TigerWood

$1,800.00

Tags: Boneyard, Cantilevered, Complete Amp Cabinet, Copy Available, Garage, Original Available, Reclaimed Instrument, Self-Standing, Stave

Categories: 25.5" scale, Hollow-Body, Pro, Six-String Guitar, Standard Scale

A rare simulated-woodgrain Eminee Tiger body with the raised Tiger logo, currently built around an oak wine-barrel stave, 25.5-inch neck and twin soap-bar humbuckers — while I decide what this body really deserves.

TigerWood is built around one of the less common vintage Eminee Tiger bodies: a simulated woodgrain version with the raised Tiger logo molded directly into the body.

The unusual body is combined with an oak wine-barrel stave, a 25.5-inch neck, Peavey string-through hardtail bridge and two soap-bar humbuckers. An Amazon Basics amplifier completes the current configuration.

TigerWood is fully functional, but its current form may not be its final one. The woodgrain Tiger body has become more important to me as I've worked with other examples and realized how rarely I encounter this particular version.

If TigerWood remains in the Garage, I may rebuild it around a special neck I've been saving. Another possibility is considerably more radical: combining this rare Tiger body with the neck and old-growth redwood structure currently belonging to RedwoodBungBass.

For now, the existing guitar remains intact while I decide which direction is worthy of the body at its center.

The rare part is already here. The question is what deserves to go with it.

Additional information

Instrument Type	Guitar
Approach	Reclaimed-Instrument Build, RestoMod, Whole Integrated-Amp Build
Construction	Cantilevered, Hollow-Body
Body	Eminee plastic toy guitar
Beam	Wine Barrel Stave
Neck	Maple
Fingerboard	Rosewood
Headstock	Standard Guitar Headstock
Scale Length	25.5"
Number of Frets	22
Bridge	String-Through Fender Stoptail
Tailpiece
Neck Pickup	Humbucker
Middle Pickup
Bridge Pickup	Humbucker
Pickup Switch	3-Way Toggle
Controls	1 Volume / 1 Tone
Knobs	Faceted Pointer
Amplifier	Amazon / NUX Mighty Lite variant
Power Supply	9V Rechargeable Battery

TigerWood

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

8.67 / 10

312 / 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

The Body Deserves Another Chance

I've used a number of vintage Eminee Tiger bodies over the years, but this one is particularly special to me.

It's one of the simulated woodgrain versions, which are much harder to find than the more familiar plastic colors.

And this one has the raised Tiger logo molded into the body—a version I've only come across a few times.

That's the part of this guitar that I keep looking at.

The rest of TigerWood came together around an oak wine-barrel stave, a 25.5" neck, a Peavey string-through hardtail bridge, two soap-bar humbuckers and an Amazon Basics amplifier.

It works.

But when I look at the finished guitar, I can't help feeling that the Tiger body is more special than what I built around it.

The Reason This Rubÿtone Is in the Garage

I don't want to use a rare piece just because I have it.

I want the rest of the guitar to deserve it.

There is nothing preventing somebody from liking TigerWood exactly the way it is.

That's important.

This isn't a guitar that needs to be rescued from a bad design. It's a perfectly functional Rubÿtone in its current form.

I've just changed.

I've built enough other Tigers since this one to know that if I were starting with this particular body today, I wouldn't build the same guitar around it.

So if it stays with me long enough, I suspect I'm going to take it apart.

I already have a very special neck that I've been thinking about using with this body.

But there is another possibility that interests me even more.

What If TigerWood Met RedwoodBungBass?

I may introduce TigerWood to RedwoodBungBass.

RedwoodBungBass is almost the inverse of this problem.

Its important parts are already there: the modified six-string bass neck and that extraordinary piece of old-growth redwood that came from Tommy Smothers' house.

What it doesn't have is a body.

TigerWood has a body that I think deserves something more.

That's an interesting coincidence.

It doesn't necessarily mean they belong together.

I won't know until I put the pieces on the bench and start looking at them.

And that's usually where the interesting decisions happen.

Maybe the proportions will be wrong.

Maybe the redwood and simulated woodgrain will fight with each other.

Maybe I'll put them together and immediately wonder why I didn't see it sooner.

Or maybe I'll use that other neck.

I don't know yet.

And I don't need to.