Viola2025

$3,495.00

Tags: Amp Cabinet Abbreviated, Bluetooth Amp, Cantilevered, Copy Available, Integrated Speaker, Original Available, Reclaimed Instrument, Stave

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

A self-contained electric guitar built around an entire uncut 16-inch viola, with a Gretsch neck, whiskey-barrel beam, DiMarzio mini-humbucker and onboard NUX Mighty Lite amp.

This instrument uses an entire 16-inch viola as the body of a self-contained electric guitar without cutting or splitting the original instrument. It was the very next project after developing the concept using an Eminee Tiger body.

The viola remains intact and serves as both the guitar body and speaker enclosure. The structural beam, bridge and pickup are isolated from the viola body, while the electronics and speaker are installed inside the original 16-inch shell. This preserves the viola’s shape and proportions while giving it a completely new function as an amplified electric guitar.

The neck is from a Gretsch G5220 Electromatic Jet BT whose original guitar had apparently suffered an “El Kabong” incident. A P-90-to-mini-humbucker dogear conversion plate mounts the DiMarzio mini-humbucker, while a top-loading Fender-style hardtail bridge provides a simple, direct string path.

The structural beam is oak reclaimed from a whiskey barrel stave.

Amplification comes from a NUX Mighty Lite with three presets and a 3-inch speaker. The speaker is mounted directly to the maple back of the viola, with the electronics contained inside the instrument. Nothing needs to hang from the outside of the body, making Viola2025 a genuinely self-contained amplified instrument.

The intact wooden viola gives the instrument a noticeably warmer character than the plastic Tiger body that preceded it. It isn't necessarily better—the two materials have different personalities—but Viola2025 answered an important question and established another direction worth pursuing.

An output jack provides a direct connection to an external amplifier or sound system.

Custom versions can be built with different pickups, controls, bridges and other specifications.

Additional information

Instrument Type	Guitar
Approach	Front Integrated-Amp Build, Reclaimed-Instrument Build, Structural Reinterpretation
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	DiMarzio Mini Humbucker
Middle Pickup
Bridge Pickup
Pickup Switch
Controls	1 Volume / 1 Tone
Knobs	Vintage Chicken Head Knobs
Amplifier	NUX Mighty Lite
Power Supply	9V Rechargeable Battery

Viola2025

Rubÿtone Guitar Scorecard

9.44 / 10

340 / 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

What Happens If the Body Is Wood?

Viola2025 started with a question.

I had already been working with the Eminee plastic toy-guitar body, and I liked what was happening. The design allowed me to separate the structural parts of the guitar from the body that contained the amplifier and speaker.

But I didn't know how much of what I was hearing came from the design and how much came from the fact that the body was plastic.

So I wanted to try essentially the same idea with wood.

A viola was an obvious candidate.

This time I didn't want to cut it apart. I wanted to see if I could leave the entire 16-inch viola intact and make it perform a completely different job.

The neck came from a Gretsch G5220 Electromatic Jet BT—or, more accurately, from what was left of one. The neck had been separated from the original guitar in what looked to me like an El Kabong incident.

Perfectly good neck.

It just needed another guitar.

The beam came from an oak whiskey barrel stave. I mounted the bridge and pickup to the structural system rather than asking the old viola body to carry those loads. The viola could then do what I wanted it to do: provide the shape, enclose the electronics and become the speaker cabinet.

A DiMarzio mini-humbucker went into a dogear conversion plate, and I used a top-loading Fender-style hardtail bridge.

Inside the viola went a NUX Mighty Lite with three presets and a 3-inch speaker mounted directly to the maple back.

Then I could finally answer the question that had started the project.

Yes, the wood makes a difference.

The viola is warmer than the plastic Tiger body.

But that didn't mean I had discovered that wood was better and plastic was wrong. I liked things about both of them. What I had really discovered was that this construction could accommodate very different body materials without requiring one of them to be the correct answer.

That was more useful.

Viola2025 is also where another Rubÿtone idea really began to crystallize.

The body no longer needed to be the structural center of the guitar. The beam could do that job. The body could be allowed to become something else—an enclosure, a speaker cabinet, a visual identity and another variable I could experiment with.

Once that became clear, I didn't need every future version to look like this one.

The next step could use an intact donor body differently. Controls could move to the front. Amplifier cabinets could become abbreviated rather than occupying the whole body. Pieces that had originally developed as solutions to individual problems could now be treated as parts of an established design language.

That progression eventually led toward Viola26 and TigerJazz.

So Viola2025 wasn't the end of an experiment.

It was the point where I understood the experiment well enough to stop asking whether the idea worked and start asking:

How far can I take it?