How Does a Resonator Guitar Work

Video Transcript

"Hey. A resonator guitar, which is what this is, came about because of the problem with a guitar before, long before amplification, the guitars were being drowned out by the other instruments in the orchestra. So when you had an acoustic guitar competing with a French horn or a clarinet or something, you definitely had some problems. The basic, this one is all steel. Some of them are wooden body, but the main item on a resonator guitar is the cone. This round tray like plate that you see here. And this is what gives it its volume. The holes here are created to let the sound out, the vibration of the strings are sympathetic with the cone, and there is a chamber inside the cone where the sound will resonate, and that's a really, it's the vibration of the steel and the cone responding to the sound waves that the strings produce which give it that little bit of an extra volume. So this, as you can see, this particular resonator guitar is equipped with a pick up and so this one wouldn't, doesn't have any problems competing in the volume category because all you have to do is plug it into an amplifier, which I've done. And so that's just a little like a little Blues improv. And the guitar became very, very important in the blues genre and much loved amongst the blues players in the early days of Blues. And so the guitar went on from there, although it was originally intended, as I explained, to give a little extra volume in an ensemble where it was being, the guitar was being overpowered. But the guitar, but the resonator guitar lives on through the, mostly through use of being used as a Blues instrument."