TeleDreadBass

$2,100.00

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

Categories: 34" scale, Four-String Bass, Hollow-Body, Pro

A 34-inch-scale hollow-body bass built around an Eko dreadnought acoustic body, with a reverse-headstock neck, Warman and archtop pickups, and an onboard Blackstar Fly 3 Bass stereo system.

Flat top Bass Guitar

"Another dreadnought model"

TeleDreadBass is a 34-inch-scale, self-amplified electric bass built around the body of an Eko twelve-string acoustic guitar.

A maple bass neck with rosewood fingerboard and reverse Telecaster-style headstock converts the old dreadnought body into a full-scale electric bass. Individual bridge saddles provide proper adjustment for the new scale and string configuration, while Warman and Jazz Archtop pickups are controlled by a three-way toggle.

Onboard amplification comes from a Blackstar Fly 3 Bass paired with its extension speaker, creating a 6-watt stereo system with one speaker positioned on each side of the instrument. A rechargeable 9-volt power system keeps the bass self-contained for practice, busking and portable playing.

The body remains unfinished and prepared for its final automotive-style color. That decision has deliberately been left open, making the finish one of the remaining opportunities for its next owner to participate in the design.

TeleDreadBass also shares an unusual family connection with another Rubÿtone: the twelve-string neck removed from this same Eko donor eventually became Tiger 12.

Additional information

Instrument Type	4-String Bass
Approach	Found-Object Build, Reclaimed-Instrument Build, RestoMod
Construction	Conventional, Hollow-Body
Body	Eko Acoustic Guitar
Beam
Neck	Maple
Fingerboard	Rosewood
Headstock	Bass Headstock
Scale Length	34"
Number of Frets	20
Bridge	Individual Saddles
Tailpiece
Neck Pickup	Warmouth Humbucker
Middle Pickup
Bridge Pickup
Pickup Switch	3-Way Toggle
Controls	1 Volume / 1 Tone
Knobs	Faceted Pointer
Amplifier	Blackstar Fly 3
Power Supply	9V Rechargeable Battery

TeleDreadBass

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

8.33 / 10

300 / 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

One Eko. Two Rubÿtones.

TeleDreadBass started with an Eko Ranger XII that wasn't going to continue its life as an Eko Ranger XII.

The old twelve-string had developed problems that made keeping the original instrument together less interesting to me than looking at what its individual parts could still become.

And there were two very useful parts.

The body went one way. The neck went another.

I kept the Eko dreadnought body and started imagining it as a bass.

The proportions actually made sense. A full-scale bass neck is a substantial thing, and the large acoustic body gave it enough visual weight to keep the instrument from looking like a bass neck attached to something too small.

I chose a 34-inch-scale maple neck with a rosewood board and a reverse Telecaster-style headstock. Individual saddles gave me the adjustment I needed at the bridge, and I used a combination of Warman and Jazz Archtop pickups with a three-way switch.

Then there was the amplifier.

A Bass Needs a Bass Amp

I used a Blackstar Fly 3 Bass, but I didn't stop with the little amp by itself.

Blackstar makes a matching extension cabinet that turns the system into a 6-watt stereo rig. Instead of keeping the amp and extension cabinet together as two little boxes, I separated the speakers and incorporated one on each side of the guitar.

That gave TeleDreadBass a proper onboard bass system while keeping the whole thing self-contained.

And because this was still a Rubÿtone, I wasn't particularly interested in making the old acoustic body pretend it had always been designed to be an electric bass.

It hadn't.

That's the interesting part.

The Other Half of the Eko

I didn't throw away the twelve-string neck.

That neck had its own problems, including a substantial twist relative to the original body. But once it was separated from the Eko, I could approach those problems differently.

I kept it.

Eventually, after considerable fret leveling and recrowning, that same neck became the twelve-string neck on Tiger 12.

So the Eko Ranger XII didn't really disappear.

It divided.

Its dreadnought body became TeleDreadBass.

Its neck became Tiger 12.

That's one of the clearest examples of what the Boneyard means to me. Saving an old guitar doesn't necessarily mean restoring it to exactly what it was. Sometimes insisting that every part remain together is actually the least imaginative thing you can do with it.

This Eko had at least two more guitars left in it.

The Reason TeleDreadBass Is Still Open

There is one major decision I deliberately haven't made yet.

The color.

The body has been prepared for paint, and I've imagined it finished in automotive color. But once I realized this could become somebody else's guitar, choosing that color myself seemed unnecessary.

Maybe you want something restrained.

Maybe you want something ridiculous.

Maybe you want to paint it yourself.

The structure, pickups and stereo bass amplification are already here. The Eko has already made the unlikely transition from twelve-string acoustic to self-amplified electric bass.

The next owner gets to decide what color its second life should be.