All Koa rope-bound slack key guitar
Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2014 12:40 am
I've not put one in the gallery for a while, so seeing as this one is quite an interesting beasty, I thought I'd put it up.
The commission was for an all koa guitar, to live in DGDGBD tuning, strung 13-56, ultra low action, hyper loud, with sound port and wedge body. Also with rope binding, slot headstock and a few custom inlays.
The hyper loud, low action and koa top all seemed rather mutually exclusive, so this was going to force an alternative approach.
To get the top mass down I reckoned I'd have to go really thin, so I worked out the mass of a spruce top for the same guitar and took the koa down to that mass, noting its stiffness. It ended up somewhere under 2.00mm. Then to support the very wavy short grain figure in the top, I used a classical style (Smallman type) dense lattice in KBP and CF, sized for the steel string loading. That was the structural design for the top sorted.
I reckoned this was going to be a pretty lively sounding guitar, so opted for a non-live back to maximise loudness rather than a live back looking for more tonal colour.
The client had an idea for a rosette he liked and you can see how this turned out. The red is blood wood (Brosimum Rubescens) and the green is English lime that I dyed. The brown is natural EIR.
The fretboard inlays are original scrimshaw of sea life (running with the Hawaiian theme) engraved into fossilized walrus tusk set into the fretboard. The headstock inlay "Maluhia" means Peace/Serenity in Hawaiian.
The rest you can probably figure out from the pics.
I haven't got a sound sample for it, but there's no doubt it exceeded its new owner's expectations. Its new owner has an up-market Gibson J200 and a Takamine Anniversary dread in his stable. In terms of loudness, it easily had them both for breakfast. The tone was very appealing. It has a sort of blues crunch tone (slightly over-driven tubes) with lots of headroom and high harmonics that sustain into next week. I had no real idea what to expect tone-wise from an instrument like this, and was very pleasantly surprised. The K&Ks reproduced the acoustic sound very accurately.
Anyway, the customer was really happy, which is what counts at the end of the day. Pics below:
The commission was for an all koa guitar, to live in DGDGBD tuning, strung 13-56, ultra low action, hyper loud, with sound port and wedge body. Also with rope binding, slot headstock and a few custom inlays.
The hyper loud, low action and koa top all seemed rather mutually exclusive, so this was going to force an alternative approach.
To get the top mass down I reckoned I'd have to go really thin, so I worked out the mass of a spruce top for the same guitar and took the koa down to that mass, noting its stiffness. It ended up somewhere under 2.00mm. Then to support the very wavy short grain figure in the top, I used a classical style (Smallman type) dense lattice in KBP and CF, sized for the steel string loading. That was the structural design for the top sorted.
I reckoned this was going to be a pretty lively sounding guitar, so opted for a non-live back to maximise loudness rather than a live back looking for more tonal colour.
The client had an idea for a rosette he liked and you can see how this turned out. The red is blood wood (Brosimum Rubescens) and the green is English lime that I dyed. The brown is natural EIR.
The fretboard inlays are original scrimshaw of sea life (running with the Hawaiian theme) engraved into fossilized walrus tusk set into the fretboard. The headstock inlay "Maluhia" means Peace/Serenity in Hawaiian.
The rest you can probably figure out from the pics.
I haven't got a sound sample for it, but there's no doubt it exceeded its new owner's expectations. Its new owner has an up-market Gibson J200 and a Takamine Anniversary dread in his stable. In terms of loudness, it easily had them both for breakfast. The tone was very appealing. It has a sort of blues crunch tone (slightly over-driven tubes) with lots of headroom and high harmonics that sustain into next week. I had no real idea what to expect tone-wise from an instrument like this, and was very pleasantly surprised. The K&Ks reproduced the acoustic sound very accurately.
Anyway, the customer was really happy, which is what counts at the end of the day. Pics below:
- Front_1_s.jpg (105.17 KiB) Viewed 30761 times
- Back_s.jpg (85.89 KiB) Viewed 30761 times
- Butt_s.jpg (78.22 KiB) Viewed 30761 times
- Head end on_s.jpg (73.81 KiB) Viewed 30761 times
- Headstock_s.jpg (101.21 KiB) Viewed 30761 times
- Sound port_s.jpg (117.78 KiB) Viewed 30761 times
- Rosette_s.jpg (142.25 KiB) Viewed 30761 times
- Part front_s.jpg (144.07 KiB) Viewed 30761 times
I particularly like the detail of the end graft and how you've handled it with regards to the wedge shape. Interesting approach inside the box also using a lattice 
The client took a trip to Hawaii and sourced the wood himself! Four consecutive slices from the same wedge, so it's book-matched front to back as well as side to side.
