John Dopyera - Middle Years

Middle Years

One day in 1925, vaudeville promoter George Beauchamp approached John Dopyera. It was the era of silent movies, in which a piano and sometimes orchestra supplied live sound at cinemas. Beauchamp made a request; he asked Dopyera to make him a guitar loud enough to be heard over other instruments. Dopyera set to work, and over the following months invented a guitar with three aluminum cones mounted underneath the bridge, an amplification scheme similar to the diaphragms inside a speaker. The instrument was 3-4 times louder than a normal acoustic guitar and had a rich, metallic tone, as though it were being played in a large metal basin. It became known as the resophonic guitar (sometimes called National or Dobro). Joined by his brothers Rudy and Emil, as well as a group of willing investors, Dopyera founded the National String Instrument Corporation. The resonator guitar initially sold well, but eventually met with enormous success becoming the staple in jazz clubs and movie houses across the US. Several years later, the brothers separated from the corporation and founded Dobro (the name they also gave to the instrument), their own company, a play on words derived from the "Do" in Dopyera and "bro" from Brothers. The word also means "good" in Slovak, fitting well with their promotional slogan: Dobro means good in any language!.