StandingSlide

$1,200.00

Tags: Copy Available, Garage, Original Available, Reclaimed Instrument

Categories: 25.5" scale, Pro, Simple, Slide Guitars, Solid Body, Specialty, Standard Scale

An eight-string standing slide guitar begun as a sculpture project in 1995, with a configurable string layout, active EMG 85 and preamped piezo for sounds conventional lap steels can’t make.

StandingSlide is an eight-string experimental slide instrument built from walnut and maple, with its original structure dating to 1995.

The bridge and string-anchor arrangement allows the eight strings to be installed in different configurations. Duplicate strings can be positioned in different locations, allowing experimentation with drone strings, doubled high strings and alternative string-gauge arrangements.

The primary magnetic pickup is an active EMG 85. A second under-saddle piezo transducer has its own preamplifier, allowing the two pickup systems to be balanced at the instrument and combined through a single output.

The position of the piezo also produces unusual effects when the slide is moved to the extreme end of the playable string length near the bridge.

StandingSlide remains under development as an experimental platform for combining standing slide-guitar technique with ideas borrowed from lap steel and pedal steel.

Additional information

Instrument Type	Lap Steel
Approach	Boneyard Build, Experimental Build, Found-Object Build, RestoMod, Structural Reinterpretation
Construction	Simple, Solid-Body
Body	ScrapBin
Beam	ScrapBin
Neck	Maple
Fingerboard	Redwood
Headstock	Modified Headstock
Scale Length	25.5"
Number of Frets	16
Bridge	12-String Acoustic Fixed
Tailpiece
Neck Pickup	EMG 85
Middle Pickup
Bridge Pickup
Pickup Switch
Controls	1 Volume / 1 Tone
Knobs
Amplifier	TBD
Power Supply

StandingSlide

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

9.50 / 10

342 / 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

One Project Went in Two Directions

StandingSlide started in 1995, before there was anything called Rubÿtone.

I was finishing my BFA at UWO, and during my last semester I built it from raw materials for a sculpture class. The walnut and maple came from the scrap bin in the school shop.

At the same time, I was building the 6-String Bass 1995 in much the same way. That project got most of my attention, so the lap steel didn't get as far before the semester ended.

My original objective was pretty practical.

I wanted something handy.

I liked slide guitar, and I wanted an instrument that was compact, portable and easy to have around.

So naturally, I built a double-neck lap steel.

That turned out not to be handy at all.

The Double-Neck Defeated the Idea

On paper, two necks meant more possibilities. Different tunings could be sitting there ready to go, and I could move between them without restringing or retuning.

The problem appeared as soon as I actually had to deal with the thing.

A double-neck instrument sitting across your lap is big, awkward and difficult to handle. I had created more options by making the instrument considerably less convenient to use.

That was almost the opposite of what I had set out to accomplish.

So the project sat that way for more than 20 years.

Eventually I realized there was a very simple solution.

Cut it in half.

And that's where one project went in two completely different directions.

One half became Lap6.

Lap6 became the beautiful one—the more resolved lap steel that came out of the original idea.

The other half became StandingSlide.

This one became the experiment.

Eight Strings Don't Have to Mean One Thing

Once StandingSlide was free from the double-neck configuration, I could stop worrying about preserving the original idea and start asking what else this half could do.

There are eight strings, but I don't have to put the doubling in the same place every time.

I designed the bridge so the strings can be arranged differently depending on what I want to try. If I want a high droning effect like a banjo, I can put the doubling in one place. If I want more strength from the unwound strings, I can put two strings of the same gauge beside each other at the high end.

There isn't one correct arrangement.

That's what makes it experimental.

Two Pickups Became One Output

The main pickup is an active EMG 85, which has always given me a very good slide tone.

The second pickup is completely different: a piezo transducer underneath the saddle.

Back when I was using this for gigs, I ran two cables from the instrument into a two-channel amplifier. That allowed me to balance the EMG and piezo separately, and it worked well.

More recently, I added a preamp to the piezo channel and rebuilt the control panel so I can balance both pickup systems at the instrument and send everything through a single output.

That made the instrument much handier—which, after all these years, brings it back to the reason I started the project in the first place.

It also improved the piezo sound considerably.

And the piezo has another trick. When I run the slide all the way toward the bridge and get extremely close to the under-saddle transducer, I can produce sounds that I can't get from an ordinary lap steel.

That's the kind of thing that makes me want to keep experimenting with it.

Under Development

Lap6 and StandingSlide started as the same object, built from the same walnut and maple in the same sculpture class in 1995.

But after I separated them, they developed very different personalities.

Lap6 became the beautiful lap steel.

StandingSlide became the laboratory.

The direction I'm interested in now is right there in the name. I want to stand up with it. I want to borrow ideas and mechanical devices from pedal steel without turning it into a conventional pedal steel. I want to find out what those controls can do when they're attached to something designed to be much more portable.

That finally brings the project back around to the original objective.

I wanted something handy.

It took more than 20 years—and a saw—to get there.