Dark Curly Koa

Fae picked out this beautiful set of Dark Curly Koa for her new custom ukulele. Her request was for a darker voiced tenor, smooth and silky–maybe “nahenahe” in Hawaiian. So here it is: dark, chocolate, compression curl Koa. All the pieces of this set came from the same billet of wood so the match was really good for all parts of the body and the density was a little less than some similar appearing Koa; which, in my opinion, was perfect for the sound requested. This Koa is from my stash of reclaimed “old growth” from the big Island sold by Allied Lutherie.

To keep the look dark, Fae selected India Rosewood. The purfling and sound hole rosette are Paua Abalone.

Fae asked for blond curly Koa for the accent woods and also picked out a finger board and bridge of smokey Munn Ebony. To keep the instrument on the light side I used Honduran Mahogany for the neck. All my necks use a passive, carbon fiber truss rod–a solid pultruded, uni-directional carbon fiber bar that is routed into the neck under the finger board (light, super stiff and has a great tap tone as well). The neck has standard width dimensions but I kept the thickness at 5/8″ and elliptical shaped to keep the feel “small”. For bacing I use a combination of Oregon Port Orford Cedar and Canadian Sitka Spruce.

Gotoh gold planetary tuners with black tulip knobs are a standard on all my builds as are the gold “evo” frets from Luthiers Mercantile (no nickel alloy). We also installed a Mi-Si under saddle pick-up. The strings are custom set of GHS fluorocarbon utilizing Sarah Maisel’s low “G”.