NUD: Solid Koa Pineapple Sunday (2019)

[Cluze]

Wow! I've never seen rosewood that dark.

[Cluze]

This is an excellent point.

I think I will email KoAloha, see if they can shed some light on it. In the end, I suppose in the end it kind of doesn't matter as I don't intend to sell it or take it international so CITES shouldn't be an issue, but I am curious.

[Cluze]

Yeah, the pictures were taken in the game room (formerly the dining room.) I don't think we have a copy of Five Tribes, but I'll have to double check. We don't get as much time to play games these days as we would like, but when *isn't* that true? :-)

[Jerryc41]

Beautiful, and I agree with your evaluation. I got mine from Mim, too. They go fast.

[Cluze]

In case anyone was wondering about the blem, it is pretty hard to see, but I did my best with a picture. It is maybe 3 mm long if I am generous with the tape measure and on the G string side on the back:



It is easier to feel with a finger than to see. Lighting this one was quite tricky. Just a tiny ding, but it does two things:1. Gives it more personality and 2. Saved me a little money.

Speaking of personality, there is a neat variation in the wood that I have never seen before. One half of the front and one half of the back have this weird sort of textured look. (The front and back that show this might have been facing when the board was cut is my guess.) You can see it here in a picture of the back:



The kind of marbled texture in the upper half of the image is missing from the bottom half. It is perfectly smooth to the touch and can't be seen unless you are really close to it. I don't know if it was a natural variation in the wood or if it was something that happened when it was cut, but it looks neat, in my opinion.

[Kibes37]

Congrats, very cool pick up. Nice NUD, too.

[Joyful Uke]

Wow, looks like a great ukulele, and definitely a nice NUD.
I don't have UAS, I don't have UAS, I don't have UAS....

Oh, it's a concert body with a tenor neck. (Yes, I checked Mim's site, LOL.) I need a concert neck, so whew, UAS can calm down for now.

[merlin666]

Wow congrats on a fantastic catch. I don't think they used rosewood as fingerboard material for a very long time. When I did the factory tour last fall they had a huge stack of ebony boards, and a smaller stack of koa boards for the rosette models. Ebony and rosewood feel very different, with ebony being much smoother with tighter grain.

Edit: I just checked Mim's site and it seems all KoAlohas that I had a look at listed rosewood; I think that's not correct and they may not have updated their specs in more than a year.

[bf_]

While the Pineapple Sunday, with its tenor scale neck on a concert body, has an extremely generous 38 mm nut width, the string-to-string spacing might surprise you. I happened to be measuring these things (I keep track of all of these things in a spreadsheet) and I noticed something odd. I had also recently purchased a Kala KA-FMCG concert ukulele, and while its nut is only 35 mm, the string-to-string spacing is identical on the Pineapple Sunday at about 27 mm from G to A.

KoAloha uses a wide binding on their necks. Note how the fret ends don’t reach to the sides of the neck.

[efiscella]

I am hoping that I can help solve some of the questions about this particular Pineapple Sunday. As expressed on a different thread, Pops had sent me three of these to sell as a fundraiser for our choir at Mainstage Center for the Arts. I purchased one myself. In order to sell them, I needed some more detail on them. Here is how Pops responded:

Here are the features of this batch:

A. The pegs are normally black oxide but we ran out and I had to substitute the gold finished
Geared tuners.
B. The fretboard and the bridge have been changed to ebony wood for a smoother
action along the entire fretboard. Ebony also contributes to elevate the "looks" of the
ukulele making it very distinguished and classy.
C. The fret dots have been replaced by curly maple fret "bands" that are original to ukulele. I
would venture to say that UkeSA and KoAloha are the first and only ukulele makers that
have inaugurated this original feature on the Pineapple Sunday model.
E. The debossed grid on the face has been minimalized to accent the beauty of the koa
instead of drawing attention to the former elaborate grid pattern

Below is a pic of the one I have:
IMG_2837.jpg
IMG_2671.jpgIMG_2672.jpg