Dark Koa Tenor Ukulele

This week’s addition is a Dark Koa Tenor Ukulele which was just completed and delivered Thrusday to Hale Ukulele in San Diego. This is the second and next to last set of this particular look in Koa that I have in stock. My wife has nicknamed the instrument “the skunk” because of the dark and light stripes down the center. I guess it looks a little like a skunk. This is another set of salvage Koa from the big island of Hawaii. The white sapwood shows some classic black spalt.

This Dark Koa Tenor Ukulele shows some additions I have been adding to the builds of late, notably side body and fret board purfling. I’ve used blue here to kinda bring out some of the blues in the Paua Abalone Purfling–it is pretty subtle. In addition, I added an off-center rosette motif also with paua abalone. I’m prone to say that there really are no new ideas in luthiery but a lot of cool ideas and materials being used to create new and interesting looks to old ideas. I’ll have to give credit t0 Devine Guitar and Ukuleles for this rosette idea.

That said, the rest is par for the course: India Rosewood binding, chocolate heart mango accent woods, Gotoh UPT tuners, gold evo frets, ebony finger board and bridge and a solid curly Koa neck with carbon fiber truss rod .