Suzuki Kohaku CHK-4 Bass Electric Taishogoto

Tested, working fine and sounding great. Complete with hard case. The Suzuki Kohaku Taishogotos are lovely instruments – well made, good to play and sound great with pedals: this bass version is great for natural sounding basslines (especially for those of us more adept on keys than fretboards). This one is currently strung with a single low string, but will be restrung before shipping using the spare strings.

“B CHANNEL” ITEM: Interesting and fun pieces we’ve picked up, plus some ex-demo and B-stock items. We keep prices as low as possible on things like this by doing only minimal servicing, plus of course the usual safety checks where appropriate. There is no warranty on these items, however of course it will arrive as described and your usual rights are unaffected. If you require the “full” Soundgas service on this item it may be possible – get in touch.

MORE TAISHOGOTO INFO:

The Taishogoto or Nagoya Harp is a Japanese stringed instrument dating back to the early 20th century. To enable ‘quiet’ practice with headphones,  an electric pick up was added which of course means you can now plug this into your pedal/effects chains, guitar amps, echoes etc. Played by strumming or plucking the strings with a plectrum while  ‘fretting’ the notes using the keys, this could be viewed as an electric guitar for keyboard players. It’s very similar to India’s Bulbul Tarang, though happily not in build quality: I bought a Bulbul Tarang direct from India some years ago and it arrived with multiple issues caused by a combination of poor manufacturing and shoddy packaging. This is a delight to play and quick to get pleasing results.

I’ve been enjoying investigating the guitar versions for a while and have created some astonishingly huge electric guitar style walls of sound. This bass Taishogoto has been a delightful addition to the arsenal – I’ve been getting some very raucous results with some overdrive/fuzz from the Soundgas Type 636P. Traditionally the strings are both tuned to G an octave apart, but it’s worth experimenting with alternative tunings for chord style playing as this can really open up the possibilities. If you have a few pedals to hand you can very quickly create a massive sound from this humble instrument.

The pickup output is on a standard 1/4″ socket.