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Old 10-06-2021, 09:22 PM
sedandelivery sedandelivery is offline
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Default NGD: A Mule redemption story

Some of you may have seen my Mule tricone post from a few weeks ago. Long story short, I had been watching the used market for one forever, finally took the plunge and the one I received had a bowed neck that required some serious work. The guitar was returned and that dream was put on hold...

I decided instead I was going to wait for a vintage national, preferably one with some type of funky paint job. This guitar from Umanov's always stuck in my head as being the coolest thing I've seen https://www.gbase.com/gear/national-duolian-1934-red. Then about a week after returning the first Mule, I saw this one on reverb and I knew I couldn't pass it up. I loved the paint job, and after owning a tricone for about 5 days, I thought a single cone might be a better fit for me. Also, Mule is currently only making tricones, so I figured that adds to the rarity factor.

It arrived today and I love it! The neck angle is perfect and the saddle is very high. The previous tricone sounded sweet, but this single cone has more of that bluesy, ghostly reverb tone I was looking for. I'm still getting used to the technique of playing a resonator, dealing with all the extra overtones and the lack of sustain on the fretted notes. Plus the flat fretboard radius and the large frets with take some adjustment. The roasted maple neck is a nice touch. None of my other guitars have anything like it. Most people rave about Mule necks, but the profile doesn't really stand out to me. I like it just fine but not more or less than my other guitars. I think what people may be reacting to is the heavily rolled fretboard edges, which is like nothing else I've ever played. Very cool. Still figuring out which open tuning I will leave it in most of the time and I will probably buy one of those slimline resonator pickups at some point. Man, slide notes really sing on this thing!
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Old 10-07-2021, 07:53 AM
THart THart is offline
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Nice, glad you found one. Looks like this one has no truss rod too. Does have the Mule tail piece. Do you know when it was built? My new Mule has a truss rod, I wonder when they started putting those in.
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Old 10-07-2021, 12:05 PM
sedandelivery sedandelivery is offline
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Mine is #710. There is a photo of it completed on the Mule instagram from Sept 28th of 2020, so I assume that's when it was finished.

Funny you mention the truss rod. I looked into this issue a lot given that my previous one had a neck problem. I knew the older ones had adjustable truss rods, then he went away from that and I figured all the new ones had the titanium stick inside. I hadn't noticed that the even newer ones like yours have the truss rod opening again. The I found this little exchange on their instagram a few days ago.

I guess all things considered I'd rather have an adjustable truss rod than not, but it doesn't really bother me, some of my favorite guitars don't have truss rods.

With the amount of time I stalked the used market, I probably should have just ordered a brand new one and gotten exactly what I wanted. Saved a little bit of money, but not much. Oh well, I'm really enjoying the red which is not something I would have ordered on my own.

Last edited by sedandelivery; 10-07-2021 at 01:09 PM.
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