KoAloha Ukulele - New Factory Tour & Interviews

oh that everybody welcome to Alani Center right across the street from the amazing Ala Moana Shopping Center we're gonna go check out the new factory its showroom at cool little girl Ella come on join me [Music] oh yeah so what I do is I think all of our round lumber and I turned that into parts of acrylic so you know when the tourists come true it's not a very interesting area for the average person but it is one of the most critical area you always want to start with quality rate so no matter and if they're making music you'll be partying if you wanna play good music the quality of the base material is really important so basically what I do is I turn like this which is a board of cork into it's motherboard of course which we then cut into tiny thin pieces of pork and so something like this would become a top for a backrub ukulele so after we cut and we sand and we get everything to a precise thickness or do is work magic so they might have like a nice book net for a topper of that so is this where you would grade the core that you're going to use for yes and it's really so the grading actually do on the fly so on this that big pile over there and believe it or not this is actually just the leftover stuff so you know the parallel a so for me as a builder to me the tone and the playability is the most important but unfortunately you know humans we judge everything with our eyes first right so the first thing is we do is and if it's a piece of food we look at it it looks appetizing maybe we'll eat it right but if it looks gross like you you don't even want to try it right so you know aside from from the tonal and of course the structural aspects of choosing the wood I also have to make sure it looks really nice because you know if they really like sounds great plays great structurally sound but it just it doesn't look appealing nobody's gonna pick it up play it yeah so I do all that creating here and basically I take each board one at a time and on the fly I'll grade it so if it's got a little bit of curl I might set it aside for a custom or one of our special instrument and the more plain are kind of you know quote-unquote boring greens would be for a production when you read crow you're talking about this gene that you can only see in this yeah he's so extra like wrong and this piece isn't wet it comes out a little bit more I can't get this on wet but yeah so the curliness is it basically looks like tiger stripes are or that that prostrate pattern in the wood so yeah it looks really pretty and a lot of people like it so I guess this would be what the tree would look like yeah so the tree would start off like that I get it and of course they cut to one inch or two inch thick pieces makes it a little bit more easy for me to process so just out of curiosity I will of a board or plank that size originally how many who cool Ellis would you be able to create from something like so assuming that there were no defects and you know no knots no cracks no bark no I mean if Rosa perfect piece of wood I mean I out of this particular piece maybe about the six ukulele or six Huckle le buddies but the thing is I need to cut around like I don't know if your bill is well so this piece actually has a bunch of knots in it so there's a not here it's not here it's not here here here here here here s so I got a cut around all of that stuff so this piece will probably end up being maybe one ukulele if if I can get usable material between all of the imperfections in the wood so you use this machine first which is failure yeah it's our jointer but it is basically the same and a chop saw initially to get the size and then I think what is that a band yes it's just a really really big band saw and what that guy does is he turns so this block we packed into 67 years and basically that big fan saw the processes of design but that's what turns it into these okay so final question for your father how long does it take to turn a piece of wood like this through your production facility and output new blood equable okay so angry mmm tomorrow we that's a week from you know absolutely bra and unselected and dimension you know slab of pork as it comes to the milling gets processed and you finish the collect arts gets assembled as a body gets mated with the neck and put together finish sanded sprayed often and Strunk so it's about a week or so how many steps are there us I actually documented accounted one time and for the smallest soprano size for the way that we build there's actually three hundred different things that we need to do so not necessarily three hundred individual steps but there's three hundred things that need to happen to put together the smallest soprano ukulele so it's quite a bit of quite a bit of work that's amazing and then how many people generally are involved in that whole process from where you are working right now also we have a guy in each major section and so milling would be one I'm usually here of bodies which is right on the other side so that's another major section there's the assembly there's the spray stringing and then also penitently cleaner there's the guys who do our prep work so that would be kind of like a six section yeah I'm actually buffing - so yes I say about seven different areas are sections that the ukulele or the word we need to cast you become up a finished product thank you for sharing this process with us and and we're gonna go I guess take a walk around the rest of the facility yeah appreciate you Jana and I see something cool absolutely okay which guy that we just finished that is fantastic as you can see it's a very sharp teeth based build here here but I've got a shark teeth rosette and then there's a label mono which is the Hawaiian work club with more shakti and then back we got another shark tooth and then we hit a little tiger shark at the top in the back that's incredible so I notice it has a black label yep on the inside yeah to indicate that it's a custom yeah sorry we have our red labels and our black labels the red labels are semi custom line and the black labels are for custom line so Grizz and I just finished this up it's about to get shot up today and hopefully it sounds good and this is co-op yeah so this - it's a cool top and back and we did a MIDI side with ebony binding for purfling on the front back and sides have any fretboard the body of the club is actually poor as well and then this little tiny piece here with a wrap on the club there so that's another native hood for more money and the neck is mahogany have any head play and a hand cut so all of the pieces of shell on isla colony were all hand cut in-house by crazy night you know that's incredible I know a normal production tenor would run eleven to twelve hundred dollars in our store but what a custom instrument like that one yes yes I mean the base price of our black labels is four thousand but this one obviously has a lot of detail in there so there definitely be a bit more than that yeah I could imagine it's just one final question what is this inlay made of so the rosette is black mother-of-pearl the teeth are all white mother-of-pearl so the teeth on that on the club as well this teeth in the back is also white mother-of-pearl and then the tiger shark is a combination of black mother-of-pearl and white mother-of-pearl but if you look closely we actually angled the shell so that the tiger shark has like a sort of tiger stripes on it that's fantastic oh man so how much how much should we charge ha that was the thing well look at this thing Wow I do a lot of a lot of stuff around here because we a small family company you know so one person gotta do a lot of things my main responsibility is you know anything related to computer you know computer stuff I also take care of the social media and when the production need help you know they shorthand it I jump in and you know I hope you know it's set up I also coordinate with Thailand Factory you know when we bring in the appeal you know I take care of you know making sure that the quality from Thailand you know the Opio Ally is you know up to the standard house is this factory different than what you would consider a normal assembly line factory because it's handmade and yeah it's pretty much it's just like mirror you know off our factory here you know it's not just that we go to Thailand and then we bucola we actually you know that you know the economy family the whole team help us beautif the factory from the ground up so all the cheeks more machines even the frets or machine that pop you you know there's only two frets or machine in the world one here in Hawaii and one in Thailand so he built one specifically for Thailand just so that we can make it exactly the same thing like we are doing here in Hawaii so how big is the facility compared to now the same and is same thing you know family-oriented kind of company we have husband and wife you know working together in Thailand a lot of them are brothers cussing just like what we are doing here there's I think his is also contributed to the passion that go into it because when you work with the family right you care for each other and that also show in the product that we are making because we considered you know our customers you know our business partner also part of the family because we want we don't wanna you know screw them up or anything like that we want to take care of them so everything that we do we take pry and we put a lot of passion in what we're doing and I think it's also important to know what the Opio line is also lifetime guarantee it is the same warranty like yes and the fact that I'm being here working with the okami family here in Hawaii you can't just assure that any problem can you know that we gonna resolve it we're gonna fix it for you we're gonna replace it for you so when you buy the Opie oh it's almost you know like same quality same product as a cola Leclaire been playing Cola Cola for about thirteen years right and when I play an appeal oh cool a little Aloha to me it's indistinguishable far as the players both of you sound like some people they you gotta look really close you know like through the sound hole maybe you see the oh that's like made in Thailand you know if you close your eyes you play it it's almost indistinguishable so as far as the production is concerned all the people that are working there we're training and is it cool it there yeah we uh you know when we started the company you know the factory in Thailand seven years ago you know all the people here that working here they travel to Thailand and then each one of them spend like months over there just so that they can train you know the Thai Thai Thai crews over there - they do exactly - the same so we got hands-on mentors yes so they only they all know each other they spend time working together you know and you go back on a regular basis every year just like to check on them and I also have you know my partner you know Bert he's running the factory he's been friend with me in high school I know him for like 20-something years so you know it's easy to work with you know someone that you can trust and you know being a part of the family yeah so it is aligned Opio line is something that a lot more people can afford yet enjoy the sea level you know people like to have a KO Aloha but sometimes they kind of under budget so Opio can come in um you wanna Keener you know you're even a professional you can pick up some opium models we have the spruced up and you know that we don't even have it on you know here maybe in Hawaii so there's some something different that you can only get from the open or line yeah so if I travel to Thailand I can go visit the family yeah feel free to you know like contact me contact us and you said are we going to Thailand Bangkok you like to be seated you know the Opio factory yeah we show it for you yes what is it call the factory in Thailand we don't really have a name for it yeah actually the only one who can la manufacture in Thailand believe it or not all really nice yeah you cannot really go get lost or anything if you cannot go to Thailand there's only one you know clearly a manufacturer that's us long as this Factory been working operational years I think it's been seven years now yeah we've been through so many iteration you know we used to build with the sapele now we changed it up to acacia we have a spruce top so we plan to add a lot more the newest model is the sixth string you know that kita Lily right I don't know if you seen that but I can get one and show you and you can play it just like a guitar but smaller and you know in a tenor size yes what a nice it's been a tremendous addition to the Colo her family your team you sail and and you as well it's one of thank you so so much alright and tell me your last name rawa hahaha [Music] [Music] Thanks it's not really a series of ours that were kind of releasing but we're working with an individual the guys from Romania and this guy's got mad talent he's a pile of fur I never heard of this until like recently but it's like pyrography you know biography you know and it's a he actually uses a soldering pen to hand draw these images on and on anything we on wood and that's what this is I mean they're not done by laser or anything like that we give him the unfinished Akula the lighter the color that we use the better the image kind of comes out but then we give him the unfinished instrument and just on the surface of the Hawaiian core he's able to pretty much burn by hand these images as you see here we have the whole new our showroom guy Lloyd he wanted to do some kind of samurai theme you know that's pretty cool but it's been really popular is the flowers you know bloom areas the hibiscus so really nice you know it's a something different that we kind of offer our cousin I think I think where this gentleman really shines is a portrait you know cuz he did all these kind of these gifted us with these kind of things like with pops and Alan and Paul and he's really great with portraits this is Bob I had it all by hand why I could've sworn there was a machine yeah tell you the truth I thought it was - I thought this guy was it wasn't for real but I've seen his work is he does amazing work there's a specific sound hmm that is associated with Colo hope you love it there's a projection of resonance a sort of sustain has something to do with their internal or different bridge work and in way it interacts with the song more definitely and it's very unique definitely your instruments that didn't have in every line can you talk a little bit about yeah sure I'm up with that and maybe how that works because they they're very strong instruments as well yeah exactly Cole of a sickly my goal from the onset in 1995 I have a Komaki which my wife bought for me which I loved you know and then my goal was to be able to duplicate and match the Komaki song you know and I'd be happy but being the way I am if I matched the sound I certainly would want to try to see if I could surpass it a bit you know and so that was my my dry and all this and as a musician folks I'm not an equality maker by trade by education I'm a professional musician an oboe player I played with the Honolulu Symphony I played with a world-famous Royal Hawaiian band for 10 years as the principal my title was musician first year solo voice so you know music in a sense I come from a background of music and so the actually this is a super-secret that I'm about to reveal because of when I played the oval the most important part of playing the oboe for an oboist is to be able to make your own greed the oboe is a double reed instrument like the bassoon and oboe the saxophone clarinet is a single Reed and it just vibrates the oval Reed presents such a challenge because you have a reed here and a reed on the bottom and what you need to do is you need to scrape scrape it gradually and make the edge so thin less than paper-thin and then what you can do with the reed is you can create your own sound the nuances of sound but you need to know what to do so what happened was all that I've made literally thousands of oboe reads my college career was spent with my wife who was my girlfriend at that time if you ask her where was Elvin in school all the time I was in the music practice rooms she was sitting down and I was making reeds my whole musical career and so what I did was the principles of making an oboe Reed I applied it acoustically to the ukulele and so it worked and so I was so happy and so right now Cola is basically like an offshoot of an oval read it's so it's like it's a it's a unique sound is loud it's beautiful and right now we're experimenting with different types of wood such as mango acacia and all these other types of beautiful sounding wood so Oh needless to say we're also I'm heavy into Engelmann spruce folks cuz um I found out that despite my absolute love for the coal wood the grain the the beauty everything else the sound and all that I found out that uh and my ears don't lie lie to me so I follow that Engelmann spruce the reason why Martin guitars tailored all the Spanish flamenco guitar makers right all over the world there's just one wood that they're going to use for their classical guitars they're excellent instruments great presence warmth and a lot of projection as well oh yeah I'm excited too oh yeah this sounded in mahogany it's fabulous definitely we're know we're having a hint yeah we're here being a I don't know if it's a problem but it's I think it's called awareness or education the masses of customers that we come that come to our shop everyday like throughout the world everyone is brainwashed into thinking that when you say ukulele automatically they say Hawaii and the wood is called so unfortunately core is not as as available as pine and all these other woods so that gives it even more value for the customer and they're not they're not resistant to paying a higher price for it for the wood but because of the scarcity factor we need to start on this program of educating the masses that there are other woods that are available readily available and their sound is wow it's all comparable it's like just beautiful it comes down to just a matter of taste which type of wood appeals to your senses the best you know and so we have a huge job but we've we've made as you can see on this wall this is a spruce and can you give me the mangle the strike yeah this is an example of a beautiful mango mango front sides and back so also the sound and this has got evany Evony fred boy [Music] beautiful song [Music] I know not only yours truly but every single craftsman that we have working in there when I walk through the shop I can see that they put their heart and their soul into making and to doing that with that particular job so when I wound up I am so happy you know that that gives me a sense of of like us more than satisfaction you know like a sense of like wow you know these they've learned well and they're just carrying on this because actually in anything I don't care if you're making sushi I don't care if you're making doughnuts I don't care whatever you're doing people are not ignorant you can tell the quality of a product you can almost sense right that wow this person put their heart and soul into this thing you know and then to me that gives it the added value the real value that people are looking for you know just how dedicated how passionate you know it was it just me slap together without any feeling at all or you know especially with the new coletek because ukulele ministers to people's hearts and souls and minds you can be frustrated you can be angry with it whenever you pick up a uke all those things disappear and you blessed so many people around the world with the sound of your instrument the joy of playing it myself included and it's an honor to be able to share that with people people come on here we're what's going on Tristan what she's waiting on somebody yeah she sees hello folks this is the founder the true founder of coal Aloha ukulele you know and she's the boss the yeah so my to call Aloha we want to know you as a friend here we are all too Connie Kapila and good times never end your love will always be memory that time will not erase until we me [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's alright after very pop you have our white labels and then under that we have our black labels our red labels is red in between our custom and production line mm-hmm so the only is the main difference from our production and a red labels is we still build everything internally like a custom aesthetics wise we upgrade what could be more front binding of a face rosette and then also in our front burner and have a it's like that very more our head plate in the custom oval so this is a red label no that's not custom no so generally the red labels are going to be at least minimal white cell yeah value at least acceptable one like this looks like a big weight a lot more and this one is actually on another customer oh wow that that one is actually one of our 20th anniversary bodies and then they just built done that on inlay all the specs to what they wanted we decided to kind of play with it so we did on Alaskan double so something that we don't normally do but a small asking but when it's more for playability so that it's not too sharp on the edge as you're playing core or critical of face back insights with a front evany binding happening last game bevel a mini fretboard head plate and then we have a pink shell it's actually like a white mother-of-pearl but has a pink obviously like an epoxy finish on top of it and yeah beneath fretboard with a maple curly maple Inlet and then airbrush Sakura handmade in Hawaii so just appreciate all the work you guys do it just gorgeous thank you like it's art and it sounds beautiful Thank You Luca Delhi is really something and brings people together it's a really social instrument it's a social business and I I'm kind of guessing that people worldwide identify with that because everyone wants a place of belonging you know something that you can plug into and pretty much just have a good time so we've seen pockets come some have kind of slowed down a little bit but it's not to say that it's dead in those places you know it's some places it caught on as a fad but there's still a lot of strong places of pockets throughout the world that support because I love hookah live in music and I think part of that appeal is well the ukulele is an adopted Hawaiian instrument it's so unassuming that you can pick it up save you in Finland and you can play Finnish music in Japan you can play Japanese music you can play pop if you play rock we've seen some of the best ukulele music coming from people that aren't playing it traditionally that how we grew up in fourth grade you know with the Kuna coming over and we do our Hawaiian programs which is great but you see people expressing it in their own culture as well I think that's probably why you see it pop up all over and it seems to be a lot of growth in Asia and even in Europe right now and uh specifically even Australia is another country I think you guys are seeing a lot of growth yeah Australians Korea they love Ooka Lily Koreans love or cooler there I think everybody really be in charge everybody loves so good yeah pretty much you know we already know there's a big interested in American culture and in US particularly through pop music and ambassadors of ocularly learn in recent times with the last 20 years or so the brother is making an impact in movies but also sing about in Europe as well oh yeah yeah anyway thanks again for your time is there anything that you'd want to share with the folks out there in the the world of online world before we say what they really think about that one but I guess I should oh thank you everybody for tuning in and spending time with us here at the koala a factory we hope that you come down and visit it spend some time with us we enjoy our new home here in Kakaako it's a fun place we work with great people come and see what's what's so special about this issue here we [Music] ice too hard

Channel: HawaiiMusicSupply

Views: 31,335

Keywords: the, ukulele, site, KoAloha, Koaloha ukulele, 2018, Hawaii Music Supply, SHop Tour, Interview, Opio, Factory, documentary, Pops, Alvin, Paul, Alan, Peng, New Factory, Ukulele Factory

Id: fd9ZopV2uoE

Length: 36min 42sec (2202 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 24 2018