The double logo, like the pickups on this resonator guitar, represent the incongruous union that resulted when Semie Moseley, founder of Mosrite, acquired the Dobro brand in 1965.

Mosrite was riding a wave of success in the mid 1960s, thanks to a solidbody electric model endorsed by the popular rock instrumental group, The Ventures. The Dobro brand, named after the Dopyera brothers, who founded the National company and invented the resonator guitar in the 1920s, had been virtually dormant since WWII.

Dobros were played exclusively in bluegrass by the 1960s and Mosrite models, such as the California, with it’s thin, double-cutaway body, sieve-like soundholes (the prewar Dobros had smaller soundholes covered by window screen), and electronics, were so far afield from traditional, bluegrass instruments that any advantage of brand recognition was also removed.

In the meantime, Dopyera family members began producing instruments again, and when Mosrite’s fortunes fell in the late 1960s, the Dopyeras reaquired the Dobro name and returned it to the headstocks of traditional-style resonator guitars.