1930s Regal Dobro Resonator Guitar

My friend Anders sent this up from New Orleans for service. It's a nicer-grade Regal resonator with an actual "vented-holes" Dobro spider-bridge cone under the hood and actual Dobro-style screens for the soundholes. Unlike the "actual" Dobros, though, the body shape is more like an L-00 in cut and has a rounder bottom and shoulders.

Unusual features include a very wide 1 7/8" nut width, ebony fretboard, and nicer-than-average tuners. There were a couple of nice maple bridge plates already on the spider-bridge, to I just reused those and added compensation.

Frustratingly, this came into the shop in pretty good order but the neck had some warp and the part of the dowel that glued into the heel had some damage. I fixed all that during the neck reset and now that it's done-up, it plays beautifully and has that classic, airy, midsy, honky, Dobro tone. These have great sustain compared to a National and a more-scooped high register with more-present lows.

Repairs included: a neck reset, repair to the dowel, board plane and refret with medium fretwire, adjustment to the cone seating and location for better intonation, cleaning, and setup. It'd been played for a long time with a raised nut in Hawaiian/Dobro-style, so it was nice to see this "come back" to its original, roundneck, "Spanish" format.

Setup notes: action is spot-on at 3/32" EA and 1/16" DGBE at the 12th fret, strung with 54w-12 gauges. The neck is straight.

Condition notes: replaced frets, new side dots, replaced pearl dots on the fretboard extension, pearl dot hiding some heel/dowel reinforcement at the heel cap, general small scratches/usewear throughout -- but otherwise pretty clean for its age. All the hardware save the saddles and the tailpiece and coverplate screws is original.

I cut down the tall bone nut to suit. I'm not sure if it was original and this had just been played Hawaiian/Dobro-style all its life, but it was certainly tall and old.