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StratoVette

$2,495.00

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It started with a Fender American. Then I cut away everything I didn’t need and retained the outward form of what was left—three Seymour Duncans, a cantilevered body, and a NUX Mighty Air tucked into the sculpture.

It started with a Fender American. Then I cut away everything I didn’t need and retained the outward form of what was left—three Seymour Duncans, a cantilevered body, and a NUX Mighty Air tucked into the sculpture.

Stratovette reduces the familiar Stratocaster solid-body form to a skeletal, self-amplified electric guitar while deliberately retaining enough of the original outline to make its ancestry immediately recognizable.

The open structure creates space for a NUX Mighty Air mounted horizontally within the guitar. Its rechargeable stereo amplifier and speakers become part of the instrument itself rather than requiring a separate cabinet.

The pickup system moves in the opposite direction from the minimalist body. A Seymour Duncan Black Winter, Lil’ ’59 and Duncan Distortion provide three contrasting voices, with additional switching allowing the humbuckers to move toward more single-coil-like sounds.

Stratovette explores how much of a conventional solid-body electric can be removed while preserving the parts that determine how the guitar plays, sounds and feels—and how the space created by removing material can become useful in an entirely different way.

Additional information

Instrument Type

Guitar
Approach

Experimental Build, Reclaimed-Instrument Build, RestoMod, Whole Integrated-Amp Build
Construction

Cantilevered, Solid-Body
Body

USA Fender Stratocaster
Beam
Neck

Maple
Fingerboard

Rosewood
Headstock

Standard Guitar Headstock
Scale Length

25.5"
Number of Frets

22
Bridge

Telecaster Hardtail
Tailpiece
Neck Pickup

Seymour Duncan Black Winter
Middle Pickup

Seymour Duncan Little ’59
Bridge Pickup

Duncan Distortion
Pickup Switch

5-Way Lever
Controls

1 Vol. 2 Tone, 5-way Lever controls Coil Splits
Knobs

Top Hat Knobs
Amplifier

NUX Mighty Air
Power Supply

USB-C (Internal Rechargeable Battery)
StratoVette
Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard
9.69 / 10
349 / 360 points

playing

Fun to Play
10
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
10
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
10
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
10
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
10
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
10
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
9
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
10
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
10
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
10
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
10
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
9
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
9
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
10
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
9
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
10
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
9
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
10
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
10
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
10
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
10
Considers how much meaning comes from the history and previous purpose of the materials themselves.
Transformation
10
Measures how completely the original object has been given a convincing second identity without erasing where it came from.
Boneyard Score
10
Rates how deeply the instrument embodies the practice of building from saved, secondhand, leftover, or previously overlooked materials.
Necessity
10
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
10
Measures the strength of the narrative carried by the guitar’s materials, development, accidents, people, places, and decisions.
Surprise
10
Rates the number and quality of discoveries the instrument offers after the first glance.
Conversation
9
Measures how naturally the guitar makes people curious enough to ask questions.
Cool Factor
9
Captures the difficult-to-measure quality that makes an instrument desirable before every reason can be itemized.
Identity
10
Measures how immediately the guitar feels like itself rather than a variation of something more familiar.
Rubÿtone DNA
10
Rates how clearly the instrument expresses the recurring ideas behind Rubÿtone: reuse, structural invention, functional sculpture, irreverence, and serious playability.

impact

Humor
9
Measures whether the guitar contains genuine wit rather than a joke pasted onto an otherwise ordinary object.
Punchline
7
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
10
Measures the willingness to question inherited rules about what an electric guitar is supposed to look like, contain, or be made from.
Rules
10
Rates how effectively the instrument departs from established guitar-building conventions while remaining musically and structurally convincing.
Copy Potential
10
Considers whether the central idea could inspire a new custom build without requiring an exact duplicate of the original.
Evolution
10
Measures how much useful creative territory remains in the idea after this particular guitar is finished.

THE STORY

What If You Take Away Everything You Don’t Need?

It started with a Fender American.

A Stratocaster already knows perfectly well how to be a Stratocaster, so the idea wasn’t to improve one.

It was to see how much of that familiar solid-body guitar could disappear while retaining the outward form of what was left.

The missing parts became part of the design.

Opening up the body created room for a NUX Mighty Air, mounted horizontally inside the cantilevered structure. Its stereo speakers become part of the sculpture rather than an amplifier hanging off the guitar.

So now the guitar carries its own amp.

Three Pickups. Because Two Would Have Been Reasonable.

The electronics went in the opposite direction.

A Seymour Duncan Black Winter, Lil’ ’59 and Duncan Distortion provide three distinctly different voices, with additional switching to move the humbuckers into more single-coil territory.

Apparently, removing most of the body created an irresistible urge to put the excess back into the wiring.

The result is recognizably related to the guitar it started with, but there's a lot less guitar surrounding the important parts—and considerably more going on inside what remains.

Then there’s that strap.

Its almost Dutch-master-looking pattern has absolutely nothing to do with the engineering.

Which is probably why it belongs there.

Then Somebody Wanted One

Stratovette also became the prototype for another Rubÿtone.

A client saw the idea and wanted a high-end version of his own. That commission eventually became StratoFire.

The deal didn't ultimately work out, but the design did.

That's an important distinction.

Stratovette had started as an experiment in subtraction—take a familiar guitar, remove what isn't necessary and see whether the empty space can become useful.

Once somebody else looked at it and wanted me to build another version, the experiment had become something that could be developed.

That's one of the ways Rubÿtones move forward.

One guitar doesn't necessarily provide the final answer.

Sometimes it just asks a good enough question that I want to build another guitar to answer it differently.

Stratovette asked what could be removed.

StratoFire started with what remained.

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