Kona Weissenborn Style 3 (USED, 1920s)

Ethereal tone in this vintage Kona–Hermann Weissenborn's classic, solid-neck, deep body lap slide. Grab that bar and you will hear right away what Ben Harper and Ry Cooder love about these guitars.

Rare Kona Style 3 Hawaiian made by Herman Weissenborn. Many folks are aware of Weissenborn Guitars with their characteristic shallow koa body and hollow flush fret neck. The Kona line is a slight diversion from that design with a round (Spanish style) fretted neck and deeper body.

While both are designed to play lap style, the Kona has a "convertible" design and could theoretically be played in what we now consider standard guitar position. While few folks would go to the lengths necessary to make a Kona work for fingerstyle, this one would make an outstanding, sustain-rich, bottleneck slide guitar. Played in either manner, this instrument is quite resonant, tonally very similar to a hollow-neck Weissenborn, but a bit darker, not quite as airy, and with better bass than many we have heard.

With the Sunrise pickup, plugged in to a nice tube amp, this lap slide will take you from silken clean slide tones to overdriven, edge-of-feedback splendor. Few instruments are as satisfying to hear recorded on a ribbon mic, acoustically, as they are in an electric-amplified context. Blending the two sources verges on otherworldly.

This Kona has survived in excellent, all-original condition with an understated, straight-grained koa body. Priced with non-original, very cool, Vox rounded triangle case, and includes a Sunrise pickup (removable via an inline cable mounted internally) and custom-made capo for playing all those D licks up a step or so.