REVIEW OF LEBEDA BASIC RESONATOR GUITAR
GUITARIST MAGAZINE - ISSUE - 233 - Feb 2003
LEBEDA BASIC RESONATOR GUITAR BY MICHAEL MESSER
TECHNICAL EDIT BY DAVE BURRLUCK
As the resonator market grows bigger, we take a look at this new Dobro-style
guitar
By Michael Messer
//The Rivals//
Regal RD45 £399
Dobro DWF60 £1,395 approx.
National Model D £1,499
Limited availability over the past few years has kept the now Gibson-owned Dobro
brand
out of sight, certainly compared to National Resophonic. The DWF60 has typically
a spider
bridge with unbound figured maple body and plain appointments. National's new
Model D
is a Dobro-style with spider bridge and features a spruce laminate top, solid
walnut sides
with walnut laminate back and is available both round and square neck. The
low-end is full
of Dobro-style resonators, many of which look the part but sound way off.
Regal's RD45
is still the best option: nice quality with a good tone
LEBEDA BASIC
PRICE: £895
ORIGIN: Czech Republic
TYPE: Dobro-style resophonic guitar
TOP & BACK: Birch ply
SIDES: Maple
NECK: Maple
SCALE LENGTH: 635mm (25-inch)
TUNERS: Individual enclosed chrome (copies of Grover)
NUT/WIDTH: Synthetic /45mm
FINGERBOARD: Rosewood
FRETS: 19
RESONATOR: Lebeda Dobro-style with spider bridge set-up
OPTIONS: Square neck option (same price). The Deluxe version costs £995 and is
all maple construction
LEFT-HANDERS: To order only (£POA)
FINISHES: Only Darkburst (as reviewed)
The London Resonator Centre 020 7833 9881
www.resocentre.com
LEBEDA BASIC TEST RESULTS
Build quality 4
Playability 3
Sound 5
Value For Money 5
WE LIKED The excellent authentic Dobro tone and playability
WE DISLIKED Badly finished frets and the lack of attention to correct intonation
The Lebeda Basic is a budget-priced hand-built Dobro-style resonator guitar made
in the
Czech Republic by Jiri Lebeda. The interesting thing about this guitar, other
than the fact that
the Czech Republic is the birthplace of the Dopyera brothers, is that in this
particular style of
instrument - a Dobro - there are no rivals available in this price bracket.
To understand the importance of the Czech Republic and Slovakia as far as such a
relatively
unknown instrument as the Dobro in the modern world, one would really have to
visit the town
of Trnava, Slovakia, in August, for the annual Dobrofest festival. Dobrofest is
a celebration of
the Dobro and National guitar and pays homage to one of Slovakia's most
important families:
the Dopyera family, namely John Dopyera, inventor of the resophonic guitar.
There is even a
Dobro postage stamp and Dobro bunting hung through the streets! The Czech
Republic and
Slovakia are the home to a vibrant and active bluegrass and American folk music
scene. There
are many great acoustic pickers of banjos, mandolins, acoustic guitars, fiddles
and, of course,
Dobro players. And outside of the USA, these guys are among the best this writer
has heard.
USA players like Jerry Douglas, Rob Ickes and other renowned slide players are
held in very
high esteem there, and it shows. This is the home of the Dobro-style resophonic
guitar.
So with that past and present history in mind let's get back to the Lebeda
Basic: a guitar that's
faithful to the original 1920s Dobros, but with a few adjustments aimed at the
modern musician.
The build quality is very good and compared with many old OMI and current Gibson
Dobros
it's frankly way ahead. The body (birch ply top and back with maple, presumably
ply, sides) is
all very well finished with a dark honey coloured sunburst and ivoroid binding.
Some of the best
Dobros made in the twenties and thirties were made of laminated woods like this
guitar. The
construction and physics of a Dobro, or indeed any resonator, is totally
different to a regular
acoustic guitar, so all the normal rules about woods have to be left behind.
The metal coverplate, tailpiece and 'tea strainer' grilles are probably imported
from Korea or
Japan but, hey, at this price we can't expect Lebeda to go all the way and make
his own. These
parts are look adequate and should last a long time.
However, the cone, a Dobro-style with a spider bridge assembly, is made by Jiri
Lebeda and is
very faithful to the sound of an original Dobro cone. It would be very
interesting to compare it with
a Quaterman cone (considered by professional Dobro players to be the best) but
you can always
upgrade even though this proprietary part really does a great job.
The tuners are good quality enclosed metal copies of Grovers and look smart on
the flat headstock,
which appears to be faced with a piece of flame maple. The tasteful Lebeda logo
is sprayed onto the
wood and then covered with a clear finish. We get a modern adjustable truss-rod
accessed under the
three-screw plain matt black plastic cover on the front of the headstock.
The maple neck feels perfectly comfortable and Lebeda do offer a square-neck
version for lap-style
slide-only duties. The frets, however, could be finished a little better which
would make the whole thing
feel smoother and more professional. Again, this is only a minor job in the
hands of a reputable luthier.
And we would like to have seen some dot markers on the side of this one - they
are very helpful on
stage or in a dimly lit bar-room. However, original Dobros did not have side
markers and we've seen
many beautiful old guitars with Tippex dot markers painted on.
Still in moaning mode, there are also some concerns here in regard to intonation
relating to the nut,
string height and the position of the spider bridge. The review guitar didn't
play up the neck in tune
and clearly the nut is too high and (more seriously) the neck angle may require
a tweak. While you
may be using a guitar like this for more rootsy styles, not to mention slide,
where intonation is less
of a problem, a more accurate compromise would add points to this Lebeda.
Inside the guitar -the guts - you can see that the construction is quite
interesting. It appears to be a
fusion of modern and old methods of building a Dobro-style instrument. There is
no sound-well,
and the construction is similar to a Scheerhorn Dobro (which for the uninitiated
is a top-end
hand-built USA Dobro-style made by Tim Scheerhorn and considered by leading
players to
be the ultimate in its field) but with some additions that we've not encountered
before. The top
has an extra layer of laminate around the cone, to add rigidity, presumably
necessary due to
the absence of the sound-well. The sound-posts are similar to the Scheerhorn but
the neck-stick
and bracing construction are new to us and we presume are fairly unique to
Lebeda. Whatever
the design, the execution is neat and very professionally finished.
SOUNDS: Of course, the construction becomes irrelevant if the playability and
tone aren't up to
scratch. First off, this guitar really sounds good. Of all the modern Dobros
we've played - in all
price brackets - the Lebeda Basic is right up there with the best. The plywood
body and
budget-conscious construction have helped create a guitar which is really very
faithful to an
original 1920s Dobro.
We tested the instrument in various styles and tunings and it really does
perform well.
As a bottleneck guitar in open G and D tunings it is a good sounding slide
instrument and
is not too affected by those intonation concerns. It reminded us of that classic
Eric Clapton
Dobro sound in the early seventies: very cool. For bottleneck blues it's a
different sound to a
National single-cone style guitar that's renowned for its attack and less smooth
sustain.
We then tried the Lebeda as a lap-style guitar in high bass G tuning, the
classic way to play a Dobro.
This is where it really comes to life and sings - it really honks! It's a superb
tone for playing old-style
classic bluegrass, country and Hawaiian music, which is what these guitars were
originally made to do.
We might conclude that it's the blend of old and new style construction that
really makes the Lebeda
work. The tone has a honky midrange, a deep bass and the treble is very sweet.
It's a loud sound too
- just like it should be. As a lap-style slide guitar this is a classic, and
maybe we should remind you that
it's available as a square-neck lap guitar at the same price.
//Verdict//
A hand-built resophonic guitar with a tone that matches an original Dobro and
priced at under £900 is a
long-awaited and worthy addition to the ever-growing range of weird and
wonderful new versions of
these classics. We can overlook the fretting and the intonation problems because
everything else is so
well done. Dobros are so much more forgiving than Nationals: they are
essentially easier to play, and
are much less likely to get buzzes and rattles from an inexperienced player.
In short, unless you want to buy a much more expensive antique or hand-built
Dobro, you really won't
better this Lebeda Basic guitar. At the price it's unbeatable: the best
budget-priced Dobro we've yet seen.
Lebeda Basic
Guitarist RATING 4.5 (AWARDED GUITARIST MAGAZINE'S CHOICE OF THE MONTH)
Reproduced by permission - Future Publishing®
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