Tricone - anyone use one?

Jazzaferri

The single cone wooden bodied instruments hAve one sound, the metal bodied tico es have quite a different sound. Depending on your budget, best to get a nickel silver bodied reso if you are going metal. There is a fellow in the Seattle area who builds great metal bodied tricones to order. Its a few years and not cheap, but that is the tricones equivalent to a Holo or Hahl or DuPont Vielle Reserve.

If you want a cutaway single cone (spider not biscuit) talk to Mark at Rayco Resophonics. Lives in BC. A good player and a great builder. He may still have my plans for a 14 fret Macca style cutaway reso.

If you like to play up the neck its nice to have the cutaway. One thing to keep in mind is reso's tend to have pretty heavy strings. Think Flattop heavy or medium heavy.

Orville Johnson in Seattle plays some blues on a round neck metal body.

Square neck (played with steel) usually tuned GBDGBD use string sets starting at 16 and going up to the high fifties or low 60s depending. Fairly short scale though. I'd have to measure but around 25.

The string break angle on the spider bridge style single cones, usually wood body, but also In metal. Is best. Around 14 degrees.

Round necks, usually use lighter guage strings but many of the Asian ones have heavy clunky spiders and poor aluminum cones and sound very metallic and thin. If you get one custom made you could set it up with a higher string break angle so one could play with lighter strings 12-50 range.

My favourite reso strings are made by Newtone which Michael can get. To my ear they gave the best sound.

Tut Taylor flat picked a dobro and sounds great on it...getting pretty old by now...but should be some you tubes up there.

Orville Johnson who taught me much about Dobro lives and plays in Seattle and is a real font of info. Great singer, great blues player, great dobroist.

Jazzaferri

Forgot to add, if budget considerations are major, as long as the intonation is good on one, getting an Asian Guitar and having a Scheerhorn cone and spider and a decent bridge insert put in (used to be around 175 plus labour) is a good way to get a decent sounding budget instrument. national are pretty good if you get an oldie. The new ones need to have the cone and biscuit upgraded and set up to sound their best.

My apologies for the rambling brain dump.

Lango-Django

Jay, by "Asian guitar" do you mean just any guitar, or Asian reso guitar?

Jazzaferri

Asian reso's. The cones are made from a different alloy and the spiders are quite a bit heavier. I have rebuilt several with the Quarterman cones and spiders (which up until Scheerhorn were the gold standard). They sound much better after hot rodding. My Rayco absolutely blows em away sonically. Much more responsive, with a fuller richer louder sound.

Lango-Django

Ok, I'll warn you in advance, Jay, this will be a weird question... Have you ever heard of anybody mounting a "whammy bar" type tailpiece on a reso guitar?

Personally I love the "moaning" sound of a reso guitar, but the harsh sound of the metal or glass slide: not so much...

pickitjohn

Since this thread is about Tricones I thought perhaps some good advice may be applied to my National Tenor Tricone…

@Jazzaferri Jay sounds like you may be able to help.

If I should contact through P.M. let me know.

Still plays O K but could use new Cones.
What would you suggest, and where can I get the parts.
I would love any how to advice, or where to read up on this information.

Thanks

pick on
pickitjohn

Jazzaferri

Absolutely @pickitjohn . Pm me if you want

pickitjohn

@Jazzaferri

PM sent

thanks
pickitjohn

Campusfive

I can't seem to find a duly amazing clip of his playing, but youtube "John Reynolds." He's a goddamn genius. And mostly plays a National Style 1 Tricone. There's some Django in there of course, along with some Lang, and Lonnie Johnson, and Kress/McDonough, etc.

I've toyed with buying a Republic Tricone for years, but every time I play a real National, I just can't go back. I've been so close to buying one on ebay several times, so eventually I'll manage to do it.

Jazzaferri

I know of several people who have bought Asian instruments and then upgraded as soon as they played a good instrument.