Great Ukes: The History of Dobro Resonator Ukuleles and their ‘National’ Origins

TEXT AND PHOTOS BY SANDOR NAGYSZALANCY | FROM THE FALL 2024 ISSUE OF UKULELE

When the Dopyera brothers left their Austro-Hungarian homeland and emigrated to the United States in 1908, little did they know what an unpredictable and fascinating journey their lives would take. The children of Slovak parents Katherine and Jozef Dopjera (as their name was originally spelled) John, Rudolph (Rudy), Ludovit (Louis), and Emil (Ed) learned to build musical instruments from their father, who was a talented violin maker. After initially living in New York City, the family moved west and settled in Los Angeles. In 1911, the Dopyeras (the Americanized version of their name) opened a woodworking shop on the outskirts of L.A., where they did furniture repairs and made chairs, boxes, and some musical instruments.

By the 1920s, John Dopyera had not only developed considerable skill building stringed musical instruments, he had created—and patented—a number of unique inventions, including an improved shipping crate and a picture framing machine. John and Rudy had also begun to build and sell banjos and, in 1926, registered two patents for banjo features, one of which was for an improved banjo resonator. 

While it’s unclear how many banjos the Dopyera brothers sold, they were profitable enough for the shop to become exclusively focused on musical instruments.

John had a deep interest in amplifying the sound of a guitar so it would have enough volume to be heard alongside horns and other loud band instruments. Around this time, he made the acquaintance of a charming vaudevillian musician name George Beauchamp, who worked with him to try to develop a louder guitar. When Beauchamp’s idea of attaching a phonograph horn to the bottom of a guitar proved to sound terrible, John went to work on his own solution, which was to insert a speaker-like spun aluminum cone inside the guitar. The vibration of the strings was transferred to the cone via a top-mounted wooden puck bridge, thus amplifying their sound. 

Beauchamp was so thrilled with the tone of this first resophonic instrument that he took it to a Hollywood party, where it was played by Hawaiian steel guitar virtuoso Sol Ho’opi’i.

That first success led Beauchamp and the Dopyera brothers to partner together and form the National Stringed Instrument Corporation in 1927. National’s earliest products were round-neck resophonic Spanish guitars for regular fretting and square-neck Hawaiian guitars for playing with a slide bar, like a lap steel. Both types sported heavy metal bodies and came in single-cone and tricone models, the latter featuring three smaller cones instead of a single, larger cone. In 1928, at the peak of America’s first uke craze, National introduced its first resonator ukuleles as well as a line of plectrum guitars, tenor guitars, and mandolins. 

Unfortunately, at the same time that National was building its beautiful “amplifying” ukuleles (as they were referred to in catalogs), the business foundations of the company crumbled due to conflicts involving intellectual property of the single-cone resonator instrument design. John Dopyera and his brothers left National and formed their own company, which they named Dobro, a contraction of Dopyera Brothers. (Coincidentally, the word dobro means “good” in Slovak, the Dopyeras’ native language. Their company motto was “Dobro means good in any language.”) 

The Dobro Company thus became independent and a competitor of its original parent company, National.

To avoid infringing on the resonator instrument patents still owned by National, Rudy Dopyera developed a new design for a single-cone resonator. The cone was inverted (hollow side up), surmounted by a multi-legged spider bridge that transmitted the energy of the instrument’s vibrating strings to the cone, which amplified the sound. In 1936, he was awarded U.S. patent #2,045,265 for this design, which differed from the original resonator instrument patent in that the spider bridge sat on the perimeter of the cone, rather than on the apex, as it did on National instruments.

In the early 1930s, Dobro built a wide variety of metal and wooden single-cone guitars, mandolins, and ukuleles. The bodies for the wooden instruments were produced by
Regal, which also licensed Dopyera’s inverted-cone-and-spider design for its own line of resonator instruments. 

The two most popular ukuleles Dobro produced were the A-15 and A-30 models, both tenor-sized instruments with mahogany plywood bodies and solid mahogany necks with rosewood fingerboards. Each sported a six-inch single cone and eight-legged spider bridge. These components were housed beneath a chrome-plated nickel cover plate, perforated by four sets of holes, each arranged in a fan shape. Not only were Dobro’s single-cone ukes louder than the resonator models made by National, they were cheaper to manufacture.

The difference between the two models was the number of additional screen-covered holes (sometimes referred to as tea strainer vents) at the top of the body above the cover plate: The A-15 had two holes astride the end of the fingerboard, while the A-30 had only one centered hole, thus engendering its nickname: the Cyclops. Dobro also produced a model with a pair of f-holes in the upper bout, which included a rare variant sporting a cover plate with six pairs of holes shaped like stars and crescent moons.

In addition to producing instruments under its own brand name, Dobro licensed designs and supplied parts to other manufacturers and vendors, including Kay-Kraft, Regal, Harmony (for Sears), and Montgomery Ward. Unfortunately, as the Great Depression was in full swing by the time these resonator ukes hit the market, they didn’t sell very well. This is likely the reason there are so few around today.

After numerous clashes in court between National and Dobro in which Dobro prevailed, the Dopyera brothers regained control of National in 1934, at which point it became the National-Dobro Corporation. The new company produced a full line of acoustic resonator instruments, as well as electric lap steels and amplifiers (made by Western Electric).

National-Dobro moved to Chicago in 1936–37, and in 1940 was purchased by Valco, a new company formed by three former owners of National-Dobro, including Louis Dopyera. 

The Valco name is a combination of the three partner’s initials. The company’s success was short-lived, as production of all metal-bodied resonator instruments ceased following the U.S. entry into World War II in 1941. After a number of revivals and changes in ownership, in 1993, the Dopyera brothers sold their company and the Dobro name to the Gibson Guitar Corporation.

Inveterate inventors, John Dopyera and his brother Rudy continued to design and build novel instruments—including an aluminum-bodied resophonic violin, the Bantar (a cross between a five-string banjo and six-string guitar), and the Zorko electric upright bass—well into their senior years.