RedE

$895.00

Tags: Bluetooth Amp, Boneyard, Complete Amp Cabinet, Copy Available, Garage, Original Available, Stave

Categories: 24.75" scale, Six-String Guitar, Solid Body, Standard Scale

An old-growth redwood amp-guitar built around a mahogany neck with its missing headstock rebuilt in matching redwood, a vintage Tri-Sonic pickup and onboard rechargeable Spark Mini amp.

RedE is built around old-growth redwood reclaimed from a water tank, using the stave both as the structural beam and as the material that gives the guitar its unmistakable visual identity.

The 24.75-inch-scale mahogany neck arrived without a usable headstock, so rather than disguising the problem, I rebuilt the missing section in matching redwood. The repair became part of the design. Its rosewood fingerboard, ebony archtop bridge and Stella acoustic-guitar tailpiece bring together parts from very different kinds of instruments, while a Matsumoku pickup provides the guitar’s voice.

A rechargeable Spark Mini provides the onboard amplification, with USB-C charging. The compact amp and minimal control layout keep RedE unusually simple and portable while still making it a completely self-contained Rubÿtone.

The result is less about decorating a conventional guitar with reclaimed wood than allowing one extraordinary piece of old material to determine the instrument around it: structure, proportion, headstock and identity all grew from the redwood stave.

Additional information

Instrument Type	Guitar
Approach	Experimental Build
Construction	Solid-Body
Body	Redwood Tank Stave
Beam	Redwood Water Tank Stave
Neck	Mahogany
Fingerboard	Rosewood
Headstock	Redwood Water Tank Stave, Modified Headstock
Scale Length	24.75"
Number of Frets	21
Bridge	Ebony Archtop Bridge
Tailpiece	Stella Acoustic Guitar
Neck Pickup	Matsumoku
Middle Pickup
Bridge Pickup
Pickup Switch
Controls
Knobs
Amplifier	Spark Mini
Power Supply	USB-C (Internal Rechargeable Battery)

RedE

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

8.00 / 10

288 / 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

Another Redwood Model

Some materials don't need much help becoming interesting.

The old-growth redwood used for RedE came from a water tank. By the time it reached me, it had already spent far longer being something else than it was ever likely to spend being a guitar.

That made it a pretty good Rubÿtone candidate.

The neck presented a different kind of opportunity. It was a mahogany neck with a rosewood fingerboard, but the headstock was gone.

Normally, a missing headstock is a very good reason not to buy a guitar neck.

Around here, that's not necessarily a disqualification.

Since I was already building the guitar around this beautiful old redwood, I used the same material to replace what was missing. Instead of trying to make the repair disappear, I let the new redwood headstock become visible evidence of what happened.

The guitar began developing its own vocabulary from there.

An ebony archtop bridge went underneath the strings. A Stella acoustic-guitar tailpiece found a new job at the other end. A Matsumoku pickup became the voice. None of those parts began life expecting to meet one another, but together with that long redwood stave they started looking less like leftovers and more like a guitar.

For the amplifier, I used a Spark Mini. It is rechargeable through USB-C, compact enough to integrate without overwhelming the instrument, and powerful enough to make RedE a genuinely self-contained guitar.

That's really what I like about this one.

RedE doesn't hide where its pieces came from. The redwood still looks like old redwood. The headstock doesn't pretend it was always there. The archtop bridge and Stella tailpiece don't suddenly stop looking like parts borrowed from other kinds of guitars.

They just have new jobs.

RedE is currently in the Garage because it needs some attention before it is ready to go back out into the world. If somebody decides this is the one they want, that's all the excuse I need to put it back on the workbench.

The theme is already here. The next version is waiting.