck and open G tuning has three strings that stay the same (dgb) and the high 'e' drops a tone to 'd' whilst the lower 'e' does come up a tone and half .and the 'a' up one tone to become 'b' .
hardly nothing your guitar (well mine atleast) hasn't had to deal with on a friday night "few beers, tune up and LETSJAM!!!...session"

also a bit of a correction to my first post. after floating around on the net tonight and finding some of the info.i said biscuit when i've got a dobro. so i mean bridge...i think?

alaya - Posted - 07/16/2009:  05:42:35

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All you really need is one of these.
stewmac.com/shop/Nuts,_saddles..._Nut.html

trusty g - Posted - 07/18/2009:  18:27:40

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quote:

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Originally posted by alaya

All you really need is one of these.
stewmac.com/shop/Nuts,_saddles..._Nut.html

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my dad had one of those when he got into hawian guitar when i was a kid.
to my mind though, i did think of one of those, but kind of got it in my head that your raising one end of the strings but not the other. which is why i stared thinking about changing both ends. nut and bridge block. since posting this thread i'm more in mind to keep the round neck standard and i'll just need to save my bucks and find a cheap entry level squareneck