Unum (Viola2020)

$2,800.00

Tags: #StayHome Collection, Bluetooth Amp, Boneyard, Cantilevered, Complete Amp Cabinet, Copy Available, Original Available, Self-Standing, Stave

Categories: 24.75" scale, Hollow-Body, Pro, Six-String Guitar, Standard Scale

The first of the #stayhome collection: a 16-inch viola-bodied electric guitar with a Matsumoku set-neck, wine-barrel beam, Jazzmaster pickups and onboard NUX Mighty Lite amp.

The First One of #stayhome

$1,800 for a custom copy

Every collection has a beginning.

During the strange, suspended period of 2020, when the world suddenly slowed down and ordinary routines disappeared, projects that had been sitting around waiting for attention became possibilities. There was time to look at old parts differently. Time to take things apart. Time to experiment.

It began with a neck that had already lived another life. The neck came from a red SG project that had developed a serious feedback problem. Rather than allowing the neck to remain attached to a project that wasn’t working, it was removed and given another chance: a Matsumoku-made set-neck with a mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard, 24.75” scale, and 22 frets.

At first, I planned to build one guitar.

There was no plan for twelve. The new body began with a 16-inch viola. Instead of treating the viola simply as a convenient hollow shell, its acoustic architecture became an essential part of the design.

An oak wine-barrel stave forms the central structural beam, while a spruce stair tread becomes the trim. The neck and beam form a cantilevered structure that allows the two halves of the viola body to support the amplifier while remaining isolated from the guitar’s bridge and pickups.

That unusual separation serves a practical purpose. The amplifier has room to breathe, providing ample dissipation while helping eliminate the feedback problems that had plagued the original SG project. The result occupies an unusual territory somewhere between a hollow-body guitar, an electric instrument, and a self-contained amplifier. Two Jazzmaster pickups, positioned at the neck and bridge, feed a simple three-way toggle switch. A Harmony Power Pal knob controls the instrument, while a rechargeable 9V-powered NUX Mighty Lite turns the guitar into its own little sound system. A Fender® top-loading hardtail bridge keeps the string path simple and direct.

But the most important feature isn’t found in the specifications. It is the chain of events that brought the guitar into existence. An unfinished SG project became a source of parts. The neck became an idea. The idea became a guitar. And the guitar became the beginning of twelve.

What started as an experiment during the 2020 #StayHome period grew into a much larger exercise in creative reuse. Parts, materials, discarded projects, forgotten objects, and things saved for a future purpose began to find new lives.

Each guitar that followed would have its own story and its own peculiar combination of materials.

This one was the beginning.

Additional information

Instrument Type	Guitar
Approach	Boneyard Build, Reclaimed-Instrument Build, Whole Integrated-Amp Build
Construction	Cantilevered, Hollow-Body
Body	16" Viola
Beam	Wine Barrel Stave
Neck	Mahogany
Fingerboard	Rosewood
Headstock	Standard Guitar Headstock
Scale Length	24.75"
Number of Frets	22
Bridge	Fender Top-Loader Hardtail
Tailpiece
Neck Pickup	Fender Jazzmaster Pickup
Middle Pickup
Bridge Pickup	Fender Jazzmaster Pickup
Pickup Switch	3-Way Toggle
Controls	1 Volume / 1 Tone
Knobs	Harmony PowerPal Amp
Amplifier	NUX Mighty Lite
Power Supply	9V Rechargeable Battery

Unum (Viola2020)

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

9.86 / 10

355 / 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.