All Mahogany Or Spruce Koa Parlor

[Perigord]

?

[guitaradoptions]

Both! ;)

[sully]

spruce/koa would get my vote.

[JasonA]

Well, in line with Dave's advice I ordered a spruce/koa today to go along with my all mahogany. :D

So in about a week I could give you a better opinion. I imagine I will sell whichever one I like least. Hey, no snickering Fingerstyle Banjo man!

[fingerstylebanjo]

I knew it!! What happened to the blackwood you were going to buy for me??

Oh, well - I can't wait to try your new koa/sitka.

[wyodeb]

I'll be interested to know how you like it! I have a sitka/koa OM ordered. Maybe we can compare notes (bad pun not intended!) :blink:

Deb

[JasonA]

Well, I don't know how much of a comparison you can make with a parlour and an OM. I have played a Larrivee Koa L that was terrific though.

When it gets here I may try to make a comparison recording between my mahogany top, the sitka/koa, and my friend's sitka/rosewood. Could be fun! The koa one I bought has a B-Band undersaddle pickup in it though. I hope that doesn't hurt the acoustic sound any.

[slim]

JasonA, did you get your Spruce/Koa?  I would love to hear the sound clips of the different models.

I am in a dilema, there are no Larrivee Parlors in the Washington DC area at this time and I have no idea which model to order.  Since I have an L-05, I thought it would be fun to have something slightly different and was leaning towards the all mahogany.  I talked with a local dealer and he told me that this model was inconsistant, sometimes the tops were dull/dead sounding but then again sometimes they were great.  He prefered the rosewood...

How does one get any idea of what to expect when you can't hear it? Would the all Mahogany sound like the Martin 00-15 but smaller?  Is listening to guitars with the same tonewoods the the best way to compare when in this kind of a vacuum?

Any input would help?

Thanks.  

[JasonA]

Hey Slim, I got my koa parlor last night. Not much time to play with it yet.

However... this Saturday FingerstyleBanjo, myself and another friend are getting together. I believe there will be 5 parlors present... 1 sitka/rosewood, 1 sitka/walnut, 1 sitka/koa and 2 all mahogany. I'm going to try to record a clip of the same music played on all 5. Hopefully I'll be able to post some mp3s shortly thereafter.

My initial impressions are exactly what you might expect given the tonewoods. The koa has a much louder and more power treble and midrange, but not as bassy as I remember the rosewood being (though none of the parlors are particulary bassy). The all mahogany has a very even sound, with that certain mahogany top mojo. It's not like a Martin sound exactly, but a 00-15 might give you an idea. Beware though... some of the Martin 15 series I've tried in Guitar Center sound just terrible. I think they're particularly susceptible to sounding bad with old strings.

[slim]

Thanks, I will be eager to hear the results!   :)