Description

A huge thanks to the unofficial Travis bean website.

circa late 1975 model, #654 of the current site count of 755 Artists.

Complete with Gibson hardcase.

Why koa?

Bean’s explanation is surprisingly unromantic.

When they were developing the instruments, he went to a local art-wood supplier looking for timber that would look good as a one-piece guitar body. Koa was effectively the material that looked right, and it subsequently turned out to work well acoustically too.

For the early TB1000 series, koa was the standard body material.

The site says the 1000-series guitars remained koa until around the post-reorganisation period. Later, particularly on painted instruments, magnolia began to be used instead.

Very early instruments weren’t necessarily koa: the site records:

Guitar #11 — Padauk
Guitar #12 — Teak

after which production settled predominantly on koa