CherryTiger

$2,495.00

Tags: Bluetooth Amp, Boneyard, Cantilevered, Complete Amp Cabinet, Copy Available, Found Object, Original Available, Reclaimed Instrument, Self-Standing, Spirit Level

Categories: 24" scale, Hollow-Body, Pro, Short Scale, Six-String Guitar

A compact Tiger-bodied electric built around a cherry carpenter’s level — a literal “level playing field” designed to fit snugly into a plush hardshell guitar case.

CherryTiger combines a vintage Emenee Tiger-style body with a cherry carpenter’s level chosen as much for its graphics and hardware as for its structural usefulness.

The level is marked “Cherry — Best Wood for Levels,” a piece of advertising copy that became part of the visual design. Rather than positioning the level in the easiest orientation, it was cut and arranged on its side so the original lettering, glass bubble and brass fittings could remain visible.

CherryTiger was also deliberately built to fit snugly into a plush-lined hardshell guitar case. The fit has the satisfying, almost tailored quality of opening a high-end Les Paul case—the instrument settles securely into the interior rather than simply occupying a generic case. By coincidence, the plush velvet lining also closely matches the color of the Tiger body, making the guitar and case look as though they were designed as a pair.

The contrast is part of the appeal: a vintage plastic toy-guitar body and an old carpenter’s level presented with the fitted-case treatment normally associated with a considerably more conventional high-end instrument.

Additional information

Instrument Type	Guitar
Approach	Boneyard Build, Found-Object Build, RestoMod, Whole Integrated-Amp Build
Construction	Cantilevered, Hollow-Body
Body	Eminee plastic toy guitar
Beam	Cherry Carpenter Level
Neck	Mahogany
Fingerboard	Ebony
Headstock	Standard Guitar Headstock
Scale Length	24"
Number of Frets	20
Bridge	Telecaster Hardtail
Tailpiece
Neck Pickup	Humbucker
Middle Pickup
Bridge Pickup	Humbucker
Pickup Switch	3-Way Lever
Controls	1 Volume / 1 Tone
Knobs	Vintage Chicken Head Knobs
Amplifier	NUX Mighty Lite
Power Supply	9V Rechargeable Battery

CherryTiger

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

9.89 / 10

356 / 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

Cherry. Best Wood for Levels.

Sometimes an object tells me what to do with it.

I found a particularly nice-looking carpenter's level with something printed on it that sounded like it had come directly out of an old tool catalog aimed at beginners:

“Cherry — Best Wood for Levels.”

I loved that.

Once I saw it, there was no possibility that those words were going to disappear inside the guitar.

They had to be featured somewhere visible.

That turned out to be considerably more difficult than simply using the level as a beam.

The Level Had to Go Sideways

The other things I wanted to preserve were the glass bubble and brass fittings.

Normally I can look at an object and decide how it best fits the guitar.

This time the object was making demands.

The lettering had to show.

The bubble had to show.

The brass had to show.

So I decided to put the level on its side.

To make that work, I had to cut it up.

I went through a surprising amount of trouble just to preserve a sentence advertising the superiority of cherry for making carpenter's levels.

I think it was worth it.

Then There Was the Case

I had another goal for CherryTiger.

I wanted to build a Tiger that would fit snugly into a proper plush hardshell case.

I wanted that particular feeling you get with a high-end Les Paul and its fitted case: you lower the guitar into it and everything seems to land exactly where it belongs.

That part worked.

But the best part wasn't planned.

When I finally put CherryTiger into the case, the plush velvet lining turned out to be almost perfectly matched to the color of the Tiger body.

The guitar just slides into it and looks like the case was made for it.

It wasn't.

Sometimes I work very hard to make the parts line up.

Sometimes I just get lucky.