Hendricson Resophonic Bakeplate Baby Tres

[picture of my Hendricson Resophonic Bakeplate Baby Tres]

It was December 2000 and I was in Amsterdam, preparing for my fortieth birthday. I got pretty bored because I didn't bring a guitar so I went out looking a cheap instrument in the local music shops.

I stumbled on this strange instrument at the back of a shop. It had three sets of double strings, a bit like half a twelve string. I picked it up and fell into a natural finger picking sort of style which sounded a bit celtic. It was only 30, so I bought it. Took it back to the hotel and messed around with different tunings etc.

The guy in the shop said to come back the next day when the bloke who made it would be coming in and he could explain how to play it. I can't remember why not, but I never did go back. Though I spent many hours happily plinking away, learning the odd, sometimes ancient sounding, tunes that the Tres could make.

A couple of years later, and I started enjoying writing songs again. Or maybe that should be - I started enjoying the songs I was writing. Anyway the Tres was lying around and its unique mood was inspirational for certain kinds of song:

...are pretty good examples.

The thing is that the Tres has a got a real jangly sound, that I think is really sweet. You've probably figured out by now that I'm not playing it like many other people. I've got it tuned a bit funny and I'm really using the bottom strings as a drone.

Anyhoo, I thought... what this needs is a pickup, so I can take it out to open mics. But this was a bit of a puzzle. An undersaddle bridge wasn't really gonna cut it. Look at the bridge fer chrisake:

[Picture of the bridge on the Tres]

I think it's a bit of ivory in an ebony holder but when Mr. Hendricson put it together, the string action was not uppermost in his mind. I had to cut a bit of a match to bring up the height on the high string side just to get some workable clearance. And it sits on the lid of a tin of paint. Yes, that's what (I think) Mr Hendricson used as a resonator. (I love this instrument, I honestly do, but it really should just not work!)

No UST pickup is gonna work here!

After scouring various sources, I ended up with a Stewart MacDonald Mini-Flex Guitar Microphone. And I have to say, I'm very pleased with it.

Fitting it into the Tres was dead simple. Just make space a hole for an endpin jack socket and take the paint tin lid out. There's a AA battery contained within the assembly and it seems to last for a long while.

I've moved the microphone head position around several times, and I think (currently) that the best position is moved over to being underneath the edge of the soundhole by the top strings. You'll see that in a moment.

Because I couldn't resist doing something else to the Tres.

Like I said before, I really like this instrument. Because its so unusal it opens up new things to play that sound like nothing else, this in turn influences my lyrical direction and I end up going off is some funny directions. But... lets face it... it's really ugly. It looks like the cheap donor guitar it was and tends to evoke some derision - but only before people hear it.

And so I thought, with Fear of Height coming out soon, and because I really liked the pictures on the album artwork, I would get a new look for the Tres. And here it is:

Yep, that's the same picture as is on the cover of the album, minus my feet of course.

Printed on an inkjet printer using photo quality paper, then glued (with wallpaper paste) to the front of the guitar. Then given a couple of coats of varnish.

And even that didn't destroy the sound, because lets face it, mostly the sound is coming from the paint tin lid.

Notice where the microphone ended up.