Mavis Mule and Learning Slide

On Jul 31, 2023 I received my Mavis Mule resonator guitar. These guitars are built by Mule Resophonic out of Saginaw Michigan. The company was started by Matt Eich. The guitars he and his team creates are very cool and I was happy to be able to get one.

Since its a small company you (generally) order your guitar with a small deposit. When you get to the top of the queue Matt reaches out to go over the specs for what you want built. The build process begins and you’ll get photos as the build is done.

Finally, when the guitar is complete you get some final photos. You settle up the bill and the guitar is shipped to you. Here’s some photos of my Mavis.

I’ve played around with the Mavis immediately (of course). I had to set it aside a bit as I dealt with other things but I finally got back to it.

One of the things I wanted to learn more about is slide guitar. I’ve got quite a long way to go to get to where I’d like to be with this. In order to get better I record practice sessions and listen to them later. You might think you sound fine when you are playing. Recording lets you review what you were playing, find problems with it or things you need to work on and improve. And you can just toss the recordings since its just practice anyway.

These are a couple snippets from a practice session. The guitar is tuned to Open-G. I’m using a slide ring made by Black Mountain. They make very inventive products for guitar. A normal slide is used on one finger and that finger becomes unavailable for playing chords, etc. With a slide ring you can use all your standard chord shapes.