The Coolest Guitar in the World

This is a National Tricone in Vintage Steel finish. I have always thought they were the most wild-looking and cool-sounding guitars anywhere. They were designed in 1927 (!) and still look modern to this day. I first saw one back in the 1970’s on the cover of Johnny Winter’s “Nothin’ but the Blues” album and was amazed at the design and look of the things. I would ask friends in the guitar biz about them only to find that the company was long out of business and the remaining originals cost a fortune.

You can read a brief history of National and Dobro here:

Years later, I met one of the owners of OMI who made the Dobro resonator guitars and bought a “Hula Blues” wood bodied single-cone Dobro from them. I asked him why no one made the tricones anymore and was told, “oh, the dies were lost and no one will ever make those again, it is just too expensive”. Since I consider the tricone to be one of the triumphs of great artistic industrial design, this saddened me greatly. But then one day at the NAMM show in the late 1980’s I rounded a corner and there was a bunch of brand-new Tricones! Well alright! Looks like someone resurrected the National company. The instruments were, and are made like a Benz with vastly better construction and finishing than the old ones and even a truss rod in the neck (something missing on the old guitars) Looks like the “insurmountable missing die problem” was not such a big hurdle after all.

The new National has thrived since then, offering more models and finishes of Tricones, as well as lots of single-cone and wood-bodied instruments every years. Pro players have taken to them like a tomcat to a can of tuna, and you can hear greats like Doug MacLeod, Bob Brozman, Catfish Keith, and Steve James playing the daylights out of their Nationals on one CD after another. Tricones are back, and better than ever.

Here’s the inside story on how they work:

The strings sit on a T-shaped aluminum bridge that sits on three small, inverted, aluminum speaker cones. It’s a mechanical amplifier! The sound projects from both the backs of the cones out through the top cover’s grilles and also exit the body through the large openings in the upper bouts. There are square-neck tricones for slide-only playing, and round-neck tricones for slide and regular fretted playing. The steel body, aluminum cones and bridge really color the sound making for a totally unique tone. The tricone, having smaller cones and less mass than the single cones, seem more sensitive and sustain amazing well.

One thing I want to make really clear is that you do NOT need to play slide, nor use an open tuning, or even like the blues to really enjoy these guitars. I had not touched a slide in 20 years and immediately wrote 2 new songs on mine. Both sound like sort of a Who / Moody Blues hybrid. I have started experimenting with open-G tuning. lighter strings, and even a slide, but you can easily set these up to play most any style of music on them. It has a stunning bell-like tone that is so different than any other guitars that it takes your playing and songwriting in new directions. Very cool.

They are not cheap, but are reasonable with the painted steel Polychrome Tricones around 1,500.00 street price, and the shiny brass-body nickel-plated ones in the high 2K region. Fancy engraved models may be had with prices going well above my budget.

My Vintage Steel tricone is a new model with a steel body and a satin nickel finish that I think is the most attractive of all the metal guitars. The steel body is supposed to be a bit more midrangey than the brass guitars, but I have not compared them directly. Street price on these in the low 2K range. There is a cutaway version for a few hundred more.

I also want to say that these guitars are a perfect example of what I was talking about in “The New Rock Guitar Manifesto” (read it here) as great design growing organically from the instrument rather than the mediocrity we so often see glued onto tired designs in the form of gold fittings, ornate inlays, frills, curlicues, F-holes, super-fancy paint and wild quilted maple tops.

This











was designed in 1927 and still looks like the future.


This






is what is popular today with many players and represents a move backwards from great design to the esthetic of ornamentation, nostalgia, and strip-mall jewelry stores, and it already looks like last week.


I recommend National guitars as highly as possible. I do not know how they could be improved. Try one.

http://www.nationalguitars.com