We highly recommend this Tornado to anyone looking for a modern guitar with the heart and soul of the great, vintage classics.
The Tornado is essentially a reworked Junior Glide model (think Les Paul Special) and was brought to life via a collaboration between Koll and visionary guitarist, David Torn. Starting with the Koll's Glide body shape, contours and a tummy cut were added to make it more ergonomic - comfort and playability are definitely the name of the game here.
The neck carve is a slim C (.8"-.9" 1st to 12th fret) and sports rounded fingerboard edges on the marker-less rosewood fretboard. Given this guitar is designed for forward-thinking players, it makes sense that you'd leave off fretboard markers. The effect is subtle, but somehow feels a bit more open and lends itself to less pattern-prone excursions.
Alright, on to the good stuff. This Korina Tornado sounds fantastic and feels immediately comfy in-hand. Loaded with a pair of Arcane Triple Clone humbuckers, which are an exact replica of a particularly great-sounding pair of PAF humbuckers, the tones we were pulling from our trusty Carr Sportsman were punchy and almost Tele-like in the top-end. This is a very touch sensitive guitar with great dynamic range. The Korina body/neck impart a really sweet midrange without muddying the overall tone. Clean or overdriven, we were loving what this guitar had to offer.
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David Torn (also, aka “splattercell”) is a composer, texturalist, guitarist, producer & whatnot of actual international stature, renowned for his unique musical voice which seems to span & un-define a range of idioms and styles.
In addition to the medium of film scoring, David’s creative contributions have graced & assisted the works of other musical artists-of-note as diverse as David Bowie, k.d. lang, Tim Berne, John Legend, Madonna, Tori Amos, Bill Bruford, Tony Levin, Mick Karn, David Sylvian, Chocolate Genius, Michael Shrieve, Steve Roach, Patrick O'Hearn, Matt Chamberlain, Meshell Ndegeocello and Don Cherry.
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