Toy Store: Suzuki Kohaku CHK-1 Soprano Electric Taishogoto (Copy)

Beautiful Suzuki Kohaku electric Taishogoto for sale in very good condition and excellent working order. 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!

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 these for a while now and have created some astonishingly huge electric guitar style walls of sound. I'm particularly fond of using it with a treble boost, germanium fuzz and tape echo. Traditionally the strings are all tuned to G, but it's worth experimenting with alternative open tunings (try slide, folk or lap steel tunings) as this can really open up the possibilities. If you have a few guitar pedals to hand you can very quickly create a massive sound from this humble little instrument. I've recently read that Harmonia apparently used one, which goes some way to explaining why I'm so smitten with them.

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

Specification:

Light Weight Electric Taisho Koto (Taishogoto)

Electric/acoustic Taisho Harp with double sound pickup systems designed by Suzuki: Electro-magnetic and string-vibration sound pickup systems.

27-keys, 5-string.

Kohaku is one of the best designed Taisho Koto in the market, well loved world-wide by Taisho Koto players and professionals.

The length is about 74 cm.

Technical information: Dimensions: 74 × 15 × 7.0 cm. Weight : 1.7 kg, case : 1.2 kg, total weight : 2.9 kg.

Strings: 1st to 3rd (Fine string), 4th (Looped fine string), 5th (Looped fine string). Range: 5-6 #, 27 key.

Condition

In very good condition. Cased. Working very well. Minor scratches and marks from use - the battery compartment lid is missing and there's some oxidation to some metal parts but nothing that adversely affects use. Please see photos or get in touch if you require more information on condition.

Voltage Information

N/A

Tax

For sales in UK the price will include 20% VAT. Buyers elsewhere may incur VAT or other local taxes on import.