Dobro ( / d oʊ b r oʊ / ) is an American brand of resonator guitars owned by Gibson and made by its subsidiary, Epiphone. The word "dobro" is also used as a general name for any wood-bodied, single-cone resonator guitar.

The Dobro was originally a guitar-making company started by the Dopyera brothers, called the Dobro Manufacturing Company. Their guitar design, which had a single resonator cone pointing outward, was created to compete with the inward-facing tricone and biscuit designs made by the National String Instrument Corporation. The name "Dobro" was also used on other instruments, including electric lap steel guitars, solid body electric guitars, and resonator mandolins like the Safari.

History

The history of the Dobro guitar began in the 1920s with Slovak immigrant John Dopyera, an instrument repairman and inventor, and musician George Beauchamp. They were looking for a way to make Beauchamp's guitars louder. Dopyera created an amplifying device, called a resonator, for Beauchamp. This invention was patented in December 1929. In mid-1929, Dopyera left the National String Instrument Corporation to start the Dobro Manufacturing Company with his brothers Rudy and Ed, and Vic Smith. National continued to operate under Beauchamp and others. The name "Dobro" comes from a shortened form of "Dopyera brothers" and also means "good" in Slovak and other Slavic languages. An early company slogan was "Dobro means good in any language." In 1930, the company name was changed to Dobro Corporation, Ltd., with financial support from Louis and Robert Dopyera. At this time, Dobro was a competitor of National.

The Dobro was the third resonator guitar design by Dopyera, but the second to be made. Unlike his earlier tricone design, which had three inward-facing resonator cones, the Dobro used a single outward-facing cone with a concave surface facing up. The Dobro company called this shape a bowl-shaped resonator.

The Dobro was louder than the tricone and cheaper to produce. Dopyera believed the cost of making resonator guitars was too high for many musicians. His inability to convince National's directors to make a single-cone version led him to leave the company.

Because National had a patent for an inward-facing single cone (U.S. patent 1808756), Dopyera designed a different model. His guitar had a bridge resting on an eight-legged cast aluminum spider at the edge of the cone (U.S. patent 1896484), unlike National's design, which placed the bridge on the cone's tip.

In the following years, both Dobro and National produced many metal- and wood-bodied single-cone guitars. National also continued making tricone models for a time. Both companies used parts from National director Adolph Rickenbacher, and John Dopyera remained a major shareholder in National. By 1932, the Dopyera brothers controlled both National and Dobro, merging them into the National-Dobro Company. By the 1940s, National-Dobro was bought by Valco. Valco stopped making Dobro-branded guitars after World War II, but the Dopyera brothers continued producing resonator guitars under other brand names.

In 1964, the Dopyera brothers revived the Dobro name. They sold it to Semie Moseley in 1966. In 1970, the Dopyeras' Original Musical Instrument Company (OMI) reacquired the Dobro name. In 1993, Gibson Guitar Corporation bought OMI and the Dobro name. The company became Gibson's Original Acoustic Instruments division, and production moved to Nashville in 2000. As of February 2012, Dobros were made by Gibson's subsidiary Epiphone. As of January 2023, Dobros were not listed on Epiphone's website.

The Dobro was first used in country music by Bashful Brother Oswald, who played it with Roy Acuff starting in January 1939.

The first and second prototypes of the Dobro created by the Dopyera brothers are displayed in a museum in Taft, California, where the town's oil production history is also highlighted.

On June 19, 2019, a 1933 Dobro Resonator Guitar Model 27, owned by David Gilmour, was sold at auction for a record $112,500.

Epiphone Dobros

Current and previous models of resonator guitars made by the Gibson Company include:

• Hound Dog Round neck Deluxe
• Square neck M-14 metal body
• Gibson's Phil Leadbetter resonator series