Pink

$1,500.00

Tags: Amp Cabinet Abbreviated, Bluetooth Amp, Boneyard, Copy Available, Found Object, Garage, Integrated Speaker, Original Available, Reclaimed Instrument

Categories: 22.5" scale, Hollow-Body, Short Scale, Six-String Guitar

A 22.75-inch short-scale resto-mod built from a damaged Oscar Schmidt acoustic, with a spruce stair-tread beam and a pair of Seymour Duncan pickups — and, of course, a whole lot of pink.

Pink began with a well-appointed Oscar Schmidt acoustic guitar that suffered damage on its way to the store. After repairing the neck, I used the damaged instrument as the foundation for another self-amplified Rubÿtone.

The construction follows an idea I had previously explored in the fourth iteration of Uno, combining the acoustic donor with a separate structural system and onboard amplification.

Pink remains an unfinished Garage project rather than a completed Rubÿtone. The guitar plays well, but I would replace the current amplifier before considering it finished, and the exposed spruce structure still needs to be painted to integrate it visually with the body.

The important parts are already here. What remains is an opportunity to finish the instrument around its next owner.

If Pink speaks to you, let me know. I’ll put it back on the bench, get it running properly, and we can decide together how it should be finished.

Additional information

Instrument Type	Guitar
Approach	Front Integrated-Amp Build, Reclaimed-Instrument Build, RestoMod
Construction	Simple, Hollow-Body
Body	Oskar Schmidt Acoustic
Beam
Neck	Mahogany
Fingerboard	Rosewood
Headstock	Standard Guitar Headstock, Repaired Headstock
Scale Length	22.5"
Number of Frets	20
Bridge	Telecaster Hardtail
Tailpiece
Neck Pickup	Seymour Duncan Humbucker
Middle Pickup
Bridge Pickup	Seymour Duncan Little ’59
Pickup Switch	3-Way Lever
Controls	1 Volume / 1 Tone — Push-Pull
Knobs	Vintage Chicken Head Knobs
Amplifier	Lekato Mini Amp
Power Supply	USB-C (Internal Rechargeable Battery)

Pink

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

9.11 / 10

328 / 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

The Theme Goes Without Saying

For this rendition, I chose a nicely appointed Oscar Schmidt acoustic that had suffered some breakage on the way to the store.

After repairing the neck, I went down the same road with this one that I had explored with the fourth iteration of the original Rubÿtone, Uno.

And for a while, I was working on Pink every day.

It was actively on the bench and moving forward. On the day of the last photoshoot, I had been troubleshooting the wiring. Since I was already taking guitars to be photographed, I brought Pink along too.

It got its pictures taken.

It never made it back to the bench.

There wasn't a dramatic failure. I didn't decide the idea was bad. Nothing happened that made me give up on the guitar.

Other things simply came along.

That's one of the reasons I wanted the Rubÿtone Garage in the first place. Some of these guitars aren't here because they failed. They're here because development stopped at a particular moment while my attention moved to another project, another problem or another idea.

Pink is a particularly literal example.

I know what I would do next.

I think it deserves a better amplifier. I would paint the exposed spruce to match the body and make the structure feel like it belongs to the rest of the instrument. Then I would finish sorting out the details and get it back into regular playing condition.

But that doesn't necessarily mean I should make all of those decisions myself.

If somebody likes Pink enough to take it out of the Garage, that's a pretty good reason to put it back on the bench. We can talk about the amplifier, the finish and anything else that should happen before it leaves.

Because the important part is already settled.

If you like the color, you'll love the way it plays.

And the theme?

That goes without saying.