LevelHeaded

$900.00

Tags: Boneyard, Complete Amp Cabinet, Copy Available, Found Object, Original Available, Spirit Level

Categories: 25.5" scale, Pro, Six-String Guitar, Specialty, Standard Scale

A carpenter’s level became the backbone of the guitar—and suddenly the leftovers were playing on a level field.

LevelHeaded combines a pine carpenter’s level, a bass-guitar headstock and a maple electric-guitar neck with a rosewood fingerboard in a compact open-frame construction.

The carpenter’s level serves as the central structural beam. Its upper edge is shaped to establish the instrument’s balance on a strap and position the guitar comfortably for seated or standing playing.

A repurposed bass-guitar headstock forms the lower body section. In addition to providing a stable lap support, it functions as a compact control panel with the switches mounted directly into it.

A pair of genuine Fender American Telecaster pickups provides the guitar’s electric voice. The combination of the long, narrow level, conventional electric-guitar neck and oversized headstock body gives LevelHeaded its distinctive proportions while allowing each of the repurposed components to perform a practical function.

Additional information

Instrument Type	Guitar
Approach	Found-Object Build, Front Integrated-Amp Build, Reclaimed-Instrument Build, Structural Reinterpretation, Whole Integrated-Amp Build
Construction	Simple
Body	Bass Guitar Headstock, Remnant of the BEAM
Beam	Pine Carpenter Level
Neck	Maple
Fingerboard	Rosewood
Headstock	Modified Headstock, Standard Guitar Headstock, Bass Headstock
Scale Length	25.5"
Number of Frets	22
Bridge	Stratocaster Tremolo / Whammy Bridge
Tailpiece
Neck Pickup	Fender Telecaster Neck Pickup
Middle Pickup
Bridge Pickup	Fender Telecaster Bridge Pickup
Pickup Switch	2 Rocker Switches (On-Off)
Controls	1 Volume / 1 Tone
Knobs	Top Hat Knobs
Amplifier	SECO SMA-5 (Vintage Tube Radio Themed Mini Guitar Amp)
Power Supply	2 9v. Rechargeable batteries with On-Off-On Rocker Switch

LevelHeaded

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

9.36 / 10

337 / 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

Leftovers Come Into Focus

LevelHeaded started as a tester. I wanted something I could use to try out the Boss Katana and see what it could do. It wasn't originally conceived as a finished design, so there wasn't much reason to leave anything alone.

It morphed. It changed. It became.

I tried a couple of different bass-guitar headstocks along the way, looking for the right place to house the switches. At one point, it even had a scalloped fretboard. Parts came and went as I figured out which ideas were useful and which ones weren't.

Eventually, the leftovers started finding jobs.

The Headstock Became the Body

A pine carpenter's level became the structural beam, while one of the bass-guitar headstocks became the lower section of the body.

The headstock wasn't there just because it looked strange. It gave me a compact place to mount the switches where I could reach them while playing. Its shape also created a surprisingly useful place for the guitar to rest on my lap. Once it was doing both of those jobs, it stopped feeling like a leftover bass part and became part of the design.

The carpenter's level developed in much the same way. In addition to providing the structure, I shaped its upper edge specifically to control how the guitar balances on a strap. That determines the angle at which the instrument hangs and makes it comfortable whether I'm sitting or standing.

That's one of the things I enjoy about working with found objects. I don't always know what job a part is going to have when I first pick it up. Sometimes its usefulness is what finally makes the whole design come into focus.

The Serious Part of the Joke

The genuine Fender American Telecaster pickups are the serious part of the joke.

They're very good pickups, and LevelHeaded deserves an amplifier that lets them sound like it.

That's the part I would change next. I'd like to keep the Vintage Tube radio cabinet but retrofit it with a NUX Mighty Lite or something comparable. The cabinet belongs with the guitar. What happens to be inside it doesn't have to remain there forever.

That's why LevelHeaded belongs in the Garage. It doesn't need to become a different guitar. Most of the decisions that make it LevelHeaded already work: the level, the headstock, the controls, the balance and the pickups.

It just deserves a better amplifier.

LevelHeaded didn't begin with a finished design that I was trying to execute. It began with a reason to put some parts together and see what happened.

Sometimes the leftovers come into focus.

Let's talk about what you want.