....is not amplified. I need it to be. Dobro people here, do you mic or do you have a pickup in your instrument? If you have a pickup, what model do you have? I tried a mic at rehearsal yesterday and it barely registered. Of course, it was a Shure 57, which may be the wrong kind of mic entirely. Also, I aimed it at the small resonator hole rather than the hubcap.

How do I get this thing to the PA?

Pickup/preamp

http://www.fishman.com/products/view/jerry-douglas-signature-series-aura-imaging-pedal

Here is a vid about intallation:

If I needed to Amp a Dobro I would go with a lap steel. Rondo has one for 99US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2rjjH6_4Pqc#at=264

If you want an authentic Dobro sound, mic an acoustic Dobro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0dVqmegKBw

If you want a full acoustic/electric sound, then try one of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHcYiOsO3a4&list=PL7MZ550uvzVpVidUK25QOulvFWyzouur9&index=6

And of course if you want steel guitar, …… that ain’t no Dobro! LOL.

Eddie,

Here's my friend Mike Auldridge stealing an extra Dobro break on "Out Among The Stars" with The Seldom Scene.

http://youtu.be/JaojfdxYsK4

He's getting great sound out of his Dobro with a Shure SM57 pointing at the approximate center of the spider and about 6 inches away. The vox mics are SM58s. Mike could afford any professional mic made yet he's using the SM57.

Eddie, go back and try pointing that '57 at the spider, think the same as mic'ing a small amp with a single 12 or 8 inch speaker, meaning place the bidness end of the mic towards the outer part of the cone, about 1/3rd of the way in from the edge.

Of course, if you are trying to play the Dobie with an electric band, you may just have to go the pickup/preamp route to be heard over that.


--Mac

I INSTALLED ONE OF THESE:

http://www.fishman.com/products/view/classic-series-active-resophonic-pickup

(they also make a passive version of the same thing, but it requires a preamp)

I'm pretty happy with it. It retains the dobro sound, and makes the instrument much easier to record.

You WILL have to drill a hole in the instrument in order to install it. (Maybe two, depending on where you place the battery.)

If you get one, when you unpack all the parts there will be a little clear plastic washer that is easy to miss. Make sure you have it... without it the pickup will short and then it doesn't work.

(Don't ask how I know this.)

I have one specific song that has a dobro intro. I have a dobro but it is 100% acoustic. For electric/acoustic guitar I would just use my Ovation. I also have a lap steel. This song needs dobro, not an approximation. If you are doing a tribute, you need to be authentic, thus the hole in my wallet....

I will try putting the mic over the hubcap as Mac suggested, but I have a feeling Mr Fishman will be seeing my credit card number soon when I buy his pickup as will my guitar guy Dennis when he installs it.

I didn't really want to buy a pickup for the dobro... I tried using a mic, but holding it on my lap while playing, I couldn't maintain a consistent distance between the mic and the resonator.

Its a fairly quiet instrument to begin with, and I had a hard time getting the mic loud enough to capture the dobro without also picking up every other transient sound in the room or getting feedback. Noise to signal ratio was never good for me, and you know how that works out.

Also my picking hand was in the way about half the time. The pickup solved all of those problems. I researched all the options before buying that one. Its not the best one available, but I felt like it delivered 80% of the best one's quality at about 50% of the price

this website has instructional videos for sale and quite a few free demo videos to watch. The guy is a BIAB user too, so its nice to support the brotherhood.

http://www.lessonswithtroy.com/dobro_lessons/DOBRO-BASICS-VOLUME-1.html

by the way... is there an instrument you DON'T play??

Jerry Douglas uses the Fishman bridge pick-up on his Weissenborn guitar too. The recorded sound your hearing here is likely being pumped through the Aura pedal that bears his signature.

Well, at the moment, dobro....

WHOLE different technique than slide guitar and I am just now learning it.

ALL THIS for the intro on one frickin' song..... buy a used dobro, get it ready to play at the volume it needs to be.....

Monday morning I try moving the mic like Mac suggested, but I have a feeling that I will end up electrificating (my own word!) it to be heard.

in fact look @ 1:05 in the video above... you can clearly see the volume and tone pots as well as a Tele/Strat blade switch.

Eddie, another inexpensive pickup is the Signal Flex SF20, http://www.acousticcabin.com/Signal-Flex-SF20-p/sf20.htm

It is a Piezo Transducer pickup that is attached to your instrument via a suction cup, thus you can place it anywhere on your dobro. It’s only $12 but it does a very nice job. I have one that I have used on acoustic guitars, mandolins and banjos. In fact I have both recorded and played through an amp with those instruments and the pickup added no noise to the signal, which of course surprised me, as it’s main purpose is a mic for tuning acoustic instruments.

What I really like about this pickup is that you can place it anywhere on your instrument. That way you can find the sweet spot for the sound you want. Also it does not attach permanently to your instrument and it leaves no residue behind when you take it off.

It does come with a very short chord so you will need to purchase an extension chord for it.

Hi Eddie.

I've never had a lot of success using a Dobro live with a mic. It works in the studio, but I've always used a condenser on it which isn't really going to work on stage, particularly if you're moving about at all.

Also, remember that as soon as you drill a hole in any acoustic guitar you run the risk of changing the sound of it.

Mario's suggestion looks good to me. I've not used that particular model, but I've used similar things in the past with quite good results. I like the fact that it's not a permanent fixture and that there's no need to modify the guitar.

ROG.

Not with the Dobro, as the only place that actually vibrates is the spider itself, which is in effect a speaker cone attached mechanically to the back of the bridge. You've got the entire rest of the guitar body where you could drill holes, add bolts, whatever, without risk of changing the sound of that cone (spider).


--Mac

I may need to buy one of these for piano tuning - I have a clip-on piezo but often times, I can't find a good place to mount the clip on the piano. What I really need to do is just break down and get a full-on Peterson strobe unit.

But I can see where this thing could be very handy, (have you had to EQ the signal much?).

Scott, no I don’t use a lot of EQ when using this pickup. At times I have moved the pickup to a different stop on those instruments to get a better sound for the particular song that I am working on. Of course on some songs I have used a little EQ and compression but for many songs I add nothing. But YMMV as they say.

wow, what a great idea! the flexibility of being able to use it with more than one instrument makes it worth having... and the "price is right for the tight" too.

Thanks for posting.. I had never seen this product before.

---update-----
bummer, they don't take PayPal.
I woulda bought it if they did.

I am going to try one of the suction cup types and see how it works. Worst case I lose 12 bucks. Best case it works.

My guess is that you will get wildly different results with this pup on the Dobro, simply because it's designed not to vibrate in just about everywhere except for the spider/cone. Can't put it on the cone directly as it will mass-load the cone to death - literally. Sides of the dobro body should be relatively dead as well from a vibration standpoint.

You are going to be playing this live? If not, then mic the thing as pointed out above. SM57 should be fine, I would think.

Agreed that Dobro is cutting through the mix loud and clear. Reminds me I need to invest in a gooseneck mount to throw in the mic gig bag. So much easier to get a specific position for the mic than boom stands for something like this. Don, is that you leading?

My friendship with Mike dates back to the 70s when we set oot to co-design the Mike Auldridge line of resonator guitars. He specified the design specifications and I would sub-contract the manufacturing off-shore though Kiso Suzuki, a major violin maker in Japan. The project was still born because the Japanese could not produce a spider/cone combination that met Mike's ear.

Mike won countless awards for his fantastic playing. His last work was as a QC for Beard Guitars and they make and sell the Mike Audridge Model in both 6 and 8 string.

To give a wee glimpse into Mike's loving and generous personality, when I told him that Howard Tate (from these forums) was near death from cancer, Mike sent Howard a special Dobro piece that Howard treasured up to his death. What could be a more beautiful gift. Unfortunately, Mike died on December 29th, 2012 of the same loath disease, prostate cancer.

Well a crazy experimenter like me would try cone attachment anyway. The amount of mass loading might be something that I could live with in order to amplify the thing, after all we're not talking a Dobro King here, we are talking the ability to do one Intro for one song. EQ in the amp would likely make up any difference there.

And if I couldn't easily place it on the cone, then I'd try something like clamping one to the bridge, or even perhaps placing a sheet of that piezo plastic between bridge and cone somewhere.

Heck, I'm crazy enough to try putting a miniature electret condenser element inside the Dobro, pointing at the cone. Attachment? A blob of RTV...


--Mac

to me this sounds like the logical thing to try first. Very little monetary risk and reasonable potential to meet your needs.

Please let us know how it works!


------update------
these can be found on ebay for even less

Mac, I did exactly that with my flattop, a Japanese Hummingbird copy.

If memory serves, I think a Dobro has a sound post dead center of the cone. I suspect that would be the ideal place to mic the Dobie.

I used the Panasonic WM063T electret mic element and hot-glued it in place. BTW, that's the same element that Greg Mackie used in his Spectrum Analyzer. (How would I know that?)

Mac, I have done this on my Larrivée acoustic with one of those AT 'choir' mics that also came with a spring clip for lavalier-type use. My issue was that at the time I had no way to roll-off the lows that were overwhelming the mic in the sound-hole. Those little ATs were some of the most versatile mics (they still make many flavors of them) mainly because of the various mounts that came with them (spring-wire for hanging over a choir, plastic tube with threaded mount for use on a stand, and the lavalier clip for all kinds of sneaky uses!

My concern on mounting it right on the cone is that the mass is likely as much or more than the cone itself - but yes - experimentation would be fun!

Eddie, as I think about the past use of the little AT condensers, if you have one of those (not unlike this: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Pro45 ) that also has a spring clip to use as a lavalier, there are plenty of places on a Dobro to clip one of these. You will likely need to significantly roll off the low end - I would do this as early in the analog signal chain as possible. Anyways, there are a few manufacturers of these types of mics, most of them terminate in a belt-pack connector rather than XLR.

Every professional resonator guitarist I have ever played with used a Carl McIntyre Pickup.