Michael Kelly Koa Special
- Jay EuDaly
- May 19
- 3 min read
Model# MKKSHS
Serial# N11160249
The retail on the Michael Kelly Koa Special is $649.99. I traded a student $350 worth of lessons for it, so not bad; especially considering it had barely been played and was in pristine condition.
In spite of the low cost, and the fact that I don't think the acoustic sound is all that great, this guitar is good enough to gig with. I've used it on several solo gigs just to test-drive it. It uses Fishman active electronics and when plugged-in sounds reasonably good.
It has volume and tone controls mounted just inside the sound hole. So the trade-off for the convenient access (which I like) is that you can't use a sound hole cover.
Most gigs I play are low-volume enough that I don't need one, but occasionally a cover becomes necessary, especially when using stage monitors as opposed to in-ears.
There's an additional “side soundport” on the top side of the guitar:
Personally, I don't see the point; there’s already a sound hole on the front that I can't cover because of the volume and tone controls. If I'm plugged-in to a sound system or an amp I'm not interested in hearing it acoustically; I've always maintained that when you plug in an acoustic guitar, it's no longer acoustic, it's electric. And, as I said before, I don't care for the acoustic sound of the guitar so the additional sound hole is irrelevant to me.
Despite these - what should I call them? - "design disagreements" I have with the guitar, the Michael Kelly Koa Special is a well-built instrument.
The top is Flame Koa. The back and sides are Okoume with a Mahogany neck. The neck feels good to me. There are 20 frets.
The electronics are a Discrete Fishman Sonitone Active System. The battery access is very easy. There is a Piezo Pickup under the saddle.
The tuning keys are Die-Cast MK, gold with white buttons.
When I played it live, there did seem to be occasional tuning issues; there were times when string bends pulled it noticeably out of tune. In my experience, more expensive tuners or locking tuners help mitigate that problem. That's one of the trade-offs to keep the price down - cheaper hardware.
One more thing: I've spent a good deal of time and effort training my left hand to use the least possible force; this helps to avoid potential tendonitis and carpal-tunnel syndrome (What's Wrong With My Hand? Vise-Grip!). That's been an absolute necessity because of the quantity of gigging and teaching that I've done over the course of my career.
I've noticed that the string tension on this guitar seems to be more than other acoustics I play, even with extra-lights. Perhaps the scale-length is shorter? Anyway, I find that I have to squeeze just a tad bit more to get the strings to fret. Annoying.
There’s no way the Koa Special competes with my Martin GPCPA3 or Martin MC-28 as far as the acoustic sound goes, but plugged-in onstage it’ll do fine in a pinch.
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re playability and perceived “stiffness” in feel, I have a bit of hands on experience in this regard. The variations in the mechanical properties of any given pieces of tonewood will affect the playability. The stiffness and density of the bracing and the top wood translates not only into the sound, but also the feel. If all else is equal, a guitar made with a top wood with lower density factors and stiffness will “feel” softer to the touch than one made with a stiffer top with higher density factors. The variations in mechanical properties of tonewoods vary not only within the same species, but can and do vary with flitches cut from the same log. Many individual luthiers thickness…