The Reso Nuevo Story
After graduating from college with a degree in Biology/Chemistry in 1974 I soon found myself working in Rockville MD. Having grown up in a very small town in the extreme south east corner of Kansas this was quite a culture shock. It didn't take long to find my way to the Smithsonian and the wonderful book store they had. I was passionate about building classical guitars and would spend my weekends at the Smithsonian dividing my time between the art galleries and the then "Natural Science Museum", (where the bookstore used to be) searching, without success, for a book on guitar building.
My job took me to Sweden for three weeks in the early winter of '75 and when there, touring the historic part of Stockholm I walked by a music store with a curious little book in the window which immediately captured my full attention. It was the now classic book by Irving Sloane "Classic Guitar Construction." Thunderstruck, I went into the shop, purchased the book and went directly back to my hotel room where I spent the remainder of the weekend and the following weekend memorizing this beautiful little book.
Within a month of arriving back in Maryland I had built my first classical guitar. I had a friend with a son who wanted to play guitar and with four other children could not spend a great deal of money on a good quality instrument. So I told him "Hey, I'll make a guitar for your son". He, of course, thought I was crazy but three weeks later I presented his son with a real beauty of a classical guitar that had a wonderful sound and was a pleasure to play. When he took it to school for his first lesson his teacher took his guitar from him and said "Do your parents know you brought this guitar to school?"
From there, I made more classical guitars, banjos, harps and instruments of my own invention that were simply curiosities.
I had been interested in playing the "Dobro" most of my life but believed it beyond my ability because it was an instrument that did not have frets that you pushed the strings against and I did not consider that my "ear" was adequate for properly positioning the "steel".
Then my wife and I started a family and when our oldest daughter, Rachael, was five she saw a picture of a harp in a magazine, pointed to it immediately and said "I want to play one of these" She had never seen or heard a harp before and I thought there must be some significance to this interest so I made her a harp. She took to it like a duck to water and within a very short time could play amazingly well.
The interesting thing about harps is that there are a lot of strings to tune! By about the 20th time I tuned Rachael's harp I discovered that my "ear" was not as bad as I thought it was. I was developing an ability to hear much better than I ever thought I could. Hey! I said to myself, maybe I could play that Dobro! I had made a small harp for my youngest daughter, Rose, who was adamant about not playing it so I took it down to our local music store "Pickers Supply" here in Fredericksburg, VA and asked Bran Dillard, "Hey Bran, you interested in trading this harp for a Dobro?" Bran does not recall the last trade he turned down as he seems to have "Trade" embedded in his genetic code. I went home with a Johnson resonator guitar and Bran had a beautiful little English walnut harp to put in his window, we were both happy.
As I learned to play I began looking for that sound that was in my mind but not in my guitar, I modified this, then that, then put in a Quarterman cone (most dobro players get around to this eventually) Then for Christmas + anniversary + new years + my next ten birthdays my wife bought a new dobro for me. It was a lot of money and I liked the instrument a lot but it still did not have the sound that I thought it should. So I did the normal American thing to do in this situation, I took the darned thing apart.
Naturally I did not think it was made properly so I began to design a new Resonator in my head. Being a professional artist/woodworker I did not lack for skills in the wood shaping department, what ever I could think of I could build. I sat down at my computer with my Rhino design program and ten days later I was playing my first "Reso Nuevo" resonator guitar! If you would like to know the "secrets" of my new design you can click on "Theory" for an explanation.