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Does it take longer for koa back & sides to bloom, so to speak?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

well I've seen dense koa & liteweight Koa
Depends on thickness ,

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Mike Collins

My bias story about Koa is when I worked at a music shop that sold Taylor and one of the guys who worked their took advantage of the employee discount and bought a beautiful looking Koa 810. He loved it and so I never had the heart to tell him it was one of the worst guitars I ever played

It sure did look beautiful though.

Nonetheless I have a few sets of Koa in my shop to use one day. I hear people say it's similar to mahogany. I had a tortoise shell cat that we named Koa and one day I found a set of Koa that had this figure in it that really looked like a cat so I bought it in memory of her.

So yeah I don't have any experience with Koa really

Although I built this same employee a guitar once out of Imbuia and he loved it so much he sold the Taylor. So maybe it didn't really age that well?

Maybe some Hawaiian builders on this forum can enlighten us about the history of koa in Hawaii. It seems most of the old growth lumber was gone by the 1930s. I have a notion that the second growth wood that we see today is very different from the old growth koa. A friend has an all koa Martin 00 from the twenties and it is an absolutely spectacular guitar. Just as loud as a spruce top guitar. My gut feeling is that the koa used in the twenties was less dense than the second growth material we see today.

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Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

I don't think old/new growth would matter as it reaches maturity in about 80 years like maple. More important is probably the altitude, soil and surrounding vegetation.

Pat

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Pat

I agree with Pat and Chris I don't and didn't notice any difference at all from how they sounded right off the bench and 18 years later. I built with Koa 7 times, 5 were sold and are still with original owners and two were my prototypes that I have here.

I just played both of mine and Koa seems to sound the same even 17 years later to me.

It's a favorite tone wood here and black acacia, aka Blackwood is a close cousin and sounds the same as Koa to me too and even looks like Koa but less red and more gold but I digress.

The tone of Koa to my ear is like mahogany as someone said but a tad darker perfect for Alice In Chains unplugged stuff - The Rooster!!!! It's light, works great with sharp edge tools and if you remember to avoid metal or foil contact and are not a fan of the color green Bob's your uncle.

Keep yer hands off our blackwood

Too late!


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Well excuuuuuuuuse me I love Blackwood. The last guitar I ever built and didn't finish the neck is Blackwood. I'm going to bring the body home and make it into a lamp for my living room.

Historically, it seems a "Koa guitar" had back, sides and - top - made of Koa. Like the old mahogany topped guitars, most of those I played did not impress me, but many people love the sound. It may have been the type of music I was playing on them which wasn't where their strength lay.
The O.P. was asking about using it as a back and side material, which seems to me to be a waste if it is not also used as a soundboard, for those who truly want a "Koa guitar" experience. Looking at the numbers (wood database), Koa falls in between mahoganies and Sapele in weight, hardness, and elasticity; and as a back and side material I think would probably do the same (not a whole lot of difference between the three of them).
For those that want a sound between Koa/mahogany and spruce, American sassafras might be a good choice:

My question was prompted by a thread on the Mandolin Cafe about koa guitars taking longer to loosen up over the usual rosewood or mahogany boxes topped with spruce or cedar. I thought I'd ask the OLF because in general - most folks on forums such as that don't know what they are talking about or aren't very good at expressing themselves in understandable ways. You know... idiots.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I would guess that any opening up or blooming would be in the top as it vibrates and loosens like spruce. The first uke I built 17 years ago was all koa and it definitely opened up the more you played it.

I also built an all rosewood uke around the same time. It was very lightweight cochinchinensis and the tone was great although not very loud. I was always fascinated with the rich tone and have been meaning to get back to it and try it again. Maybe with something even lighter like Brazilian or Madagascar. There seems to be a big following with all cocobolo ukulele.

Not to rule out a change in the back and sides, but it's probably more along the lines of the wood structure changing with age over a very long time.

Pat

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Pat

I guess there are lot's of Blackwoods out there. I always thought Acacia was light like Koa was, why would they call that black wood? The blackwood I have is Dalbergia and it is indeed black wood.

My favorite guitar to date was a dread built with lightly figured Koa and it sounded great right out of the gate. The top was torrefied Red Spruce from the Hampton Brothers, so there’s that too.




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Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from poor judgement.

It is.

So the story goes, the wood collectors of yore called it that because it turned their hands black, which it does (alkaline skin + wood dust). Lemon juice will return your hands to normal colour.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

I have built 4 guitars with Koa back and sides-a triple 0 -adi top, a double 0 adi top and 2 J-45's one with an adi top and one with an ultra- light sitka spruce top from Alaska specialty woods....

I would say they were all great sounding guitars right out of the gate, but the one with the ultra-light sitka top was off the hook! aside from the top the koa was very light and I built it light. It also had a thin brushed varnish finish on it.

I am just finishing up another one-it is a J-185 style with a Lutz spruce top, brazilian fretboard,binding,head veneers and bridge.

It's an incredible set of Curly Koa I have been saving for 25 years-I finally thought-what am i waiting for???

Has anyone built a Koa topped guitar lately? Even koa bodied ukuleles are being built with spruce tops - that just seems so wrong!

Not me! This one is a year old and opened up nicely. It really sings when strung with a wound D and high tension strings.



Brad


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Not a recent guitar, but this 2014 one has always attracted a lot of attention.





This one was pretty hot right out of the gate.

These three have plenty of koa in them.



Regarding them "blooming", the video linked (which is quite long, but features all three guitars) was made not long after they were delivered, so you can make your own mind up.

https://vimeo.com/704777361?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=163819993

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Australian Blackwood was originally used for tanning hides. Around where I live, they would strip the bark off and the bark was exported to the tanning factories in Sydney or Melbourne or send to England. I think Trevor is correct, the bark turns your hands black from the tannin content. Unfortunately the tanning industry destroyed the blackwood forests here, there are no big blackwood trees left. I planted around 50, but they are still younsters.

And much of the brazilwood (Pernambuco) was ground up to make red dye. We tend to think building musical instruments is the highest use of a wood species, but others disagree.