National mandolins tend to have a longer scale, and often National owners tune them as mandolas, or at least at lower pitch than the standard GDAE. Many National mandolins were made of metal, either steel or plated brass. The National is brash, aggressive, louder, with more of a "bark." The Dobro is softer, with a smooth "ringing" sound and a long sustain. The sound difference is readily apparent. There's no intervening "spider" structure, and the strings' vibration is transferred directly to the National's cone through the "biscuit bridge." The highest point in the center of the National cone has a circular wooden "biscuit" glued to it, to which the bridge is attached. The National's resonator cone, also aluminum, rises up in the center, the opposite of the Dobro's cone. The bridge transfers the strings' vibration to the spider, which in turn vibrates the cone, which makes the sound.
Attached to it is an aluminum "spider," with legs that radiate to the edges of the cone in the center of the spider is a wooden bridge over which the strings pass. Michael's hit the crucial distinction: the Dobro resonator has a concave aluminum "cone" or vibrating diaphragm, sitting like a bowl in the well in the instrument's top. Just sand down the bridge to adjust your action height.Allen, Could you elaborate on the differences? The bridge is attached to the cone with a single screw. I have now been using the guitar that way for 9 months and I must say that the higher action improved things a replaced the original damaged cone on my G9201 with a National Hot Rod coneĬan I presume that the Honeydipper (G9201) has the same cone as the Alligator? If so, it must have been about 1" high, so how did you fit the Hot Rod cone? 7 It turns out that saddle and biscuit in my guitar were glued together, so my luthier had to make a new biscuit. Update: the dealer where I got the guitar managed to order me an original replacement saddle. (what term should I be using anyway - saddle or bridge?!) 6 There's also the question how the original biscuit is fixed to the cone and if it can be swapped out without risk. The reduced weight of the biscuit part must be an advantage, but using a harder bridge doesn't necessarily give a nicer sound (or even a louder-and-equally-nice sound).īut mind the blurb at the bottom of the page: the person cutting the bridge will need tools that can deal with carbon! Hmmm, not sure I want to go there but interesting. In my case the cone was crunched a little.Īfter some research, I replaced the original damaged cone on my G9201 with a National Hot Rod cone and fitted it with a compensated ebony maple split cap bridge from StewMac. Interestingly one can apparently not order the cone without an (already attached?) biscuit. Got word back from Gretsch customer service. It is possible to replace just the bridge, as opposed to replacing the biscuit with it? 2 Googling did turn up a reference to an interesting height-adjustable bridge once offered by Weber but apparently those are no longer available(?) Goal: raising the action when I use nylon strings (which will probably be most of the time). For now the only option I found isĪnd those are not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm looking for suppliers offering replacement bridges for biscuit resonator guitars.