THE STORY

The Other Half of the First Rubÿtone

This is the body I kept.

Before there was a Rubÿtone, there was my Atlas.

It was the guitar I learned to play on during my Oshkosh/UWO days with John Stark. I got it from Eric Earnst in exchange for a coffee table I had built from reclaimed lumber from the good neighborhoods along the lakefront.

So this guitar already had a story before I ever started cutting it apart.

Eventually the Atlas developed problems around the bridge. They could have been repaired, but the amount of work and money involved didn't make much sense for the value of the guitar.

I couldn't bring myself to throw it away.

So in 2010, I cut out the part I wanted most.

The neck became Uno.

That was the first Rubÿtone.

And the body went into the Boneyard.

The Part I Didn't Use

Uno went to Thailand with me and then proceeded to evolve through one version after another.

The Atlas body didn't.

It sat.

For years.

But keeping it never felt pointless to me. It was still the body of the guitar I had learned on, and there was nothing particularly wrong with the idea that I might figure out what to do with it later.

Eventually I had a left-handed P-Bass neck.

Now I had a reason to look at the Atlas body again.

Turning an old acoustic guitar into a bass presents some interesting geometry problems. You need the neck at the right height and angle, and an old acoustic body wasn't designed to accept a P-Bass neck.

Fortunately, by then I had another idea available to borrow.

Borrowing From Maccaferri

I had been interested in the unusual neck-mounting system of the Maccaferri G-40.

Instead of trying to force the Atlas into conventional construction, I could use a separate structural member to establish the geometry I needed.

My sister's old futon frame supplied the beam.

I reinforced the Atlas body and used the beam to position the bass neck at the height and angle I wanted. The old acoustic body could remain part of the instrument without being asked to solve structural problems it had never been designed to solve.

It worked.

And that solution became important beyond Atlas Bass.

Working through the Maccaferri neck-mounting idea here helped me understand what I could eventually do with the actual Maccaferri G-40 body I had been saving.

So an idea from Maccaferri helped solve Atlas Bass.

Then Atlas Bass helped me solve Maccaferri.

That's generally how these things go around here.

Back Where It Started

What I like most about Atlas Bass is that it completes something that started with the very first Rubÿtone.

In 2010, I looked at my old Atlas and decided that a guitar didn't have to remain intact to remain useful.

I took its neck.

That became Uno.

I kept its body.

Years later, that became Atlas Bass.

So the guitar I learned to play on eventually became two different Rubÿtones.

Atlas Bass itself isn't for sale. There is too much of my own history in this particular guitar.

But the idea behind it absolutely is.

You probably know an acoustic guitar somewhere with action so high that nobody wants to play it. Maybe the neck angle is wrong. Maybe repairing it properly would cost more than the guitar is worth. Maybe it belonged to somebody and you can't bring yourself to get rid of it, even though it spends every year in its case.

Those are exactly the guitars I'm interested in.

It doesn't necessarily need to become another acoustic guitar.

It doesn't even necessarily need an amplifier.

A large acoustic body can make a surprisingly satisfying acoustic bass.

The important thing is that an instrument doesn't have to stop having a future just because its original design has reached the end of the road.

Let's start a project with an old guitar you never play.