Viola2022

$2,700.00

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

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

A 16-inch viola-bodied archtop rebuilt from an earlier Rubÿtone that looked better than it sounded, with a whiskey-barrel beam, Jazzmaster pickups and a complete onboard NUX Mighty Lite amp.

Viola2022 is a complete reconstruction of Viola2018, retaining the original 16-inch viola body and the exact same oak whiskey-barrel stave while substantially changing the structure, bridge, electronics and amplification.

For the 2022 rebuild, the original stave was flipped over and reattached using the existing neck-screw holes. Correcting the geometry for the new configuration required cutting the beam and repurposing the removed section as a raised platform—a “high-chair”—for the Fender hardtail bridge. The original tailpiece was eliminated, opening additional space for the onboard amplifier.

Two Jazzmaster pickups provide a straightforward electric-guitar layout, while a NUX Mighty Lite supplies the onboard amplification.

The irregularities created by rebuilding around the original holes, reversing the beam and correcting the bridge geometry have deliberately been left visible. Rather than disguisging the previous construction, Viola2022 allows the history of Viola2018 to remain physically present in the new version.

The current surface was originally prepared for a very light coat of orange automotive paint with a blue interior, allowing the existing colors and wear to remain visible underneath. But the preparation itself produced a finish I have grown to like.

So there are now two legitimate possibilities: leave it exactly as it is, or dismantle it again and complete the planned orange-and-blue finish.

Additional information

Instrument Type	Guitar
Approach	Experimental Build, Reclaimed-Instrument Build, Structural Reinterpretation, Whole Integrated-Amp Build
Construction	Cantilevered, Hollow-Body
Body	16" Viola
Beam	Wine Barrel Stave
Neck	Maple
Fingerboard	Rosewood
Headstock	Standard Guitar Headstock
Scale Length	25.5"
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	Faceted Pointer
Amplifier	NUX Mighty Lite
Power Supply	2 9v. Rechargeable batteries with On-Off-On Rocker Switch

Viola2022

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

9.78 / 10

352 / 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 Same Guitar, Reconsidered

This one had already been a Rubÿtone.

It started as Viola2018, built around a 16" viola body and an oak whiskey-barrel stave.

I liked the way that guitar looked.

But I wasn't playing it because I didn't like the way it sounded.

So in 2022, I took it apart.

Same Viola. Same Stave. Different Guitar.

I kept the same viola body, although I altered the finish quite a bit.

I also kept the exact same piece of whiskey-barrel stave—but this time I flipped it over.

I even put the neck screws back through the same holes.

That meant the new version had to negotiate with some decisions that had already been made in 2018.

I like that.

I cut the beam and used the piece I removed to build what I think of as a “high-chair” for the bridge, raising it to where it needed to be.

Between flipping the beam, reusing the old holes and correcting the geometry for the new bridge, some of the structure ended up a little cockeyed and then re-corrected.

I could have tried to hide all of that.

Instead, I like the slightly disheveled look.

It's evidence of what happened.

The bridge became a Fender hardtail, and I eliminated the tailpiece altogether. That opened up the space I needed for the amplifier and changed the architecture of the guitar at the same time.

Two Jazzmaster pickups kept the electronics relatively simple, while the NUX Mighty Lite gave me a much better reason to actually pick the thing up and play it.

That's important.

There wasn't anything wrong with Viola2018 simply because it was finished.

I just wasn't playing it.

For me, that's a perfectly good reason to take a finished guitar apart.