The Dobro is a style and brand of resonator guitar first made by the Dopyera brothers who formed the Dobro Manufacturing Company. Their design, with a single inverted resonator cone, was introduced as an alternative to the patented National Tricone and Biscuit resonator designs. Two of the original Dopyera brothers, Rudy and Emile founded the Original Musical Instrument Company (OMI) in 1967 to build resonator instruments. The first OMI instruments were branded Hound Dog but they regained the Dobro name in 1970. In 1993 the Gibson Guitar Corporation acquired OMI, changing the name to Original Acoustic Instruments and moving manufacturing to Nashville. They continue to manufacture resonator guitars as a division of Gibson, which are sold under both the Dobro and Hound Dog names. Gibson also sell resonator guitars under their Epiphone brand.

The squareneck vesion of the Dobro is designed to be played Hawaiian / lap style with a steel slide resting on the top of the strings. The strings are never fretted (the action is set much too high for this) so the back of the neck does not need to be rounded and is left square which makes it more stable when resting on the player's legs.