In my last post, I shared my DIY woodburning ukulele project. The inspiration for that came after I purchased this masterpiece of pyrography in the form of a concert ukulele. This was a collaboration between Koaloha and pyrographer Dino Muradian. I purchased it from Hawaiian Music Supply (theukulelesite.com) after listening to a demo on their YouTube channel.
Here’s the backstory from the Ukulelesite:
It started by Dino selecting a custom series Kamoa, having KoAloha strip it and prepare the wood, him spending 30-40 hours on the design, and then KoAloha setting it up with their bridge, nut saddle, tuners*, and refinishing the neck. The result is a one of a kind concert with a great feel and tone.
SPECS:
Solid Spruce soundboard
Solid maple back and sides
KoAloha bridge, saddle, nut, tuners
Low G tuning
MISI pickup
It appears to be a rosewood fingerboard and bridge. The fretboard has a cool stripe running down the center as does the neck. It also has side markers which is what I really care about.
The workmanship and consistency of the woodburning is really impressive. I appreciated this ukulele even more after completing my own DIY project. Check his website for more examples.
It sounds wonderful and has really opened up nicely since I purchased it. The one issue which makes me doubt that the tuners are from Koaloha is that they have become corroded in the last year. I cleaned most of the rust off of them but they still look bad. They work fine but not what I want on such a nice custom ukulele. They seem to be generic Grover tuners. I always keep my ukuleles in their cases and I have other ukes with Grover tuners and have never seen this problem before. I wonder why they got rusty?
I ordered a new set of tuners (the same Grovers) from Sweetwater and will replace them as soon as they get delivered. I will share that process in a future post.
Take a listen.
Raw acoustic video shot with an iPhone 13 mini.