The Drive-In of #stayhome

$1,800 for a custom copy*

The idea actually started before #stayhome, on a chilly afternoon aboard a nearly empty bus coming from New Jersey. I was one of the only passengers, carrying my bulky Harmony bass, when the driver eventually looked back at me and asked, “What have you got on that guitar? Is it a drive-in movie speaker?”

It wasn’t.

But it could be.

That was enough to send me looking. Eventually I found exactly what I had begun imagining: a 1940s Simplex drive-in movie speaker, the kind that once hung from a car window while you watched a movie under the stars. Before drive-ins started broadcasting the soundtrack over your car radio, thousands of these little metal boxes were how people heard the movie. I looked at one and saw a guitar.

When I Had Time… During #stayhome

By 2020, the Simplex speaker was already waiting in my boneyard. When we suddenly had time to stay home and I decided to build twelve guitars without buying anything I didn't already have, it was finally time to find out what I could make from it.

The speaker enclosure became the body, but I didn't want the shell carrying the tension of the strings. An old-growth redwood beam takes care of the structural work, with the neck, bridge and strings working through it while the Simplex enclosure gets to remain what makes the instrument look like nothing else.

The original speaker driver was replaced with a modern speaker, and I mounted a tiny amplifier on the back. The Simplex already had a single control knob, so I gave it a new job as the guitar's volume control. Power comes from a rechargeable 9V lithium battery, which meant I didn't have to cut another battery compartment into an object that had already survived since the 1940s.

A maple neck and maple fingerboard provide the straightforward part of the equation, while a mandolin bridge handles the other end. Even the chrome bass tuning machines found an unusual home inside the speaker enclosure. Like a lot of the #stayhome guitars, the choices weren't made by ordering the perfect collection of parts. The challenge was to look at what was already there and figure out how those things could work together.

The result is small, self-contained and gloriously strange.

And Then There Is the Stance

One of my favorite things about Drive-In-Mini has nothing to do with how it sounds. It stands up by itself.

Set it down and it looks a little like a trophy, a little like a soldier and a little like some artifact from an alternate history of American music. It doesn't need a guitar stand. It just occupies the room.

That's part of what I like about using an object like this. From one direction you recognize a guitar. From another, you recognize something that once hung from the window of a car at a drive-in theater. Neither identity has to completely surrender to the other.

When I Have More Time…

The original Drive-In-Mini belongs to the twelve-guitar #stayhome collection, so I won't separate it from the collection for an individual sale. But I would love to build another one.

And I wouldn't be particularly interested in making an exact reproduction.

A custom copy gives us the chance to start with the same idea and decide together where the next one goes. Neck, beam, bridge, tailpiece, tuners, pickups, controls and colors can all change according to the player and whatever interesting materials we find to work with.

That seems more appropriate anyway. The first Drive-In-Mini exists because a bus driver looked at something that wasn't a drive-in movie speaker and accidentally suggested that it should be.

There ought to be more than one way to finish that idea.

*Boneyard Rule: The listed $1,800 price is for a custom copy. The original is part of the twelve-piece #stayhome collection and stays with the collection.