The Most Unique Guitar in my Collection | Mule Resophonic Mulecaster | Feat. Jules Leyhe

The Most Unique Guitar in My Collection... A hollow steel body tuned to B Standard. A four-person shop in Saginaw, Michigan. And Jules Leyhe playing slide and fingerstyle blues through a 5-watt tweed. Welcome back to Edge of Breakup.

In this episode, the Mule Resophonic Mulecaster T-Style is the story — running into a 1957 Fender Tweed Princeton 5F2-A with a Weber CVA-8 pre-broken-in 8" alnico speaker, with the Effectrode Tube Vibe along for the ride. Played by Oakland blues guitarist Jules Leyhe.

Matt Eich founded Mule Resophonic in 2012 out of a garage closet in Saginaw, Michigan — a man who had trained at the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery and spent years building instruments for Huss & Dalton in Virginia before a single concert changed everything. Watching Kelly Joe Phelps play slide on a metal resonator and send a crowd into a frenzy, Eich left the venue with one question: could he build a resonator that looked more like the raw material it was made from, and sounded warmer and more acoustic than anything the format had historically produced? He had never cut or welded a piece of metal in his life. He figured it out anyway. Mule is now a four-person shop with a waiting list that keeps growing and a roster of players that speaks for itself — Dan Auerbach, Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, Ariel Posen, Joey Landreth, Jeffrey Foucault, Jason Momoa, Celisse Henderson, Rebecca Lovell, and Kristian Matsson of The Tallest Man on Earth.

The Mulecaster is Mule's bridge between the resonator and the electric guitar worlds. Single and double-cutaway variations on Strat and Tele-inspired outlines — this one is the T-Style single-cut — with hollow steel bodies, a 25" scale length, and availability in both standard and baritone tuning in a range of powder coat finishes. The Mulecaster featured here is tuned to B Standard baritone — a full step-and-a-half below standard E — and fitted with Mule's own Tom Thumbucker mini-humbuckers, hand-wound in-house. The hollow steel body creates what Mule players consistently describe as a 3D quality to the sound — a resonant, acoustic bloom beneath the electric signal that no solid or semi-hollow wood body can replicate. Eich himself has said these instruments wake up his ear like nothing else, and when he goes back to other guitars he hears them in a new way. That's exactly right. Put one in your hands and your playing changes.

At B Standard baritone pitch, the Mulecaster's deep fundamentals interact with the hollow steel body's natural compression in a way that rewards both slide and fingerstyle playing with an expressive, vocal quality that sits in its own sonic universe. Into a 5-watt, single 6V6, Class A tweed Princeton and the warm alnico character of the pre-broken-in Weber CVA-8 8" speaker, the Mulecaster finds a platform intimate enough to let every nuance of Jules's playing breathe at full volume.

Jules Leyhe is a Berklee-trained Oakland blues guitarist who has shared stages with Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, Charlie Musselwhite, and Taj Mahal. Premier Guitar called his playing the best blues slide since Derek Trucks — maybe even Duane Allman. The Effectrode Tube Vibe adds its all-tube photocell-and-bulb univibe swirl — triode tubes at real amp plate voltages, Classic and Smooth LFO modes, Chorus/Vibrato switching.

This is the Mulecaster doing what it was built to do.

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🎸 Mule Resophonic Mulecaster T-Style | B Standard Baritone | Mule Tom Thumbucker Mini-Humbuckers

🎛️ Effectrode Tube Vibe

🔊 1957 Fender Tweed Princeton 5F2-A | Weber CVA-8 Pre-Broken-In 8" Alnico Speaker

🎵 Guest Artist: Jules Leyhe

🎙️ Recording Rig: Absolutely no virtual / IR / direct sounds. 4 mics on a real cab. Royer R-121, Lauten Audio LS-208, Ohma Ribbon on front of cab, Royer R10 on back of cab. All mics sent through Universal Audio Apollo x4 with default preamps and no digital preamp emulation plugins, mixed in Ableton Live 12.

The Perfect Single Pickup Junior Guitar | Grez Guitars Mendocino Jr. | Feat. Jules Leyhe

The Perfect Single Pickup Guitar | Grez Guitars Mendocino Jr. | Feat. Jules Leyhe

A tree for a thousand years. A structure for a hundred. Now a guitar. Welcome back to Edge of Breakup.

In this episode, the Grez Guitars Mendocino Junior takes center stage — played by Oakland blues guitarist Jules Leyhe, running into a 1957 Fender Tweed Princeton 5F2-A with a Weber CVA-8 pre-broken-in 8" alnico speaker. The Effectrode Tube Vibe is along for the ride.

Barry Grzebik builds guitars in Petaluma, California — just up the coast in Northern California wine country, between Armstrong Woods State Preserve and Muir Woods National Monument — and his defining material is reclaimed old growth Redwood. Not recently harvested timber. Not farmed wood. Old growth Redwood sourced from deconstructed structures: train tunnels, wine barrels, water vessels, vinegar tanks, barns, and factories. Trees that were 800 to 1,000 years old when they were felled, seasoned for decades or centuries inside the structures they built, and now given a third life as a musical instrument.

Barry plants a tree for every guitar he sells, in partnership with the Redwood Forest Foundation. The wood he uses has already lived two extraordinary lives before it reaches his workshop.

The Mendocino Junior is Grez's take on the classic Junior-style solidbody — an homage to the stripped-down 50s electric guitars that prioritized feel, resonance, and tone above everything else. The body is a single piece of reclaimed old growth Redwood, 13.25" wide and just 1.45" deep, weighing in at an astonishing 5.75 lbs. The neck is one-piece Honduran mahogany with an ebony fretboard, 24.75" scale, and 22 nickel silver jumbo frets. The single pickup is a Wolftone Meaner Dog Ear P-90 — a pickup chosen specifically for its ability to translate the natural acoustic voice of the Redwood body into an electric signal without filtering or compressing that character. Electronics are Emerson 500k volume and 250k tone with a .022 PIO capacitor — exactly the right wiring for a P-90 circuit at this weight and resonance. Music City Compensated Wrap Tailpiece. Matte nitro finish. This is a guitar built to disappear in your hands and let the wood do the talking.

"Building with first growth reclaimed wood originally harvested 100 years ago gave us a head start," Barry has said. "This wood is super well-seasoned and has a liveliness that is hard to get from younger recently harvested trees." That liveliness is not a marketing claim — it is immediately and physically apparent the moment you pick one up. The Mendocino Junior is acoustically vibrant in a way that almost no electric guitar is, and that acoustic resonance translates directly into a singing, three-dimensional electric tone that rewards both the player and the microphone.

Into a 5-watt, single 6V6, Class A tweed Princeton and the warm alnico character of the Weber CVA-8, the Mendocino Junior finds a home that feels entirely natural. Jules Leyhe — Berklee-trained, Bay Area-based, Premier Guitar's best blues slide since Derek Trucks — brings his full vocabulary of slide, fingerpicking, and flat-picking to an instrument that meets him note for note.

Subscribe for more boutique tone explorations.

🎸 Grez Guitars Mendocino Junior | Reclaimed Old Growth Redwood | Ron Ellis Pickups P90 | Emerson 500k/500k Bumblebee PIO Wiring

🎛️ Effectrode Tube Vibe

🔊 1957 Fender Tweed Princeton 5F2-A | Weber CVA-8 Pre-Broken-In 8" Alnico Speaker 🎵 Guest Artist: Jules Leyhe

🎙️ Recording Rig: Absolutely no virtual / IR / direct sounds. 4 mics on a real cab. Royer R-121, Lauten Audio LS-208, Ohma Ribbon on front of cab, Royer R10 on back of cab. All mics sent through Universal Audio Apollo x4 with default preamps and no digital preamp emulation plugins, mixed in Ableton Live 12.