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The Koa Twins go lap dancing


Freeman Keller

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Earlier this year I built two Weissenborn style guitar, one for a friend and local musician Mike Bills and one for myself. They are lovely curvy little things, all koa and maple

 

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Here is Mike playing his

 

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The are identical twins, made from the same piece of wood, same mold, same scale - everything, with one exception - one is braced in the traditional style with a big X, fairly big bridge plate and ladder braces

 

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while the other Twin has more modern tone bars and is a little more scalloped

 

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While Mike was at my house I asked him to play both and I recorded him (and them). I just started the little Zoom and let it run, these are clipped out of about 2 hours of jamming. Since he plays his plugged in we moved the soundhole pickup between them and did a little electric jamming too. Here are the clips in open G, open D and with the pickup in D.

 

No2 _G.mp3

 

No1_D.mp3

 

No1 _ Elec.mp3

 

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Very cool looking guitars Freeman. Just out of curiosity have you ever tried to fixture the guitar in such a way as if there is nothing touching the back and then play or record the instrument then compare that tone to the sound of it being played in the normal "lap position"? I know this is a very unconventional thought but it would be interesting to see if there was any discernible difference in the tone or projection with the back being damped or not..

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Very cool looking guitars Freeman. Just out of curiosity have you ever tried to fixture the guitar in such a way as if there is nothing touching the back and then play or record the instrument then compare that tone to the sound of it being played in the normal "lap position"? I know this is a very unconventional thought but it would be interesting to see if there was any discernible difference in the tone or projection with the back being damped or not..

 

Thank you, Tim. No, mainly because I can't see much point in doing that. These things were meant to be played on your lap - there really isn't any other way and whatever dampening comes from sitting on my fat belly is just part of the picture. As you know, they don't even have frets - they are just strips of maple inlayed to show position.

 

I have fooled around with my other resonators which I can play both lap and Spanish style - any observations there would be colored by the fact that in one case the cone is facing away from you, in the other it is literally in your face. I really don't detect any significant change in the sound.

 

And Tim, since you haven't been around much, I've got to show off the one that I'm really proud of - here is the Koa Twins big brother

 

Tricone_1.jpg

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