Original subtitles

Music is the most important thing in the world.

Music is the way that people connect, and you don't see that with other

instruments. You don't see that type of historical parallel with that

type of music. I think the guitar traveled with people through American

and that's a real special part to be a part of.

So when you pick up a really great guitar, you just pick it up and start

playing. You get lost in the moment.

You play a note, you play a chord, and it makes you feel something.

And I feel that excitement build when I play a chord and I hear something I

haven't heard before, and I'm lost in that moment, and I'm playing, the

giving me something back.

That ball is rolling down the hill, and it's this really special moment

where what's happening right then is only happening.

And I have a philosophy called be here now.

It's this moment that we're in.

This moment can't be anything else than it is. And when you're with a really

special instrument,

you know that might be the moment that that song comes out and if you had

up your guitar later it wouldn't have happened and you picked up a different

instrument it wouldn't have happened be here now with that instrument and i

think a really great guitar allowed you to do that

So what is a resonator guitar anyways?

A resonator guitar is a type of guitar that two brothers came up with in the

1920s. So that was the brass band era, and we didn't have amplifiers yet. So

these two brothers, the Dopier brothers, came up with this idea to make

resonator guitars. And what a resonator is, is... Inside of a resonator guitar

is the resonator cone, and it kind of looks like a speaker cone, and it's made

out of very thin aluminum.

And because it's thin and it's metal, it transmits the energy from the strings

into the guitar really efficiently.

That makes it really loud.

They also made it out of metal because they could make big tools that made

guitars very quickly. That made them even louder. So they came up with these

cones. They came up with this metal body, and they made a very, very loud

guitar.

Well, a few years later, guitar amplifiers came out. So all the jazz

who had bought these resonator guitars sold them so that they could buy guitar

amps. The people who ended up with resonator guitars were blues musicians.

would use them to play on the street and in clubs that didn't have amplification

yet. because they were loud. And so for 100 years, they were really identified

as like a blues guitar instrument.

That's a really exciting thing as a builder, to see people take it and run

it.

I think it would be hard to overestimate the influence of guitar on American

culture.

As people travel, you grab your guitar and you go.

Maybe you're working on a railroad, and you're traveling as you go. You're

picking up this regional music because you have this instrument with you at

hand, and I can learn from a guy who I'm working with or a guy that I meet.

As our country was forming, as these rural communities were connecting

in this way, music is the way that people connect.

You don't see that with other instruments. You don't see that type of

parallel with that type of music. I think the guitar traveled.

with people through American history, and that's a real special part to be a

part of.

So I grew up in Elma, Michigan, which is about an hour west of here. It's a

small kind of farm town.

My dad's a pastor there, and my mom was a schoolteacher.

And I ended up going to high school here in Saginaw.

I started being interested in playing guitar.

I didn't really love it in the beginning. It didn't really feel like my

but... I ended up starting being very interested in how it worked. There's a

bunch of pieces that go together.

You know, what are these pickups? What do they do? How do they work?

And so when I was in high school, I put together a kit guitar.

You know, that was junior year of high school, and so you're starting to think

about, what am I going to do for the rest of my life?

And so I went online and I found this guitar making school in Phoenix,

It was a completely new experience in all sorts of ways. I went from small

Midwestern town to Phoenix, Arizona, middle of the desert, run

by a bunch of ex -hippies, you know, and all sorts of different types of people.

And they're teaching us how to make these instruments.

The instructors there were perfect.

You know, they were very aware that they were giving us a very basic

groundwork so that we could go out and work. And I was like eating that up.

You know, in the beginning, I spent two years in a little basement room with no

windows, no heat.

It was just me. It was...

me failing, trying to figure out how to do this metal guitar thing on my own.

And I always wanted it to be bigger than me. I didn't want it to be

my show. I wanted to work with other people and have a team.

I wanted to make instruments for people who really understood that they were

being part of a bigger relationship.

When I started making guitars, I was incredibly fascinated with The making

of it, how to make a perfect miter on a binding joint or

weighing bray stock and how that influenced an instrument. And all of

things are important parts of making an instrument. It really is.

And I think it's our job as professional makers to learn that stuff and to

execute it.

We also have to be aware of the priorities, right?

What is the purpose of this music tool?

The purpose of this music tool is that someone picks it up and they play it and

they hear a sound that they've never heard before and that makes them make

different musical choices.

If I picked up guitar A and I played a G chord, I might hear something in it and

that makes me choose a different chord or a different melody note, right? The

way that the low end...

Maybe I go up instead of down.

Well, if you pick up one of our instruments, maybe you go down instead

you know.

That's building inspiration into a guitar.

That's building a tool that's going to affect someone's musical choices.

There was that perspective change.

Oh, this is about some kid from a small town in Michigan ending up in the

Shenandoah Valley making these beautiful instruments with these beautiful

people. It's something that not everybody gets to do, and I get to do

I'm really thankful for that.

So this is where every guitar starts out. This is the receipts of steel.

got pieces for every instrument starts here. So this is cut out on

a giant laser machine.

We've got relief cuts on the outside for flanging the tops and backs. That's how

the tops and backs are joined. We've got the mill caster sets here.

this is all 22 gauge stainless steel use stainless steel because it sounds

really good uh mild steel and stainless steel actually sound different and um

and then we can put a patina on this but it won't rough so the guitar you get is

the way that it'll stay so

the resonator guitars are soldered together there's Three main types of how

join metal, soldering, brazing, and welding.

And we use soldering because it's the lowest temperature form of joining

The metal has to be really thin so that it sounds good, but the trouble with

that is if you add too much heat, then it'll warp.

So we use soldering with these joints so that the steel doesn't warp.

So after the body's made, it goes over here to the next station. So this is

where the necks are made and attached.

And they all start out like this, like a block of wood.

This is a particularly nice piece of wood.

So we cut and join the headstock and the heel using stacked heel.

And then it goes on the CNC machine and we get this.

This is one of our neck blanks.

These are slots for the truss rod and graphite rod reinforcement so that neck

stays where we want it to stay.

So this is how a neck goes on a resonator guitar.

This is the neck stick, very technical name.

It's glued into the heel there, and this acts as like the backbone of the

guitar. So this is what's going to end up taking the structural load off the

body so that the body can just act as...

a sound -producing mechanism.

So go through here, and then with a couple different wedges and screws,

that gets attached to the body. So this acts as the scale so

that the resonator cones are producing the sound that's reflecting off the back

of the guitar, and that contributes to the tone of the instrument.

So both these gentlemen are fretting and setting up and wiring the instrument.

And if guitar making is 500 steps, these are 400 of the steps.

It's all the really tiny detail work that you don't know is involved with

an instrument, but you can feel it.

When you first pick up an instrument and start playing...

How that board is leveled, how the frets feel, how the edge of the fingerboard

feels. These are all the subconscious things that make a guitar feel

comfortable. And now you can just play.

Our job is to be as transparent as possible. So you're not thinking about

setup. You're not thinking about how it feels. It just feels comfortable, and

now you're playing music.

After the guitar is all strung up and checked out, then it goes in the cases

chipped off to there.

So this guitar is the first 12 -string guitar that we've done, and it's going

a musician, Chris Turpin of Ida Mae, and he has a Mavis, but this is...

twice the Mavis. It's a 12 -string Mavis. And it's a tool that he wanted.

And it gave us a little extra push to figure out the things that needed to be

figured out in order to make it happen.

And having the team of guys that we have here allows us to be able to

do that.

I strung it up in front of the camera.

The pressure.

Oh, and this is standard tuning, so.

Yeah.

You can edit it, right? Look at Kim.

Oh, yeah.

There's so many little things that are involved with creating something new you

need all these brains in order to figure it out and And they crushed it This is

not something that I could do on my own. I pushed this off.

This is an idea that's been on the radar. But having the group of people

have here now, we can do stuff like that where a musician wants an inspirational

tool, and we can make it happen for them. So this is kind of the final

It's being strung up. It's being finished.

And then we're going to take it to Nashville and deliver it to Chris.

Witness that really exciting moment of a musician getting something that is

going to inspire new songs, inspire new albums, is going to take them to new

places. And it's really special sharing it with these guys.

So we are on our way to Nashville to deliver the first 12 -string Mavis

guitar. That's a really new instrument for us. We've never built anything like

that, and it has a really distinctive sound.

And we're getting it to a musician who is going to take it to, like,

really amazing musical places.

Chris and I, the customer, really developed a relationship through the

process. And that's what this is really about, building things for people

and connecting that way.

And for me, being there in person and experiencing that moment

of excitement and inspiration and seeing the look on his face and seeing that

moment when he hits that first chord.

And the excitement of the potential that could happen is really important.

You can't get that online. You can't get that through email. So we're driving

down there with the guitar, and we're going to hand it to them and experience

that moment together.

How are you? Finally!

Yes, finally!

How are you? Okay,

so earlier I thought that, like, I wasn't going to be nervous and anxious.

But I really am, like, surprisingly. So now we're in the moment, and now it's

like, you know, you put so much work and, like, thought into it,

and it is such, like, a big thing. It's like you had this idea, and it was like,

can we make it happen?

Can we do it? I didn't even know yet. And then it's like, here.

It's wild.

I cannot believe it.

The river.

Oh, my word.

Oh, my God. How's that pop in person?

It's unbelievable.

Yeah,

that's the right sound.

Guitars make music needed about people.

And the guitar is that mechanism that connects people.

I can make something that connects people that otherwise wouldn't be.

And I see those things over and over again in what we do.

Someone picks up one of these instruments and plays a song or writes a

inspired by what they hear that they wouldn't have otherwise.

And then somebody hears it, and it connects with them, and then they're

along with it at a concert. So when I started Mule, that was really part of

I wanted to do. I wanted to make instruments.

for people who got that part, you know, that I'm gonna get this instrument and

connect with people in really substantial ways.