2010s Mule No 431 Tricone Resonator Guitar

My pal Mike Brown invested in this cool Mule sometime back so it could be a summer workhorse... or... workmule? This is Mule number 413 and I imagine it was made 5 or more years ago considering the serial numbers they're at these days. This uses an older-style tailpiece, too.

It needed some going-through to get it playing its best and Ancel and I tag-teamed it -- he leveled/dressed the frets and I opened it up, wired the magnetic pickup to a convenient jack location, tightened-up the internals, seated and tacked-down the cones and bridge, compensated the saddle, and set it up a little better for its current, lefty configuration.

What's most interesting about this instrument is that it's a tricone guitar rather than the single-cone it looks like at a glance. Under the hood is the usual tricone configuration with three ~6" cones and a T-bridge. Combined with the steel body, this gives the instrument a haunting, lingering, "big metal boat" kind of tone with a lot of sustain and presence.

The finish is nicely "aged" to begin-with so it has a friendly, lived-in character right from the get-go. This neck is early enough to not have an adjustable truss rod (as far as I can tell) and it has a nice, understated look to it.

Here's an under-the-hood view of the cones. Note that I used some duct-tape to both seat the cones and the bridge so they would stay-put (and keep the saddle in its place for proper intonation) while on tour. I absolutely do not trust simple tension to hold things in place in resonator guitars and I have no idea why every single builder of resonator guitars does not address this problem when they're putting them together.