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05-30-2017, 12:46 AM
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Mule Resophonic Guitars
Walking into the Dallas Guitar Show I told friends if I’m buying anything, it’ll be a steel guitar, but this time vintage for sure. I’d owned 3 previous, all new, all departed, and I wanted back in the game, so I figured in the next two days I might find an affordable veteran not done in by 80 plus years of use and abuse. This ended two minutes later at the center aisle, fifteen yards into the hall. Brian pointed to a small booth… “There you go, three old beauties”.
They certainly seemed old…metal bodies with decades of patina, slot heads looking right, but what’s with the logo? A simple profile of a stately mule in metal, inset into the headstock. All questions were soon answered by Matt Eich, founder and chief most everything at Mule Resophonic Guitars. Matt’s a luthier who designs and builds custom metal bodied guitars. To find out the how and why as to what he does, www.muleresophonic.com tells all. I’ll just talk here about the reso I left with that weekend. I’m told way back when National prototyped, but never produced, a single cone body fit with tricones, and Matt makes that guitar now. Sound wise it falls nicely between the two traditional designs; a responsive attack, with just enough sweet tricone reverb and overtone. More on that later. Matt, along with his brother and small crew, builds virtually everything by hand in his shop. Not finding tuners he liked, he had them custom built. Maybe the cones and a few other items are outsourced, I don’t know, but beyond that, the guitar is custom shop from start to finish. Coming from a design background, I appreciate attention to detail, which Matt delivers, from the aforementioned logo inset flush into the headstock like a piece of jewelry to the Mule name laser cut into the tailpiece. Materials come together neatly but honestly, with opposing wood grains where appropriate, but with no attempt to hide joints under layers of finish. The guitar looks ancient, but is not relic’d in the usual manner of new-to-old via key scraping, headstock nicking, fretboard grooving, or random body bashing. The wood and metals show their natural character, helped along by judicious use of stain and some kinda weird treatment he uses to weather the steel. The staining of the neck wood is slap dash, the metal body (stainless in my case) darkened, mottled and streaked, the play between the maple neck binding against the naturally figured ebony finger board just right. The closest thing I can compare it to are the custom cars from rat rod culture… a juxtaposition of old and new, precision and hand cobbled, a free artistic mix (no offense to Mule if I’m off base here, but love me some rat rods). O.K., so the look and build are unique and pleasing, but as should be asked, “Yeah, but how does it play?” The set up on mine allows for slide nicely, but I’ll need to work on fretting notes cleanly (too many misses and mutes so far). I figure I can get that down in time. I love the sound, and as mentioned, it combines single cone and tricone attributes. It doesn’t have the long ring of the tricones I’ve had (a National Delphi and a bell brass Donmo), nor the brashness of the Republic Highway 61 I sold too quickly (a great guitar for the price). How it stacks up against quality resonators of old is beyond my knowing, as I’ve not played enough of them to compare. Your mileage may vary. Some reinterpretations of a classic guitar design end up being little more than mimicry or worse, so to “reinvent the steel” (as one Mule t-shirt proclaims) is a bold step. I think Matt Eich’s guitars succeed, and apparently others do as well, which accounts for the year long wait it takes to get one built (I was lucky to jump the line and snag one made for display at the Dallas show). If I’m sounding like an unabashed Mule fanboy, well, I guess that’s the case. With #265 sitting here at home with me, I feel like I’m on the ground floor of something fixing to get big. I suggest you check out this young builder with a bright future.   [IMG]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4220/34982541405_e675ab94bd_b.jpg [/IMG][IMG] https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4252/34849818171_dfb863d3dc_c.jpg[/IMG]     [IMG]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4220/34982541405_e675ab94bd_b.jpg[/IMG[IMG]  
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