Welcome back to Gibson’s Recording Guitars series, which I’m picking up after a gap of some weeks. We have already spent two installments discussing techniques for recording acoustic guitars in Miking Acoustics Part 1 and Part 2, but resonator guitars — which have made a resurgence in popularity in recent years — really are beasts unto themselves, sonically speaking, and demand a little further consideration.
To begin to understand how to best mic up and capture the sound of a resonator guitar in the studio, we first need to understand how such instruments produce their sound, and where it comes from. The term “resonator guitar” covers a few camps, but all of them use a thin cone (or cones) made of spun aluminum to help produce their distinctive tone. Resonator guitars, or “resos” for short, are indeed acoustic instruments, but their sound is produced by the vibrating strings’ interaction with a speaker-like cone that resonates inside the body and amplifies the sound of the guitar (that is, amplifies it in the acoustic sense, without anything having to be plugged in). These guitars were developed at a turning point in the evolution of the guitar, when players in orchestra settings were seeking more volume in order to be heard over the horns and drums, and before the amplified electric guitar had become a reality. A traditional single-cone “biscuit bridge” reso, as originated by National Guitars in the 1920s, has a cone that opens into the body of the guitar and rises to its peak at the bridge, where a round wooden disc the shape of a biscuit supports a notched saddle over which the strings pass. A Dobro works somewhat the reverse of this, with an “inverted” cone that opens outward toward the top of the guitar, and a more intricate “spider bridge” that carries the string vibration from the bridge saddles to the cone itself, as on Gibson’s own USA Hound Dog Roundneck model. (Note, too, that Dobros are traditionally wood-bodied instruments.) The third major type of reso is the “tri-cone”, another type originated by National Guitars in the ’20s, which uses three smaller cones that speak into the body of the guitar, with a T-shaped bridge piece that caries the string vibration to the peaks of all three aluminum cones.
From these descriptions you can already begin to visualize a major component of the resonator guitar’s sound production, and however it is configured—biscuit bridge, spider bridge with inverted cone, or tri-cone—a significant portion of the instrument’s tone emanates from the cone itself (or cones themselves). Placing a microphone a few inches in front of the cone aimed slightly below or behind the bridge captures the metallic zing and twang characteristic of the resonator guitar, and this is a component you will very likely wnat to have in your recorded sound in some proportion or another. This is what shouts “reso” loud and clear, and also gives the cut and spank that distinguishes a Dobro from an ordinary acoustic guitar. For precise mic placement, use your ears as you have learned to do with recording standard acoustic guitars; move around the instrument in the region of the cone, stick a mic where you hear the most suitable sound being produced, and record a little to listen back to.
If you’ve only got one mic, or want a reso tone with a very high zing-to-warmth ratio, this mic placement might do just fine. But to understand the whole picture, we need to move on to see what other tones bloom from these complex instruments. While the cone(s) and cover plate take the position where a standard flat-top acoustic guitar’s sound hole would be located, all resonator guitars do have further sound holes of another type, positioned both sides of the neck in the body’s upper bout, and generally seen in three forms: f-holes, dual small round sound holes with steel mesh covers, or larger sound holes covered with a latticework grille (or occasionally something more unusual). While the distinctive metallic treble frequencies emanate from the resonator cone, a mic—or ear—placed near these further sound holes will detect a richer, bassier tone that is lush with reverberant frequencies that have bounced around inside the body after leaping from the inside of the cone. Aim a second mic at one of these sound holes and you capture a warmer, mellower tone with far less of the attack and zing of the cone itself, or place a mic in each position and blend the two sounds for a deep, spacious resonator sound that is probably the most accurate representation of the real instrument.
If you only have one good microphone to record with and want a full, blended sound rather than one that’s heavy with either treble or bass, place the mic further away from the guitar and in a position that accurately reflects the full tone of the instrument. You can also achieve excellent full recordings of reso guitars by using any of the stereo miking techniques discussed in Miking Acoustics Part 2, and placing the pair at a slight distance so it captures a good, airy, in-the-room balance of cone tone and sound-hole tone.
Of course, guitarists play resos in two different positions, upright and lap-style, and this will also influence your mic placement to some extent, although the instrument itself produces its tone similarly in either position—it’s just that they’re more apparent on a horizontal or vertical plane. The majority of players use a slide of some sort to play resonator gutiars, too, and you can accentuate the distinctive sound of the bar or bottleneck slide moving on steel strings by aiming a mic at the middle of the neck. Capturing the “ghost notes” produced behind the slide when strings aren’t adequately dampened (a sound some players try to avoid) can even add excitement, authenticity, and dimension to your overall recorded reso sound. Experiment, move those mics around, and record what works best for your track. These are odd beasts indeed, but they can make some glorious sounds.
Check out Gibson’s line of resonator guitars here!