Simulate a dobro

[LMO]

I know the steel guitar world is not familiar to a lot of you here, but one of the things a lot steel guitarists seem to want to do is to simulate a dobro (AKA resonator guitar) on a steel guitar. (Most people probably think of pedal steel when reading steel guitar, but in my case I'm talking about non-pedal steels, like lap steels and console steels). There are effects boxes out that claim to do just that, although from what I've heard the results are marginal.

When I get my Ultra next week this is one of the projects I'd like to try. Has anyone done something similar, and if so, can you recommend how I might approach this?

 

[LMO]

Can't say I'm shocked that this got no responses. I tried some of the EQ tricks I've heard about for simulating a dobro, but wasn't impressed. Tried an acoustic guitar IR, and that does sound acoustic-ish, but I haven't been able to get close at all with that and EQ.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to create an IR from a dobro body. I have a dobro that has a Schertler pickup, which is really just a contact mic attached where the spider attaches to the cone. I thought I would combine that with the output of a reference mic that I'll insert into the body. The best I can come up with to inject the signal is to damp the strings and suspend the dobro over a speaker. Any other ideas for doing this?

 

[Larry Mitchell]

LMO,
Interesting. I use a lap steel and dobro in the studio. Could be very interesting to have something even close for live.

Please keep us up on how it's going.

Larry