Mule

  "I dont mean to keep blowing smoke, but that guitar has really opened things up for me. I've tracked a bunch of new songs already with it and its basically becoming the main part of my "sound" whatever that is." When it comes to inspirational tone I say "swing it wide".   Inspirational tone means timbre that affects your musical choices.  You may play a C chord on this guitar and hear something different than if you play a C chord on another. This inspiration towards musical decisions is what creates songs.  It's why we love different guitars.  It's a seemingly metaphysical part of instruments of all types. But it's not entirely metaphysical.  It's most apparent when you swing it wide in regards to guitar selection.  Can you play the same way you've always played on resonator? Maybe not.   The initial discomfort makes way to "...so what DO I play on this?" You find and listen to new players to hear what they do. You learn. You combine it with where you've been musically.  You play or write songs you never would have played before.  That's inspiration at the highest degree.  But it's not magic or metaphysics. It's part of the build process.  With a player like Ariel, how did a seemingly strat style guitar prove so influential? It's not the quest for optimization like guitar companies will try to convince you. There's no such thing as "best" tone.  There's only tone that influences your musical choices.  And a tone-quest to this end will take you towards dramatically different instruments. There's nothing about this guitar like a normal electric guitar.  The body is hollow. It's made out of steel.  Its tuned to standard baritone but with a normal 25.5" scale length, with big beefy strings. (17-64). A normal gauge string at a normal baritone scale length is going to vibrate much differently than this set up.  Feed that through a steel hollowbody and our mini humbuckers designed specifically for this set up and what comes out of an amp is unlike anything previously made.   This changes what Ariel hears dramatically and it influenced his music.  Being part of that is the greatest joy of building instruments.  There is no other feeling quite like hearing someone say "I wrote this song on my Mule."  Would that song happened otherwise?  Maybe, maybe not.   There has to be a german word that doesn't translate well into english to define it.  Swing your instrument choices wide and you'll open up a new world of guitar playing.  You can sign up for your mulecaster or resonator here.  Matt