iPhoneCelloBass
$3,995.00
Categories:
34" scale, Four-String Bass, Hollow-Body, Pro, Specialty
A full-size cello turned 34-inch bass—and a reminder that louder isn’t always better. An iPhone drives the body as a passive speaker, while the bass itself keeps things simple enough to let the cello sound like a cello.
A full-size cello turned 34-inch bass—and a reminder that louder isn’t always better. An iPhone drives the body as a passive speaker, while the bass itself keeps things simple enough to let the cello sound like a cello.
It's a passive speaker
$2,995 (for a copy)*
That you can play bass with
The idea here is to keep it simple. Less is more! The beauty of these cellobasses is something to behold, but whenever I have gone for more horsepower, what I get is feedback of a kind that is not musical. They always play very nicely balanced all the way up and down the neck, until you turn them on. Then there are places along the scale that ring out loud and out of control, and other places along the register that don't put out anything, and everything in between.
When I had time...
I went the other way on this one. I had it planned out to use an equalizer booster amp from the 80s car stereo scene. During initial testing with my iPhone Xs, I found that the richest, most natural sound came out of the speakers when the booster was turned off. It was not as loud, of course, but it just sounded so nice and clean. So I eliminated the booster and replaced it with some miniature, low-power class-C amps, like the ones in the Harmony PowerPal. I was unimpressed
so I changed course and went back to the accidentally discovered way of using it without an amp and powering the speakers with the iPhone alone.
This works well for accompanying the acoustic performance of this instrument.
#stayhome collection
*The Boneyard Rule
These twelve guitars are the surviving record of one very particular moment: March–June 2020, when the outside world stopped, and the Rubytone boneyard became the hardware store.
The listed collection price applies when you purchase the entire twelve-guitar collection together. You can buy individual guitars separately for an additional $1,000 per guitar.
Unless, of course, you would be happier with a copy.
That’s where things get interesting.
A Rubytone copy doesn’t have to be exact. It can be your version of the idea, built around what makes sense to you.
Choose your:
Neck • Beam • Bridge • Tailpiece • Tuners • Pickups • Controls • Colors
The original twelve were made from whatever was lying around in the boneyard.
Your Rubytone can start there—and go somewhere entirely different.
Additional information
| Instrument Type | 4-String Bass |
|---|---|
| Approach | Boneyard Build, Experimental Build, RestoMod, Structural Reinterpretation |
| Construction | Simple, Hollow-Body |
| Body | Full-Size Cello |
| Beam | |
| Neck | Maple |
| Fingerboard | Rosewood |
| Headstock | Stand-Up Bass Scroll Headstock, Modified Headstock |
| Scale Length | 34" |
| Number of Frets | 22 |
| Bridge | Rosewood Archtop Guitar |
| Tailpiece | Cello Tailpiece |
| Neck Pickup | Fender Jazz Bass |
| Middle Pickup | Fender Jazz Bass |
| Bridge Pickup | |
| Pickup Switch | 3-Way Toggle |
| Controls | 1 Volume / 1 Tone |
| Knobs | Faceted Pointer |
| Amplifier | iPhone |
| Power Supply | None is Neccesary |
iPhoneCelloBass
Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard
9.83 / 10
354 / 360 points
playing
Fun to Play
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Material Story
Considers how much meaning comes from the history and previous purpose of the materials themselves.
Transformation
Transformation
Measures how completely the original object has been given a convincing second identity without erasing where it came from.
Boneyard Score
Boneyard Score
Rates how deeply the instrument embodies the practice of building from saved, secondhand, leftover, or previously overlooked materials.
Necessity
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
Story
Measures the strength of the narrative carried by the guitar’s materials, development, accidents, people, places, and decisions.
Surprise
Surprise
Rates the number and quality of discoveries the instrument offers after the first glance.
Conversation
Conversation
Measures how naturally the guitar makes people curious enough to ask questions.
Cool Factor
Cool Factor
Captures the difficult-to-measure quality that makes an instrument desirable before every reason can be itemized.
Identity
Identity
Measures how immediately the guitar feels like itself rather than a variation of something more familiar.
Rubÿtone DNA
Rubÿtone DNA
Rates how clearly the instrument expresses the recurring ideas behind Rubÿtone: reuse, structural invention, functional sculpture, irreverence, and serious playability.
impact
Humor
Humor
Measures whether the guitar contains genuine wit rather than a joke pasted onto an otherwise ordinary object.
Punchline
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
Disdain
Measures the willingness to question inherited rules about what an electric guitar is supposed to look like, contain, or be made from.
Rules
Rules
Rates how effectively the instrument departs from established guitar-building conventions while remaining musically and structurally convincing.
Copy Potential
Copy Potential
Considers whether the central idea could inspire a new custom build without requiring an exact duplicate of the original.
Evolution
Evolution
Measures how much useful creative territory remains in the idea after this particular guitar is finished.
