| Koa
Considerations
Q
What are the
advantages and disadvantages of a koa soundboard?
Michael
Dorato
Carmel, Indiana
| A
Hawaiian
koa was widely used after the Hawaiian music craze hit North
America around 1915—most notably by Martin for ukuleles
and Weissenborn for its Hawaiian-style guitars. For instruments
played with a metal slide ("steel") the density
of a koa soundboard yields longer sustain and a mellower tone
than softer woods like spruce and cedar. Koa's popularity
as a wood for fretted instruments lasted for only about 20
years, partly because World War II curtailed trade in the
Pacific but also because Hawaiian guitarists virtually all
switched to electric solid-body instruments by the early 1950s.
It came around again in the 1970s on guitars built by new
companies like Gurian, Santa Cruz, Goodall, and Larrivée,
although usually as a wood for the guitar's back and sides
only. In recent years it has become far more scarce and expensive,
and today a highly figured set of koa can cost a luthier as
much as Brazilian rosewood.
A koa soundboard
doesn't respond as quickly as spruce, because it's much harder
and heavier. I'd be surprised if any hot flatpicker would
choose a koa-top guitar, but for a fingerstyle player, especially
one who uses alternate tunings, and for some rhythm players,
the sweetness and continuity of tone can be enchanting. And
there's the unmistakable visual appeal of the wood itself.
—Richard Johnston
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|
A flamed koa top on a Goodall guitar. |
Maskanda
Breakdown
Q
What can
you tell me about the South African maskanda guitar style? On the
recordings I have, it sounds like it's played in an open tuning,
maybe on a 12-string without the low E, A, and D octave strings.
Martin
Moro
Graz, Austria
A
Maskanda, a mainly
guitar-based urban Zulu music form that has evolved from a solo
style to incorporate concertina and violin as well as bass and drums,
got its name as a slang derivation of the Afrikaans word musikant
(musician). The tunings vary from guitarist to guitarist; many invent
their own and become fiercely protective of them. As I've learned
from such friends as Syd Kitchen (www.sydkitchen.com)
and Madala Keneni, there are some widely shared tunings. The most
common drops the first treble E string down to D. One variation
on this replaces the D fourth string with a nylon first string and
tunes it in unison to the D first string. This is known as "double
first" tuning, pronounced dabul fersi. While growing
up in Natal, South Africa, I learned a tuning that I still use:
the high E is dropped to D, then a wooden homemade capo, with a
notch cut out at the end so that it stops all the strings except
the low E, is placed on the second fret. The maskanda guitar technique
involves the thumb and index finger—the thumb plays double-time
staccato bass runs, while the index finger picks out a countermelody.
I recall the first time I "got it"; when my thumb (with
a thumbpick) played independently from the other fingers, something
seemed to separate in my head. No wonder I took to making guitars
with the aim of making the separation of notes, overtones, and harmonics
very evident. For prime examples of maskanda, check out the music
of Phuzekhemisi and Mfaz Omnyama.
—Marc
Maingard
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Piezo
Puzzler
Q
I've heard
of a manufacturer called RMC that makes pickups for boutique acoustic
guitars and MIDI guitars. What can you tell about these pickups?
Lance
Williamson
Tulsa, Oklahoma
A
In the late 1980s,
Richard McClish, a guitarist who wanted acoustic amplification with
less distraction from finger squeaks and handling noises, came up
with a variation on bridge pickups that have individual piezo crystals
built into separate saddles for each string. He conceived of his
pickup as a microcosm of the guitar's top. In McClish's design each
piezo element is bonded to a bronze string saddle supported at each
end so that the pickup stretches and flexes with string vibration
much the way the soundboard does, responding to strain rather than
compression, which is a more common use of piezo crystals. The result
is a pickup with great sensitivity to the full frequency range of
string vibrations perpendicular to the top but less sensitive to
extraneous noise. In addition, alternate string sensors are wired
with reverse polarity and differentially summed at the preamp, reducing
sensitivity to feedback. McClish introduced his pickup in 1990.
Today, RMC pickups (www.rmcpickup.com)
can be found in instruments from Godin, Klein, Ramírez, Schecter,
and Paul McGill, among others, and are used by such players as Earl
Klugh, Leo Kottke, Thom Bresh, and John McLaughlin. They are also
available with 13-pin connectors compatible with Roland, Axon, and
Yamaha MIDI guitar systems.
—Allen
Lam
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Excerpted from
Acoustic Guitar magazine,
July
2004, No. 139.
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