For 6 months i'd been searching for a pretty slab of Hawaiin Koa to send to Erik Smith of Crow Hill guitars to build me a fully hollow (small) body electric guitar.
Why Koa wood? Well i'm a Phish Phan and the guitar playing of Trey Anastasio had a profound influence over me. I grew up on Slash, Jimmy Page, Hendrix, Clapton, but Trey's playing is on another level altogether and incorporates influences from all of those guys and a hundred others as well. He pulls from a wide array of genres including Blues, Jazz, Classical, Bluegrass, Latin, Broadway, Orchestral etc and i'll spend a life-time learning his compositions and the theory behind them.
I digress... The point is he plays a hollow body guitar custom built for him by Paul Languedoc, a Local Burlington Guitar builder (and later to become Phish's sound engineer) and while he has now built nearly 10 guitars for him the ones that sing to me like no other guitars i have ever heard are Koa1, 2 and 3 (the Ocedoc - pictured below).
I nearly got a guitar from Paul some 14 years ago but i didn't act quickly enough and it was snapped up. I may or may not get to own one of Pauls guitars one day as his waiting list is impossible to get on but in the meantime i wanted to find the right person to build a gutar with similar qualities. I landed on Crow Hill guitars after seeing this mango-wood model that was posted in a Facebook group called Phsih Guitar Heads for lovers of the same music and guitars
Here's a song i made for fun while in Lockdown in May21 called won't you make it for me Paul -
https://youtu.be/L7uM9YhMssk
Now getting a piece of Koa wood sounds easy enough and jumping on Instagram, ebay there appeared to be a heap of incredible pieces around. I soon discovered however; that these pieces were acoustic sets, and while they were expensive, you could get your hands on really incredible pieces that where highly figured and had incredible flame/grain. On the other hand getting a SLAB of Koa that was 2 inches thick and could be carved into a hollow body was a different story and i kept getting the run around for months on end. I was finally directed to a furniture maker who had some KOA that he had salvaged from a fallen tree some 20 years ago and i jumped on the opportunity and bought it. His name was Mats and he had made some incredible pices out of the salvaged logs he had stored away and he wasn't that keen to part with any of it... but hey for roughly the price of a new Gibson Les Paul he could ship it from Hawaii to Erik Smith in Iowa where Erik could begin to shape my instrument.
Quote from Mats
"Quartersawn Koa in luthier quality is extremely hard to come by, it is close to Unobtanium! What I have is some old stock, harvested on Maui almost 20 years ago. The wood grain is spectacular, I have sold some of it in the past for electric guitar bodies and it turned out real nice. What I have is in the form of slabs, about 2' x 7' , and I have to cut out a "filet mignon" piece for you, 7" x 34". I don't like to cut my slabs, I know I will never find wood of this quality again, this will cost you a premium! I am a furnituremaker and I have good use of this kind of wood for my own projects."
I then took it a little further to help envision what it may look like
And then i got some kind of sad news. How sad? well i have no idea really, Erik didn't seem too perturbed...
What to do?
Next major decision is Binding.
Points to consider:
I dont want to distract from the highly figured texture of the koa wood however contrast appears to be suited. The three i favour are either a Dark wood ie Katalox, a very light Maple or in between a nice Curly Maple... I'm Leaning toward either the Light (almost white) Maple or Katalox with a nice coloured purfing.
Erik's comments.
"Binding. The curly maple seems like a nice fit. Could also do koa binding. Or, I think my favorite is this curly katalox - it’ll end up dark with very subtle movement of the figuring. Could do it with a thin line of maple, or very thin maple/black/maple purfling. But, I agree, don’t want to over do it and distract from this crazy figuring."
Katalox:
The neck Carve/shape is a huge call and i'm leaning to the same neck carve as my PRS "Pattern regular" shape Neck whereas Erik prefers a slightly thicker neck such as the Pattern Vintage. The shapes/measurements are depicted below. I'm referencing the PRS shapes as i'm familiar with them as i currently play a 2015 PRS Custom 24 with a pattern regular neck Carve:
10-August we finalsied the neck Carve as to be largely consisten with the PRS neck i was use dto with just the most minor increases in Nut-width and neck thickness.
Having decided on the inlay i wanted to try the offset style.
But nah....
With all the decisions finally made it really came down to
Eric and his process as the finishing dried and he installed the electronics.
Once set up, he kept it over the wknd to see how it settled.
Erik’s comment on it’s character were that it sounded a little different than
he expected. “kind of a smokey, raspy voice. Like really good whiskey”. I had
no idea what to make of that but; I like good whiskey ….
Shipping was the next debacle as we tried to get it from Iowa
to Sydney amid the Covid and Xmas madness. It turned out to be ludicrously
expensive and despite getting a 3 day delivery service with USPS the guitar got
lost at the Fedex facility just 20 minutes down the road from me for over a week.
Besides the obvious desire to get it in my hands as soon as possible after
such a long journey we were coming up to our yearly sojourn self named
“Jambaroo” where a small group of ex band-mates/friends hire a house in the
woods and play/record music for 3 days straight. With this being the best
possible way to get to know the instrument at band volumes and to use it in our
recordings I was really worried it wouldnt arrive in time. Needless
to say I was a little stressed and made sure I was home for the better part of
a week in case it arrived. Eventually I went to down to the facility to ruffle
a few feathers and amazingly connected with a musician who worked there and
went the extra mile for me to find it and so it landed in my hands 2 days before our music trip... I was
not disappointed.
In fact despite the beautiful photos it was way more
beautiful in person. More importantly. And when I got to plug it in to play at volume I
got to really understand the beauty of the full hollow body experience.
The guitar was clean articulate and sweet. The harmonics
pure, and the pickups/electronics were very responsive… But all this is
expected from a builder of repute such as Erik. The real surprise was the
effortless feedback blooms that were tonally sweet and exactly what I was
hoping for after 20 years of listening to Trey Anastasio wield his Hollow-body
Languedocs. I did however see why he always had his finger on the volume knob.
There was certainly adjustment required in Volume, standing position and pickup
selection but that’s all part of the fun right?!
The only problem I have now is that playing quietly below
feedback levels will never hold the same appeal …
Enjoy some pics below and check out the voice of this thing
singing on a video I threw up on youtube..
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