Hello all,
I have been lusting after a Mule Tricone with a cutaway and pickup for several years. They rarely come up for sale, so I pounced on this one. It arrived today. It looks totally great. It plays.....not so great.
First off, when played with bare fingers there is significant rattle. I gather from research and intuition that rattle is fairly common on resonator guitars and I assume solving this issue won't be terribly difficult. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe something got jostled during shipping? For some reason it does not rattle when using a pick.
The big issue is that I can't fret a single note above the 12th fret on any string. All the strings lay on the frets too much. You can see from the photos that the neck relief seems to end at the 12th fret and then the fingerboard extension is totally flat, causing a hump that results in no playability. I know, I know, who is actually hand fretting above the 12th fret on a resonator guitar? Not many people, and for slide the guitar sounds glorious as is.
Is the type of neck/body joint issue common on resonators? I have 3 days to ship this guitar back for a refund if I need to. The guitar does not have a truss rod, that I can see. I suppose maybe you can access it from the inside?? Maybe Mule owners can chime in on how they have handled neck adjustments? Also the current string are too heavy for my liking. Maybe lighter strings will help?
Thanks in advance for any help!
