Ko'olau vs. Kanilea concert

A request for anyone who has played both Ko'olau and Kanilea concerts ... please share your impressions, sound, playability, feel, anything else. Thank you.

Bump in the hopes of comments. How about anyone that has played a Ko'olau concert?

I can't answer specifically about concerts, but I do have Kanilea and Ko'olau tenors, and I could share my thoughts on them...

The Kanilea is very sweet sounding with excellent note separation and strums well too. The Ko'olau has "balls" for lack of a better word and has a clear advantage in the volume department and also has excellent tone. They are both great, great instruments and I'd be hard pressed to choose between the two if I was forced to part with one or the other. The Kanilea also has a noticeably wider nut, which I don't mind but some might. I think the slightly more space between strings makes it very good for finger picking. Craftsmanship wise, they are about equal and in my opinion among the best I've seen in the industry – my Collings is right up there too!!

Anyway, I hope this helps, I know you were after concert-specific opinions, but since you hadn't yet received any responses, I thought I'd chime-in.

Thank you UOTB. I appreciate your chime-in. Technically, you'd expect a tenor experience to be similar. This is the difficult part of not having the opportunity to hear them side by side. I'm hoping for warmth, complexity, and sustain rather than huge volume. I'm not competing with other instruments. If that gives you any additional thoughts, please feel free to chime again.

patfia said:

Thank you UOTB. I appreciate your chime-in. Technically, you'd expect a tenor experience to be similar. This is the difficult part of not having the opportunity to hear them side by side. I'm hoping for warmth, complexity, and sustain rather than huge volume. I'm not competing with other instruments. If that gives you any additional thoughts, please feel free to chime again.

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Well if I had to pick which one fits the bill for "warmth, complexity, and sustain rather than huge volume," I'd say that better describes my Kanilea. Of course, these are just my experiences with one instrument from each of these builders, two different samples could yield different results I suppose.

Corey's playing different music and the ukes have different strings, so not an ideal comparison. You can search for more samples here.

Geez, they are beautiful! Nothing in the world sounds like a koa wood ukulele!