I love the sound that Chris Whitley used to make on his old battered National Resophonics, reminds me of dirty beer smelling live houses and steamy summer acoustic nights at the acoustic cafe. I did own a National Style 0 for a bit, but sadly had to part with it before moving to Japan. I have to say the Style 0 was a bit of a one trick pony and while I would have loved to use it extensively, I mainly used it for bottle neck blues and Chris Whitley covers. That said there has been a Style 0 shaped hole in my guitar collection (and heart) ever since!
With the economic downturn in the world right now I, like many others, are finding it hard to reason out paying the going rate for a National these days (2000 bucks or more) so I started looking for an alternative, I played a few Johnsons and other cheap Chinese made Reso’s but never really found one I like, they just didn’t sound like the Style 0 and many were simply badly made, so in the end I gave up and decided to save up for a new National.
Then an old friend of mine, who I hadn’t jammed with in ages paid me a visit and brought a long his new Republic Duolian and his Style 0, I have to say that the National was louder, but in many ways (including the look of it) I preferred the Republic. It had a Resorelic finish which means it looks like it had been left out in a swamp for years and in IMHO damn cool to look at. The set up was excellent (out of the box) and had required no adjustments at all. When I asked about the price I got a real shock, a quarter of the price of a National and less than half of what I expected!
As with many guitars, I suspected it may have been a bit of a lucky buy, you can of course pay mega bucks for a dud and I have found with budget Guitars generally you need to try a few (maybe even a hundred before finding a diamond in the rough). After persuading my other half that this was a bargain and far more important than any Kitchen, New car, house etc. (not an easy task at all!) I set about trying to find one in Japan. Eventually I found some reasonably close, so I set off to try them out. The same shop also had a bunch of Nationals and Dobros so it was an ideal place to try them out and compare them with their ludicrously expensive counterparts. The Republic is a lighter guitar than the National and I found a Tricone which looked and sounded great, unfortunately it also had some minor finish issues which made me think about it instead of buying outright. The sound should be enough right, but while the Republic is cheap for what you get, I would still expect a little better attention to detail than the average Chinese clone.
Eventually, I decided to speak to Frank from Republic Guitars, based in Texas USA, and after a bouncing a few emails back and forth I decided to order a new Tricone via his web site. A couple of things you should bear in mind when you do this, firstly the Guitar you get is not the one you see in the picture and in my case Frank was able to send me some pictures of the one he picked out for me, which had a similar finish to the one I had tried here in Japan. The Resorelic finish is completely random so every one is different! Frank also promised to send one that sounded and played nice too. Again it is a difficult choice to buy a Guitar sight unseen so this kind of reassurance and personal attention to detail that you get from Frank is unusual and unique.
The Guitar arrived within a week perfectly packed and looked and sounded great as promised. There were however some minor finish problems, which I have now had repaired and in fairness to Frank, when I pointed these out, he gave me a partial refund to cover the cost of repair. The cost of returning the guitar and sending a new one would be more than the Guitar itself and you would need to pay that yourself so you should be potentially prepared to have the guitar given the once over by your friendly local guitar shop. I was moderately disappointed at the time, but given the refund and the fact that the Guitar sounds and looks awesome (and remember you could buy 3 or 4 of these for the cost of a single National) I think you definitely get your moneys worth, if you are stickler for manufacturing perfection then I would save your bucks for a National.
All in all I give the Republic a 7/10 for quality, 9/10 for sound, 8/10 for playability, 9/10 for service, 8/10 for value. It is a great guitar for gigging as you don’t get a heart attack every time someone dings it etc and still looks and sounds great without requiring a second mortgage to pay for it.
