Boss

$1,800.00

Tags: Amp Cabinet Abbreviated, Cantilevered, Copy Available, Garage, Integrated Speaker, Original Available, Reclaimed Instrument, Stave

Categories: 24.75" scale, Hollow-Body, Pro, Six-String Guitar, Standard Scale

A 16-inch viola-bodied stage guitar with a Boss Katana Mini built into the instrument, its amp controls relocated to the front, twin mini-humbuckers and a rechargeable 12V power supply.

The Boss combines a viola body with the electronics and speaker from a Boss Katana Mini amplifier in a slim electric-guitar format designed for portable playing and busking.

The Katana circuit board is mounted inside the viola body, with its Volume, Gain, Bass, Mid, Treble, Effect Level and Decay potentiometers relocated to the front of the instrument for direct access while playing. The amplifier’s separate headphone and auxiliary-input circuit board is mounted through a rear plastic access panel.

Mini-humbuckers are mounted in P-90 dogear conversion rings, combining the smaller pickup format with the larger dogear mounting footprint. The amplifier and instrument electronics are powered by a rechargeable 12-volt lithium security-camera backup battery.

The Boss retains the shallow profile and light construction of the viola body while incorporating the controls, speaker, electronics and power supply of the Katana system directly into the instrument.

Additional information

Instrument Type	Guitar
Approach	Experimental Build, Front Integrated-Amp Build, Reclaimed-Instrument Build, RestoMod
Construction	Cantilevered, Hollow-Body
Body	16" Viola
Beam	Wine Barrel Stave
Neck	Maple
Fingerboard	Rosewood
Headstock	Standard Guitar Headstock
Scale Length	24.75"
Number of Frets	22
Bridge	Tune-o-matic
Tailpiece	Viola Tailpiece
Neck Pickup	DiMarzio Mini Humbucker
Middle Pickup
Bridge Pickup	DiMarzio Humbucker
Pickup Switch	5-Way Superswitch
Controls	1 Volume / 1 Tone
Knobs	Top Hat Knobs
Amplifier	Boss Katana Mini
Power Supply	12V Security-Camera Backup Battery

Boss

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

9.08 / 10

327 / 360 points

playing

Fun to Play

The first test is whether the guitar makes you want to keep playing it. A high score means the instrument feels inviting, responsive, and rewarding rather than merely interesting to look at. The best examples have enough soul that you forget you are evaluating them and simply keep going.

Playability

Measures how naturally the instrument responds to ordinary playing technique across the neck. Action, fretwork, neck feel, access, and setup should work together without asking the player to compensate for the design. A strong score means the unusual construction never becomes an excuse for compromised playing.

Ergonomics

Considers how comfortably the instrument sits against the body, hangs from a strap, and positions the hands. Weight distribution matters as much as total weight, especially when found objects or onboard amplification shift the center of gravity. The most artful solutions make an unconventional shape feel surprisingly natural.

Tone Quality

Judges the character, clarity, richness, and usefulness of the instrument’s core sound. The goal is not one supposedly perfect tone, but a voice with musical identity and enough detail to reward attentive playing. The highest scores go to guitars whose sound has real soul rather than merely acceptable frequency response.

Tonal Versatility

Measures how many genuinely useful sounds the instrument can produce rather than simply counting switches and settings. Different pickup combinations and controls should create musically distinct choices that a player would actually use. A clever circuit scores higher when its versatility feels purposeful instead of complicated for its own sake.

Amplification

Evaluates how convincingly the guitar performs through its intended amplification system, whether external or built in. Output, clarity, noise, feedback behavior, and usable volume all matter. For self-amplified Rubÿtones, a high score means the amplifier feels integrated into the instrument rather than attached as an afterthought.

build

Fit & Finish

Evaluates the precision and care visible in joints, edges, fretwork, hardware installation, surfaces, wiring, and final setup. Handmade character is welcome; carelessness is not the same thing as character. A strong score shows experienced workmanship while allowing the object to retain the marks and soul of its previous life.

Portability

Measures whether the instrument’s mass and dimensions make sense for the way it is meant to be used. A guitar with an onboard amp may reasonably weigh more, but every added ounce should earn its place. High scores reward designs that are easy to carry, hold, busk with, or live with without sacrificing the idea.

Reliability

Rates the likelihood that the guitar will keep working properly through normal playing, transport, and repeated use. Structural joints, wiring, controls, hardware, and power systems should feel dependable rather than experimental in the risky sense. A high score means the wit of the design is backed by experienced engineering.

Repairability

Considers how sensibly the instrument can be serviced when something eventually wears out or fails. Standard parts, accessible wiring, replaceable components, and understandable construction all help. The strongest designs are inventive without turning a future repair into an archaeological excavation.

Solutions

Scores the quality of the solutions used when unconventional materials create unconventional problems. Beam placement, neck angle, pickup clearance, feedback, balance, and internal packaging are all opportunities to demonstrate experience. High scores go to solutions that are technically sound and artful enough to look inevitable afterward.

Integration

Measures how successfully all the unrelated parts become one coherent working instrument. Neck, beam, body, hardware, electronics, amplifier, and found objects should cooperate mechanically and visually. The best integrations have a kind of soul: the parts stop looking assembled and start looking as though they found each other.

design

Innovation

Measures whether the guitar introduces a genuinely fresh idea, solution, relationship, or way of thinking about an instrument. Novelty alone is not enough; the innovation should improve the object, deepen the concept, or open a useful new possibility.

Shouldn’t Work

Rewards designs that appear improbable but succeed because the underlying engineering is sound. The wit comes from the gap between what your eyes expect and what your hands and ears discover.

Beauty

Judges visual appeal without assuming that beauty must mean polished, conventional, or expensive. Proportion, material, color, age, texture, and restraint can all create beauty in very different ways.

Sculpture

Considers the guitar as a three-dimensional object even when nobody is playing it. Silhouette, negative space, depth, structure, and the relationship between functional parts should reward viewing from more than one angle.

Coherence

Measures whether the many materials, colors, shapes, and components read as one intentional composition. A Rubÿtone can be busy, strange, or witty without looking accidental.

Relic

Rates the visual and emotional value of genuine age, wear, patina, scars, repairs, and evidence of earlier use. Authentic history carries more weight than artificially manufactured distress.

concept

Stage Presence

Measures how strongly the instrument communicates from across a room or under performance conditions. Silhouette, scale, color, movement, and unusual construction can all contribute before a note is heard.

Stands Alone

Judges whether the instrument feels complete and compelling without requiring a long explanation of why it matters. The story may deepen the experience, but the object should already make a persuasive case visually and musically.

Material Story

Considers how much meaning comes from the history and previous purpose of the materials themselves.

Transformation

Measures how completely the original object has been given a convincing second identity without erasing where it came from.

Boneyard Score

Rates how deeply the instrument embodies the practice of building from saved, secondhand, leftover, or previously overlooked materials.

Necessity

Asks whether each major component has a reason to be there. Extra hardware, controls, decorative pieces, and technology should contribute to function, story, balance, or visual composition.

personality

Story

Measures the strength of the narrative carried by the guitar’s materials, development, accidents, people, places, and decisions.

Surprise

Rates the number and quality of discoveries the instrument offers after the first glance.

Conversation

Measures how naturally the guitar makes people curious enough to ask questions.

Cool Factor

Captures the difficult-to-measure quality that makes an instrument desirable before every reason can be itemized.

Identity

Measures how immediately the guitar feels like itself rather than a variation of something more familiar.

Rubÿtone DNA

Rates how clearly the instrument expresses the recurring ideas behind Rubÿtone: reuse, structural invention, functional sculpture, irreverence, and serious playability.

impact

Humor

Measures whether the guitar contains genuine wit rather than a joke pasted onto an otherwise ordinary object.

Punchline

Judges whether the concept resolves into a satisfying final idea—the moment when the viewer suddenly understands why a particular object, material, or decision is there.

Disdain

Measures the willingness to question inherited rules about what an electric guitar is supposed to look like, contain, or be made from.

Rules

Rates how effectively the instrument departs from established guitar-building conventions while remaining musically and structurally convincing.

Copy Potential

Considers whether the central idea could inspire a new custom build without requiring an exact duplicate of the original.

Evolution

Measures how much useful creative territory remains in the idea after this particular guitar is finished.

THE STORY

It's a Stage Guitar That You Can Busk With

The idea behind The Boss was to cram as much amplifier as I could into a lightweight, slim guitar without creating unwanted feedback.

The Boss Katana Mini seemed like a good place to start. It's a killer little amplifier, but even though Boss calls it a Mini, its electronics are surprisingly large when you try to put them inside a viola.

I had already built the complete Katana into another project using its original enclosure. Eventually I robbed that project for the circuit and speaker and started figuring out how to make the same amplifier work as part of the guitar itself.

The first problem was simply fitting everything inside.

Bringing the Katana Controls to the Front

The Katana PCB was too large to package conveniently with its original controls intact, so I decided to relocate the potentiometers.

That turned into a project of its own.

Volume, Gain, Bass, Mid, Treble, Effect Level and Decay all had to be connected back to the amplifier PCB and mounted on the front of the viola where I could reach them while playing. The only control I wasn't able to relocate was the three-stage gain-setting slider, but that's not something I need to change in the middle of a song anyway.

My first attempt used fairly heavy shielded wire. I was concerned about noise and wanted every potentiometer properly shielded, but all that heavy wire created problems of its own.

Eventually I replaced those leads with smaller wires that I braided together to improve the shielding without all the bulk.

That worked much better.

The guitar sounded really good. One potentiometer ended up wired backwards, so I have to turn it the opposite direction from the others.

No biggie. I knew I could correct that the next time it came apart.

I didn't know quite how soon that would be.

Then I Fell Down With It

The Boss hit the floor when I fell while I had it with me.

The impact knocked the battery loose inside the viola body.

Not good.

Fixing that means The Boss needs to come substantially apart again. And once I'm going that far, there are several other things I've been wanting to address.

The Reason This Rubÿtone Is in the Garage

The first thing I want to change is the pickup mounting.

I like the look of the P-90 dogear-to-mini-humbucker arrangement, so I don't want to lose it. But the pickups wobble, and I don't like that at all. More importantly, they're currently mounted through the viola body. That allows vibration from the body to reach the pickups.

I now have a way to support them differently, eliminate that movement and vibration, and still preserve the dogear appearance.

While The Boss is apart, I'll reverse the wiring on the backwards control pot and clean up the fit and finish of the entire installation. This guitar has been through enough development that there are plenty of small details I can now execute better than I did the first time.

And while everything is out of the body, I want to paint the interior orange to match the strap.

Feeding the Power Hog

Packaging the Katana wasn't the only problem.

It is also a power hog.

None of my trusty lithium 9-volt batteries could deliver enough current to keep this hungry little monster happy. Eventually I found the solution in a 12-volt lithium security-camera backup power supply.

The rear plastic panel serves another practical purpose. The Katana has a separate PCB for its headphone jack and auxiliary input, and the panel gives me a practical place to mount and access it.

There were easier ways to build a lightweight portable guitar.

There were certainly easier amplifiers to put inside one.

But that wasn't really the point.

The Boss proved that I could take the useful controls and power of the Katana and package them into a slim viola-based guitar that I could carry out the door, play onstage, or take outside and busk with.

Now it needs to come apart one more time—not because the idea didn't work, but because I know how to execute several parts of the idea better than I did when I built it.

That's what the Garage is for.