Kinnaird West 000-12c Port Orford Cedar & Koa

[BlackKeys36]

Howdy!

As many of you know, I spent a week with Steve and Ryan last fall and built a deep OM. Before, during, and since that week I have had the opportunity to play about 10-12 of their creations and have been consistently impressed with both the level of craftsmanship and the voice. I knew within a few hours of starting the student build that I wanted them to build me a guitar and before my build was even back from finish I had dropped off a deposit check and picked out my tonewoods. My first ever acoustic commission was scheduled to start in late winter and finish in the spring so we decided to wait until late spring to start on this one with a goal delivery of late summer or early fall.

During my week+ with Steve and Ryan I quizzed them quite a bit on their favorites and those conversations combined with looking at the holes in my collection had me settle on commissioning a 000-12.

For the top we chose a beautiful 4A+ Port Orford Cedar top from Vince Strauss at Pacific Coast Woods. I've read that in comparison to the more well-known top woods POC is most similar to Adirondack and I like the idea of it being "different". As far as this specific top goes, this is what Ryan had to say:

"Besides being a beautiful and completely clean set of POC, it deflected as the stiffest top we've ever used. This will allow us to work it and the braces a little thinner. The high strength-to-weight ratio should allow you to dig-in for a greater dynamic range without overdriving."


Port Orford Cedar Top:



I spent a few hours while I was there digging through their stash and pulled 3 sets of Koa out that caught my eye. I have owned a couple of Koa guitars that were good, but never great and Ryan is convinced that, similar to EIR/Hog/Maple, Koa has been given a mediocre rap by some of the 1000+ gtr/day builders and that it can be a great tonewood...not just beautiful.


The Three Koa Sets I Narrowed Down To:



At the 2008 GAL Convention Steve had a table across the aisle from Bruce Creps of Notable Tonewoods. Bruce had a nice stack of Koa and curly Claro Walnut. This set was set apart from the others as an EG drop top. He had other full sets from the same tree with less dramatic curl and he let Steve dig through them and find a set of sides that matched. Bruce had this one set aside as a drop top because, "the curl is too wild for an acoustic".

Final Selection (Mineral Spirits on the right):



Sides:



I had ideas all over the place as it relates to the binding, bridge, fingerboard, etc. so we left those alone for the time being.

I'll be posting regularly over the next couple of weeks catching up to where we are in the process. Thanks for stopping by!

Back Glued Up:



Soundhole Cutout:

[MThomson]

Congratulations. Sounds and looks like a stellar build. The koa is spectacular.

[Carpinteria]

Spectacular woods! This should be a wonderful guitar! Dave

[bendandsnap]

Great choice on the koa selection, it’s beautiful. Congrats!

[Guitars44me]

Congratulations! Absolutely BOSS Koa. And the POC should be a knockout too.

I am in for the ride

Let the fun continue!

Salud

Paul

[cigarfan]

Always loved the tone of POC. And that Koa is just "electric." Congrats on the build!

[iim7V7IM7]

Beautiful figured crotch Koa… The POC will make it smell fantastic to boot…

[nootis]

Ryan showed me that back during my visit. I've never seen a more electric set of Koa. With that nice set of Port Oxford, I bet it'd be wonderful to smell the smells in the shop while building it. I just need to close my eyes, and I'm there!

Congratulations John! This will be fun to watch.

[TomB'sox]

When you posted the three sets, I immediately went to that one. Great choice and great builder. It is a shame more folks have not played one of Steve and Ryan's creations. As you know they are addicting and I can attest to that with my 4 of them haha.

[mikealpine]

These woods are awesome! Can’t wait to see the finished product.

[BlackKeys36]

Thank you all for checking out the thread and for the kind words.

For the rosette I knew I wanted some kind of radiated wood with inside and outside borders of some type. For my student build we used koa outlined with BWB. Ryan played around with some macassar and sent me this for approval:





We started out with doing koa around it:




Steve didn't think the koa had enough "pop" so we went back to the drawing board. I don't remember how exactly we got there, but I saved this picture comparing some options:



And we ended up with this (spoiler alert...I love it):




We had more back and forth on the binding than I'd like to admit and I even made a trip to Nacogdoches to see the options in person. I really wanted to pull-out one of the colors from the koa and since it has quite the palette it was a tougher decision than I anticipated:






In the end we settled on Celebes Ebony...which was my first choice and instinct back at the beginning of the project [insert face palm].

[Nemoman]

That Koa is insane--Wow!

Never have played a guitar with POC--have to try that one day.

Love the rosette and the binding choice--this will be a fun one to watch!

[Jamiejoon]

Port Orford Cedar! Great choice for the top, looks very nice.

[BlackKeys36]

Steve and Ryan decided on Adi for the braces and Ryan did a beautiful job with them:

[colins]

I was about to say how much I liked the rosette and then I saw the braces, so I need to say I like them too!

Great build; you are going to have a special guitar out of this.