Vintage VRC 800-BK Resonator Cutaway

Biscuit cone resonator guitar with cutaway and mini humbucker pickup. Made in Korea I think or China. Smallish hollow body, more like an auditorium sized instrument, quite heavy and solid with the round cavity for the cone. Chrome resonator cover with sieve like holes, and aluminium spun cone underneath. Biscuit bridge with ebony cap. Finished in matt black, which actually starts to shine up with use! No-name tuners, tailpiece which string ends slot through. standard scale, rosewood fingerboard, bound neck. came with cheap lead and allen key for truss rod.

Likes;- It looks great, black and chrome.

Dislikes;- It would have been far neater to have run the pick-up electrics to a strap button jack, rather than, drilling out the body and sticking a great ugly socket on the bottom bout. Strap button jacks are so much neater and more convenient for a guitar which will be largely played sitting down. I could invest in one of these, but I'll still have an ugly great hole in the body.

Bought this as a cheap intro to resophonic playing with a slide and fingerpicking. I fully intended to upgrade with better parts and cones. As it arrived I would give it a 4, but there again for a cheap reso, which I got for a huge discount, and intended to pull apart and rebuild, that is no slur. Howver it does raise a few issues;-

Why are guitars built with reasonably wide necks, yet the string spacing at the nut and bridge is so narrow. It is true of most instruments under #600, these days. Do manufacturers think we have tiny dainty little fingers or something. First job;- replace the nut with something bone, and space out those strings!!!!

The supplied strings were just plain awful, windings were actually coming apart. I left them on though as setting up a resonator involved a lot of loosening and retightening strings, and i didnt want to kill a new set with all that.

Sound out of the box before I attacked it with screwdrivers, allen keys, files etc, was pretty good, but rather brash, but the strings were so lifeless they didnt inspire.

So This is what I did...

As I said before, a new bone nut was cut, shaped and fitted to give wider string spacing, and a better action at the nut end. Removed cover plate, removed cone, and got rid of all the rough edges around the cone cavity. Unscrewed the biscuit bridge, and recut the slots to give a wider spacing for my stubby fingers at that end. Lowered the action a touch as I use it for both opened tuned chords as well as slide. The good thing about resonators is that the biscuit models are a cinch to work on, you can easily string it back up without the coverplate going back on, till you get the action right You can also do this without removing the strings from the guitar, by clamping the strings at about the seventh fret with a capo, and loosening them till you can pop the ball ends out of the tailpiece. This takes a few times because unlike ordinary guitars where tightening the strings pulls the neck forward and raises the action, on a reso, this is countered by the cone moving downwards from the pressure of those heavy guage strings! So remove too much from your bridge and you could end up with a reso with a shredders style action. Great for Steve vai, useless for slide. So got the action just so, took strings off again, and replaced cover plate, then strung it up again. Sound now gets a 7 and a half.

Now Im happy with the action. Im happy with the spacing. For now Im happy with the cone, though an upgrade will happen in the future (it seems there are two types of reso owners, those that do nowt with them and go off the sound, and those that pull em apart, upgrade them, even the cheapies, and get a great deal of fun out of them.) Time to lose those nasty strings. Put on a set of 13-56s and suddenly this guitar comes alive. I cant put the thing down, with slide it sings, it has that lovely raw attack of a reso, trouble is it throws the sound out the front and you dont get the full benefit of it. I have to play it facing a wall to get the bounce back. This guitar is sperb now, I would recommend what I have done to anyone. Get a cheap reso, fettle it to play better, above all change the strings, and you will have a storming guitar which sounds like no other. I love the sound so much it was days before I even got round to trying out the pick-up in it. That is good, but not a patch on the acoustic tone. I guess the electric tone is made more nasal with the cone, but I bought it for the cutaway rather than the pick-up, I intend to mike it up for recording.

Terrible factory set up, but then again I dont care, I set up all my guitars to my specs anyway.

I think it was Mike harding who refered to his resonator as a "Barnsley Fighting Guitar". This is one solid instrument, it is that wonderful combination of music and engineering. If you had to fight your way out of a gig, it would be this guitar you would do it with. It would still be in tune as they took it off you before they put you in the van too...!

I would depend on this without a back up, the trouble is I am hooked, I now want either a spider cone, or a tricone, preferably one in an all metal body. So I'll end up with a spare anyway.

Never deal with them, new acquisition, through mates in the trade. I guess if it let me down i'd use them, but Id probably just fix it myself. Besides there a whole cottage industry of reso builders/repairers/obsessives out there.

Loads of other gear, old telecaster, crafter electro acoustic, mandolas, bouzokis, lap steel, travel guitar, old Eko 12 string which I have been using for slide up till now. I had the opportunity to get this, ( I treat myself to a bit of kit like this just about once or twice a year), in the knowledge that I would upgrade things.

Multi instrumentalist into bluesy/world/folk influences who also likes to rock out, and play indie/guitar based stuff too like Kings of Leon/gang of Four, ex punk grown older. Love playing acoustic fingerstyle for chilling out and relaxing, plus the odd jam with mates. Also do some home recording using digital 8 track.

I would miss this guitar if it got nicked, like I would miss them all. Howver this one is my current fave, I guess this would get rescued from a fire, it is also hung up in my front room so it'lld be nearer the door!!!!