Kimo Koa Tenor Pineapple Ukulele - Custom Build-Sold
The Kimo Koa Tenor Pineapple Ukulele is the latest custom request to be finished.
Lot’s for Koa curl.
The Woods
Body: Hawaiian Curly Koa. This is a matching set of koa from the same billet. Since it is well quartered, I am able to flip the book-match on the front and back to make sure all the cool grain and curl in this beautiful wood are showing. That small patch of sap-wood is still available on both sides.
Same Koa but flipped bookmatch.
Accent Woods: all curly Koa.
Neck: Honduran Mahogany. Mahogany goes with Koa well. Over time it will oxidize and darken a bit but will still hold up well in the color department. It’s also light in weight so the instrument doesn’t feel head-heavy. I haven’t been able to obtain matching neck blanks in koa for a long, long time.
All Koa except for the Honduran neck.
Binding, Fret Board and Bridge: I love it when a client knows exactly what he/she wants. Having seen the latest super tenor with Bloodwood binding, fret board and bridge, the request was made for the same on this instrument. There’s a bit of blue paua abalone and a bit of blue/black fiber as well.
Koa, bloodwood, paua and blue/black fiber.
The Rest of the Build
The neck is 1.5″ by request with a Martin 16′ radius. I also make these instruments with 15 frets to the body to move the bridge placement up more into the sound board “sweet spot”. The instrument is strung with Romero flourocarbon low “G”. Mi-Si passive pick-up. Black Gotoh UPT tuners. An Ahead backpack-style case is included.
And
It works! The volume of this instrument approximates that of a standard tenor ukulele. I adjusted the bracing a bit to push for brighter notes although Koa and wood density are going to dominate in that department. In addition, I replaced the standard brass wound low “G” for a Thomastik-Enfeld Cf30 to tighten the sound a bit more. Easy to play either finger-style or strum with that pineapple-sweet Hawaiian nahenahe sound. Can’t complain about a Kimo Koa Tenor Pineapple Ukulele.
