Intended frequency range/tunings for Nat’l Tricones?

Peter Krebs · From: Portland, Oregon, USA

Hey there. A comment on the forum recently caught my eye that had to do with the design of Natl’l Tricones favoring ‘E’ based (and related) tunings/frequencies (I’m paraphrasing). Is there anything to this? Some tunings just don’t seem to ‘pop’ on my Tricone, even though I have the string gauges correct. Some sound great. Hmmm.

Paul Seager · From: Augsburg, Germany

I can't answer your specific question but I can say that my Tricone (1929 National) seems to respond to some tunings better than others. More on that below but I guess even a metal bodied instrument could react as wood does; with variations on frequencies.

I've never tried an E tuning. When I acquired the National, it was set up for open D, very bluesy and the heavy bass strings worked well tonally. I've read that Tricones like a certain amount of pressure on the bridge, hence open D gauges would support that arguement. Sadly I don't do blues!

So, I went with much lighter strings and open A. Very bright and responsive when playing hawaiian-oriented stuff, incredible harmonics and pleasant overtones. Also with swing music, A was a good fit for soloing and melodies but IMO too bright for comping (I admit that could be down to me!)

Last year, I began attending a bluegrass meet-up 1-2 per month and re-strung and tuned to G and I was astonished that the tone is noticeably different. I intend to stay with G as this is my main use for an acoustic (and I promised myself: no more guitars, no more guitars, no ...).

I will experiment with strings. I was using D'Addario EFT's for open A but for G I took a standard "Dobro" set. I think I will go back to EFT's for the next re-string and hopefully recover that bright tone.
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Tim Toberer · From: Nebraska, USA

I would be interested if anyone has done in depth research on the acoustics of tricone or spider cone guitars. I think this stuff gets very complicated very quickly and for practical use, trial and error is usually the best. The WHY can be very hard or impossible to answer. Maybe someone out there can offer an explanation? Here is an interesting site on the acoustics of a violin using Chladni patterns to reveal some of the invisible things going on. https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/chladni.html#modes

I would be interested if there is any agreement on which tunings sound best.

Eric Dahlhoff · From: Point Arena, California

When Tricones were first invented in 1927-29 what tunings were players using?
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Jeff Highland · From: New South Wales, Australia

Well there is no difference in the cone setup or vent holes between a squareneck Tricone and a spanish Tricone so anywhere between Low E and High E or so should be fine. The resonant frequency of the air in the body will support the lower notes to some extent.
Some tunings with repeated notes or close harmonic relationships are going to tend to sound more full.
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Sebastian Müller · From: Berlin / Germany

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