2010 National NRP Baritone Resonator Guitar

This is a customer's guitar that arrived today and is headed for the other side of the world tomorrow -- so please excuse the quick shots in-store as I'm about to pack it up to go. I thought all I needed to do on this was give it a setup but in the end it needed a spot level/dress job on the 1-7 frets, a bit of finagling of the dowel's set-angle in the body, and a little build-up/compensation adjustment to the saddle (the low B string was too lowly slotted).

But, who cares about that stuff -- what do I think of it, right? It's super! I think resonator baris are probably the most successful (band-playing) baris on the market as they can really get a Tele-style "dig" on that low string and boom it right out there to the audience. It's a joy to play bluesy little low-string runs on this, though fingerpicked chords for singing with sound lush, full, and "big old metal rainbarrel" big as well. It's a heckuva lotta guitar to play, though, with the longer scale and ~70w string on the bottom-end. It's not that the tension feels substantially stiffer, but simply hanging on cowboy chords on the wide neck definitely has a "vintage" feel to it.

I'm glad to see the extraneous truss cover gone on these newer Nat'ls. Also -- check out those StewMac "Golden Era" vintaged tuners. Love 'em.

I'm a fan of that inlay, too.