The Muriel Trebles

Muriel Anderson, an amazing and well known guitarist from the US contacted me some years ago asking if I could build here a set of attachable Super Trebles that she could use on any of her guitars. After two prototypes that needed to be improved, we now landed at this design you see in detail below, which works really well. One last thing I’ve changed now since the 2019 batch is the scale length towards the higher strings which was still a bit on the long side and could cause string breakage. This problem was solved now by changing the angles of both saddles and it now also works much better with Nylon strings.

(Double click on images to view galleries)

 

Materials and construction

The Muriel Trebles are made of reinforced birch plywood with two thin layers of carbon fibre sandwiched in between the plywood and the veneer covers. The entire sandwich is glued up with Epoxy resin under high heat and pressed in an arched mould which gives the board a nice prebend to take all that tension. All of this results in a super stiff and durable construction.
The saddle holders are made of solid wood and the saddles themselves are strips of durable and well sound transferring  carbon fibre strips.

 

Acoustic sound

The sound is loud enough once attached to a guitar body to blend in nicely with the natural guitar sound as you can hear on the video. The sound is transfered onto the guitar top through the round leather covered button on the back side of the Trebles. Its position is specifically placed on the vibrant area on the guitar top to transfer the sound. The ledge at the bottom of the other end is sitting on the stiff guitar edge and does not dampen the guitar sound. That ledge is also covered in leather and therefor doesn’t cause any problem with any guitar finish. The leather also provides just enough friction for the Trebles to nicely stay in place.

Pick-up

The Muriel Trebles come with a K&K passive pick-up system which has a really high output level and a very nice sound for a passive pick-up. It can easily be used without an external preamp. However, the output level and also the sound only gets better if you run it through an external preamp.
The Muriel Trebles are now also available without the pick-up, as the unit is well usable purely acoustically. Even though it can simply be miced in a setting that requires amplification, I still recommend going for the pick-up for a maximum of flexibility.

Tuners

The main tuners are 1:1 small tuning pins as you would find on a harp for example. These can only be adjusted with the provide tuning key. On the top end there are violin fine tuners installed which make fine tuning really easy and smooth.

Attaching

The Muriel Trebles are easily attachable and removable with a bungee cord and a shrink tube covered Aluminum rod that clamps the Trebles onto any guitar body. It works from a small body Parlor guitar to a big Jumbo guitar. (see video)

Strings

The Muriel Trebles can be used with either Steel or Nylon ball end strings! The fine tuners do work better with the Steel strings, but it really works as well with Nylons!
I recommed using the following gauges for steel strings:
012 / 011 / 011 / 010 / 010 / 009 / 009 / 008

For the Nylon string simply use the highest E string (high tension) with ball ends. La Bella and GHS offer those for example.

Bag

The Muriel Trebles come with nice little custom bag which also has a seperate outside compartment for the tuning key and some spare strings.

How to order your Muriel Trebles

Please simply fill out the order form down below.
Below you find some pictures of the currently available veneers. This should still give you a good idea, but please be aware that the colors will be a bit more intense once lacquered.

Payment options
After placing your order you will receive further payment info for either doing a wire transfer in your own currency or to use your creditcard.