Kabo & Koko

A matched set, yin and yang, partners in crime, or brothers in arms… no matter how you look at it, Kabo & Koko make a great pair.

Inspired by Dodo and Osmar’s “Pau Eletrico”, one of the first solid electric guitars ever made, these two minimalist guitars bring the brilliant, rustic genesis of the electric guitar up to the cutting edge of design and construction.

Kabo is simply a lovely piece of Indonesian rosewood (Dalbergia Lanceolaria) with a pickup. Koko is an equivalent piece of Cocobolo Rosewood (Dalbergia Retusa) with a pickup and a volume control.

By utilizing a perfect single piece of wood, each guitar rings with the pure musical resonance of a marimba bar, since that is effectively all it is. Meanwhile, under changing humidity and temperature the expansion and contraction remains relatively isotropic, thus ensuring a stable fret plane.

Those multiscale fingerboards and frets are prepared entirely on a Plek Station, which measures and accounts for string tension. This allows unprecedented control over the fret plane geometry.

The pickups are another first- I designed the bobbins and had them 3-d printed. They were then wound and fitted with threaded magnetic polepieces by NextGen Guitars. This allows the purity of construction and tone of a traditional single-coil, but individually adjustable for dialing in perfect string-to-string volume balance.

Even the logo is cutting-edge, being laser-engraved on the tailstock. Tuning duties are handled by Steinberger gearless tuners. Kabo & Koko may look like simple sticks of wood, but they are really precision instruments crafted with the most modern technology.