Sourcing The Wood – Building A Guitar (Part 1)
For six months now I’ve been searching for a slab of Hawaiian Koa wood to send to Erik Smith of Crow Hill Guitars so he can build me a fully hollow (small) body electric guitar.
Why Koa Wood?
Why Koa wood? Well I'm a huge Phish Phan and the guitar playing of Trey Anastasio had a profound influence over me. I grew up on Slash, Jimmy Page, Hendrix and Clapton, but Trey's playing is on another level altogether. He incorporates influences from all of those guys and a hundred others as well as Blues, Jazz, Classical, Bluegrass, Latin, Broadway, Orchestral etc – I'll happily spend a lifetime learning his compositions and the theory behind them.
I digress... The point is he plays a hollow body guitar custom built for him by Paul Languedoc, a Local Burlington Guitar builder (later to become Phish's sound engineer). While he has now built nearly 10 guitars for him the ones that sing out to me like no other guitar I have ever heard are Koa1, Koa2 and Koa3 – AKA “the Ocedoc”:
Paul Languedoc’s “Ocedoc” guitar custom built for Trey Anastasio
Regrets? I’ve had a few…but then again.
Funny story – I nearly got a guitar from Paul some 14 years ago but I didn't act quickly enough and it was snapped up. I may or may not get to own one of Paul’s guitars one day –his waiting list is impossible to get on – but in the meantime I knew I had to find the right person that could achieve that sort of quality and sound. I landed on Crow Hill guitars after seeing this mango-wood model that was posted in a Facebook group called Phish Guitar Heads for lovers of the same music and guitars.
Here's a song I made for fun while in lockdown in May 21 called “Won't You Make It For Me (Paul)”:
The first Crow Hill guitar I ever saw - Mango wood:
The First Steps
Getting a piece of Koa Wood sounds easy enough, and jumping on Instagram and Ebay, there appeared to be a heap of incredible pieces around. I soon discovered, however, that these pieces were acoustic sets. While they were expensive, you could get your hands on really incredible pieces that where highly figured and had incredible flame/grain.
However, getting a slab of Koa that was 2 inches thick and could be carved into a hollow body guitar was a different story and I kept getting the run around for months on end. I was finally directed to a furniture maker who had some Koa that he had salvaged from a fallen tree some 20 years ago and I jumped on the opportunity and bought it. His name was Mats Fogelvik and he had made some incredible pieces out of the salvaged logs he had stored away. He wasn't that keen to part with any of it... but for roughly the price of a new Gibson Les Paul he could ship it from Hawaii to Erik Smith in Iowa, where Erik could begin to shape my instrument.
Quote from Mats:
"Quartersawn Koa in luthier quality is extremely hard to come by, it is close to Unobtanium! 😉 What I have is some old stock, harvested on Maui almost 20 years ago. The wood grain is spectacular, I have sold some of it in the past for electric guitar bodies and it turned out real nice. What I have is in the form of slabs, about 2' x 7' , and I have to cut out a "filet mignon" piece for you, 7" x 34". I don't like to cut my slabs, I know I will never find wood of this quality again, this will cost you a premium! I am a furnituremaker and I have good use of this kind of wood for my own projects."
