Mule

Guitar bracing. I love ladder braced guitars.  I had an Gibson LG that really opened my mind to what's going on inside the box.  Fraulini guitars... same thing.  Dale Fairbanks uses X braces, but they are unscalloped and they are my favorite sounding guitars. To get a drastically sounding different guitar- and drastically inspiring guitar- you have to do something drastically different.  And that's something I get really excited about.   I completely support guys tweaking the forward X brace with carbon fiber, tapping, finger braces etc. and see what happens. I think that is awesome.  But what gets me really jazzed up is the stuff that is a whole new deal.   I can only pick up so many dreadnaughts before I know what to expect.  If you're looking for a different sound, play something different. Ladder bracing is the combination of 'drastically different' and completely traditional.  I think guys like Ken Parker and Charles Fox are amazing and awesome. Brilliant. I'm completely obsessed with Ken Parker's archtop 'Lucky'. The hurdle (I speculate) they face is explaining to every person who is interested why they do what they do because it uses different neck support systems, carbon fiber here, carbon fiber lattice, etc etc.  It's a lot to take in and it's so new. Ladder bracing is new but its old. So old in fact that it's older than X bracing. There's a certain appeal to that. And with guitars like Colling's Waterloo 'everything that is old is new again.' The woody thunk you get out of ladder braced guitar reminds me the guitar I'm playing is made from wood and I forget about whether the strings are phosphor bronze or 80/20- it's just flat out woody body sound.  I love it.  It adds such a character to the sound, which is what we are kind of looking for right? What is 'best'?  Thats hard to describe...but intriguing? That's a little easier to know when you hear it.  It perks your ear and you dig around a bit.  That's why I love resonator guitars so much.  Are they trebly? Sure, but they aren't defined by that because they have the low end to match.   I think thats why a lot of people really love resonator guitars as well.  You hear a reso on a track and it pulls you in .... wait what is that? Is that a resonator? Umm...yes...wait... yeah it is.  It pulls you in.  It makes you listen deeper.  And that's exactly why we play.