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TigerOne
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TigerOne

$630.00

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An old mahogany carpenter’s level came down from the rafters in Wisconsin and became the backbone of a guitar. The British call it a “spirit level.” I think that makes this even better.

An old mahogany carpenter’s level came down from the rafters in Wisconsin and became the backbone of a guitar. The British call it a “spirit level.” I think that makes this even better.

TigerOne combines a vintage Eminee Tiger plastic guitar body with a vintage mahogany carpenter’s level used as the central structural beam.

The carpenter’s level is made from straight-grained mahogany and retains its original brass corner protectors, level hardware and aged surface. The beam provides the structural foundation for the neck and string system while the plastic Tiger body adds the width and playing position of a conventional electric-guitar body.

The combination produces an overall body width and playing position comparable to a conventional solid-body electric guitar while preserving the recognizable shape and molded details of the original Tiger.

TigerOne was the first Rubÿtone built using an Eminee Tiger body.

Additional information

Instrument Type

Guitar
Approach

Front Integrated-Amp Build, Reclaimed-Instrument Build, RestoMod
Construction

Simple, Hollow-Body
Body

Eminee plastic toy guitar
Beam

Mahogany Carpenter Level
Neck

Maple
Fingerboard

Ebony
Headstock

Standard Guitar Headstock
Scale Length

25.75"
Number of Frets

20
Bridge

Harmony
Tailpiece

Trapeze Tailpiece
Neck Pickup

Lipstick Tube
Middle Pickup
Bridge Pickup

Humbucker
Pickup Switch

3-Way Toggle
Controls

1 Volume / 1 Tone
Knobs

Faceted Pointer
Amplifier

Harmony PowerPal
Power Supply

9V Rechargeable Battery
TigerOne
Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard
8.78 / 10
316 / 360 points

playing

Fun to Play
9
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
8
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
6
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
7
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
9
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
9
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
10
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
9
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
9
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
9
Considers how much meaning comes from the history and previous purpose of the materials themselves.
Transformation
9
Measures how completely the original object has been given a convincing second identity without erasing where it came from.
Boneyard Score
9
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
9
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
8
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
8
Measures how immediately the guitar feels like itself rather than a variation of something more familiar.
Rubÿtone DNA
8
Rates how clearly the instrument expresses the recurring ideas behind Rubÿtone: reuse, structural invention, functional sculpture, irreverence, and serious playability.

impact

Humor
10
Measures whether the guitar contains genuine wit rather than a joke pasted onto an otherwise ordinary object.
Punchline
10
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
9
Measures the willingness to question inherited rules about what an electric guitar is supposed to look like, contain, or be made from.
Rules
9
Rates how effectively the instrument departs from established guitar-building conventions while remaining musically and structurally convincing.
Copy Potential
6
Considers whether the central idea could inspire a new custom build without requiring an exact duplicate of the original.
Evolution
1
Measures how much useful creative territory remains in the idea after this particular guitar is finished.

THE STORY

Wisconsin

JJ likes to scrounge around in his shed whenever I stop in to see him back in Wisconsin.

He's one of those people who seems to have things waiting in the rafters that have been kicked down to him from the universe. Over the years he has come up with several contributions to Rubÿtone, including the material that became DoorJam.

This time he came down with an old carpenter's level.

Actually, he had several of them.

They were old mahogany carpenter's levels, the kind of tool that was made from good straight-grained lumber because being straight wasn't decorative—it was the entire reason the tool existed. If somebody was going to depend on a level every day, the wood had to stay where it was put.

It had protected brass corners, old hardware and plenty of age on it.

Patina.

Everybody likes to say patina, don't you?

I liked the thing immediately.

There Are Many Ways to Create a Level Playing Field

The obvious joke was irresistible.

But the level also made sense structurally.

A guitar needs something dependable between the neck and the bridge. Here was a piece of mahogany that had spent its entire previous life being selected and trusted specifically because it was straight.

People in the UK call it a spirit level, which I like even better.

I could use any number of bolt-on necks with something like this, but another part of the experiment was sitting beside it: an old plastic Eminee Tiger guitar body.

This was the first time I used one.

The Tiger body wasn't substantial enough to become the main structural part of the guitar in the way a conventional wooden body would be. The carpenter's level could take care of that job. The Tiger could provide the shape, width and identity.

When I put the two together, I noticed something else. Adding the width of the vintage plastic body around the beam brought the instrument surprisingly close to the familiar space occupied by something like a Telecaster when you held it.

That was useful information.

The First Tiger

At the time, I didn't know where this idea was going.

TigerOne did not have the cantilever construction that would become so important later. I hadn't discovered that yet. I was still figuring out what happened when I asked an old plastic toy-guitar body to participate in a serious instrument.

TigerOne proved that it could.

Later, Stanley Tiger would improve the way I supported the plastic body internally. I was still reinforcing the Tiger rather than completely separating its job from the structural job of the beam.

Much later, The Black One would give me the breakthrough. The cantilever idea appeared during that build and allowed the structure to support the instrument without asking the donor body to do work it wasn't suited to do.

Then TigerNux became the first one I started with that solution already in my head.

But none of that existed yet when I built TigerOne.

I just had an old plastic Tiger, a carpenter's level that JJ pulled out of the rafters in Wisconsin, and an idea that the two might belong together.

That's enough to make TigerOne important to me.

It wasn't the solution.

It was the guitar that convinced me there was a problem worth solving.

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