How small part from hardware shop helped alter the sound of indie rock

Guitar gadget strikes a chord. But who owns it?

- NATE ROGERS

REUBEN COX, at his Silver Lake shop, created a popular guitar modification.

Inside a wooden cabin of a building nestled on the outer edge of Silver Lake, Reuben Cox started messing around with a guitar and accidentally created a new chapter in the history of rock 'n' roll.

It was 2016 and Cox, who runs Old Style Guitar Shop - really more of a guitar shack had gotten an idea while taking photos at an Andrew Bird recording session. Producer and musician Blake Mills had brought out a 1950s Harmony electric banjo, which featured a removable rubber mute that could be wedged against the strings. It was a funky little instrument, and the muting device designed to take the musical edge off, essentially caught Cox's eye.

The next day, Cox started tinkering around to see if something like it would work on a guitar and ended up wandering around Home Depot in search of the right part; in a Dadaist twist, he found the piece he needed in the toilet aisle.

"Very Duchampian," he said, laughing as he remembered the process in an interview from the shop.

But instead of having the mute applied after the fact, as with the banjo, Cox designed his device into the guitar, with the mute becoming the bridge, where the strings rest near the sound hole.

"I was like, 'Oh, well, let's try this and see what happens," " he said.

"And it ended up being a bull'seye." First through Mills and then through word of mouth, the rubber bridge guitar, as it's come to be known, became an Excalibur in the guitar community of Los Angeles and abroad.