Redwood4Bass

$2,800.00

Tags: #StayHome Collection, Boneyard, Cantilevered, Complete Amp Cabinet, Copy Available, Found Object, Reclaimed Instrument, Self-Standing, Stave

Categories: 30" scale, Four-String Bass, Hollow-Body, Pro

A 30-inch-scale viola bass built around old-growth redwood reclaimed from a Northern California windmill water tank, with a soapbar pickup and onboard Blackstar Fly 3 Bass amp.

#stayhome collection*

$1,800 (for a copy)

This one began with a piece of Redwood that had been waiting around for seventeen years.

The Old Growth Redwood had come from a water tank at the top of a windmill in Northern California. It had already lived one life before coming east with Rubytone in 2003. During #StayHome, it finally got another job.

The concept was: construct a bass using only materials available in the apartment. This approach eliminated the need for new purchases, special hardware, or waiting for parts to arrive, relying instead on available resources and creative repurposing.

The design features a 16-inch viola body, a 30-inch-scale maple-and-rosewood neck, and a notable piece of Redwood for the beam and trim. The resulting Viola Bass combines the proportions and character of a small acoustic instrument with the functional components of an electric bass.

A key design consideration was isolating the speaker cabinet from the bridge and pickups. By separating the speaker from these core components, unwanted vibrations and feedback are minimized, preserving the clarity of the instrument’s tone. In this approach, a rechargeable 9-volt system powers a Blackstar Fly 3 Bass, making the instrument a fully self-contained bass rig that requires no external amplification.

The Gibson-style top-loading hardtail keeps the hardware straightforward. At the same time, the vintage chicken-head control knob adds just enough industrial machinery to make the whole thing look like it escaped from a particularly eccentric laboratory.

The most important ingredient, however, is the Redwood. It isn’t merely decorative trim. It is a piece of California history that had been sitting in the boneyard waiting for the right guitar to come along.

*#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 the entire twelve-guitar collection is purchased together. Individual guitars may be purchased 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 an exact copy. 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 happened to be waiting in the boneyard.

Your Rubytone can start there—and go somewhere entirely different.

Additional information

Instrument Type	4-String Bass
Approach	Whole Integrated-Amp Build
Construction	Cantilevered, Hollow-Body
Body	16" Viola
Beam	Redwood Water Tank Stave
Neck	Maple
Fingerboard	Rosewood
Headstock	Bass Headstock
Scale Length	30"
Number of Frets	22
Bridge	Gibson 3-Point Bass Bridge
Tailpiece
Neck Pickup
Middle Pickup	Soap Bar
Bridge Pickup
Pickup Switch
Controls	1 Volume / 1 Tone
Knobs	Faceted Pointer
Amplifier	Blackstar Fly 3 Bass
Power Supply	9V Rechargeable Battery

Redwood4Bass

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

9.67 / 10

348 / 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.