Koa buttons and koa bridge pins added on my dream uke.

I just added some new koa buttons onto my Kanilea's Grover tuners. I had previously swapped out the black stock buttons for some mother of pearl as a quick fix while I waited for some koa ones I had ordered.

These are the stock tuners that came with the ukulele.  And this is how the headstock looked with the white mother of pearl buttons on the tuners.

I am actually really happy with the results. I ordered two types of tuners from Taisamlu on eBay. The first were some gold ones with koa buttons, the others were a silver plate style with koa buttons.

The first set arrived yesterday (not too bad -- only about a week's shipping) and three of them were a chocolate brown color, with one more of a golden brown. Then today the plate style ones came and low and behold, they were three more golden ones and one darker brown.

I tried both the brown and the golden colored ones, and I think the lighter set are a better match for the coloring on my headstock. I didn't use the actual tuners he sent me, just the buttons, so I popped the pearl buttons onto the gold set, and used the four lighter koa buttons on the Grovers. The darker koa buttons I kept on the silver plate style in case I ever decide to sell them or change up the look of this, or another uke.

These are the silver plate style ones:

This is how the lighter koa ones look on my uke's headstock:

Finally, this is a portrait of my uke, with all her mods in place: koa buttons, and koa bridge pins (with abalone inlay dots).

I thought I couldn't love my Kanile'a Island Inlay tenor any more. But I am glad I got the koa buttons. The shipping was super fast and it was a cost effective way to make my uke the way I wanted it, since the buttons cost so much less money than the Waverly tuners did. In addition, I don't have to worry about whether it voids my uke's warranty as I didn't drill holes or replace the actual tuners, just the buttons.

I know a lot of people wouldn't care for the koa buttons, but now my dream ukulele is a dream come true for me. I would highly recommend the $20 expenditure if anyone is contemplating using wood buttons on their uke. Admittedly, I had to order two sets to get four that sort of matched though (even though the pictures don't really show that), as otherwise I would have had one much darker or lighter than the remaining tuners.