The Steel Guitar Forum

This is not intended to open a can of worms, Never the less , These type of guitars exist , yours and mine. The Gibson guitar mfgrs. are saying 0nly theirs is a dobro. True. So now we are calling them Resonator guitars, or some other name.

There are many different types of resonators , round neck standard guitars metal guitars with resonators. resocasters

Saturday night I was listening to a band
live, a member said so and so on the dobro. only thing is he wasnt playing a gibson dobro.

We have used that term so long it is hard to change,

When I was a teenaged boy ,a man stopped by and asked me if I would like to learn to play a guitar. Sure would, so we went into the house to talk to my parents, We bought a guitar for $5.oo . He called it a Hawaiian Steel guitar. well I took lessons and learned to play. The guitar had the round hole , no resonater. I always called it a steel guitar.

The Dobro name was becoming quite peominate, then . Electric steels were becoming popular, Lap steels ,etc. . I used my hawaiian steel guitar to court my new girl friend, Then I went to war, when I came back . I went to look for a steel guitar, was shown a metal guitar, no that is not it. After some discussions I made them understand what I wanted ,Oh you mean a Dobro .

Well you get the point , any years later I bought a real nice accoustic steel , not a "Dobro " , so I do not callit a dobro I call it a steel guitar. or the brand name .
What do we call these things ??

R L
I know what you are saying !
when I was a kid my first STEEL Guitar
was a Washborn ! with a round neck ,
BUT ! it was a Steel guitar . What I think
has happened is the brand name Dobro
has taken over all reason . I have a Dobro
[ made by Dobro ] and have been asked
what it is - I always refer to it as a Steel ,
when I play with some Blue Grassers they always say your a Dobro player .
I think it has been confused with a stile of
playing rather than the instrument .
Thats my take on the subject !!
BH

We went through this one before, but it's dobro to talk about it.
I'll reinterate what I said the last time. The word "dobro" is what John Dopyera exclaimed when he got his new single cone resonator guitar to work just right. In Slovakian, "dobro" means, "good". I say, we start thinging Slovak for that word. When somebody says, "He plays dobro", it means "He plays good". A dobro guitar, means a good guitar, etc. Lets see what they do with that!
BTY, the proper pronunciation for dobro is actually, "dough-bre".

I recognize how asinine Gibson's defense of the Dobro name must seem, but it's based on a trademark holder's responsibility to protect that trademark ... or risk losing it.

The common references to spider-bridged resonator guitars as "Dobros" or "dobros" are exactly what puts that trademark at risk: "aspirin," "thermos," "cellophane," "shredded wheat," "nylon," and "zipper" are all examples of registered trademarks that were not adequately protected. Common use of those names caused the trademark holders to lose their rights to the names, and they all became generic terms as a result.

So when the lawyers for Kleenex, Xerox and Gibson/Dobro send threatening letters, they are demonstrating that they're protecting the brand names that they have either developed, or bought and paid for. (Based on my own work for a major corporation, I can tell you that documenting the threats is probably more important than following up on them.)

You might not like Gibson ... you may not like big companies in general ... (and nobody likes lawyers for big companies!) ... but they're just doing what business owners need to do to protect their investments. If we begin calling all spider-bridge guitars "Benoits" or "Scheerhorns" those guys had best start sending letters, too.

Call 'em whatever you want in forums. Gibson just wants to make sure that they don't lose the sole right to put the Dobro name on headstocks.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Russ Young on 01 September 2004 at 05:26 PM.]</p></FONT>

Actually, I was under the impression that the Slovakian word for "good" is "dobra" not "dobro." And, it was my understanding that the brand name "Dobro" came about by taking the first two letters of DOpyera and the first three letters of BROthers, as in "DOpyera BROthers."

Russ -- great explanation.

I believe one of the problems that Gibson is trying to rectify at the moment is that the former owners of the trademark "Dobro" apparently did little to protect it in the past, and a bit of "trademark dilution" started to occur before Gibson bought the name.

Also, (as far as I understand the situation) way back when, Dobro was really the only manufacturer to speak of, that produced the wood-bodied, square-necked, resonator guitars. There were a few others, like Regal, but my understanding is that Regal, and maybe others, produced such guitars under license from the Dobro company. Consequently, since Dobro was at one time really the only brand of such type of guitar around, the name Dobro became nearly synonymous with that TYPE of guitar to many people.

Now, Gibson is trying to combat the effects of the above situation, and to prevent any further dilution in order to preserve the value of the trademark.

Tom, the Bosnians around here seem to be saying "dobro", but it's a shorter O than in English. Pardon me--I have to go and xerox my thermos.

I'll have the #3 please, with fries.

Anything to drink?

Give me a coke and make it a Dr. Pepper.

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Lee, from South Texas
Down On The Rio Grande

Gary -- I'd like to be able to say that I've heard the Slavs around here say the word, but in actuality, I can't make out a single word they're saying. Sounds like Greek to me and for all I know, it could be Greek.

WHENEVER I PLAY MY GUERNSEY IN PUBLIC, I'M TIRED OF PEOPLE WANTING TO KNOW HOW I GOT A STRAP AROUND THAT COW!!

Lee, you had me laughing about the drink order. I love how us Texans refer to every drink as coke. The fiddle player in my last band moved down here from Iniana, and thought we were crazy.

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"Keep on Keepin' on"