Natty TK. Red TK. One of these two, red is classic af, but the nattys are soo legit once you hone them in. Just remember: you have to put some serious work in on it! TKs don't give up tricks easily.
IIRC the Tamiwa Toy JKA 40th Anniversary TK16s were beech/birch combos with an experimental paint job. We had spoken to them a couple of years back and they mentioned that a lot of players had been asking about beech TKs so they were looking into it. From that meeting I'm pretty sure that they said the original green JKA stickered ones (not the mutant) were made of German birch.
Hey Eelco @s070s go to page 3 of this thread to be enlightened! https://www.downspike.com/threads/jka-kendamas.375/
Good to know. Definitely going to cop one soon...hopefully they arent gone or I will be posting a DS exchange ISO post.
After reading the translated text on the JP site, these were the very first designs of the TK in 2001, not that i know how it actually differs to today's designs haha! Will definitely get a fresh JKA TK (hopefully not the Muties), and compared it with this. (If anyone could point to me where to find a fresh red TK for a very reasonable price, i'd jump on it! Trying to expand my JKA collection.)
You mentioned in another thread you had picked up some Ozora strings from Goods From Japan. They appear to also have TK16s.
oh ... thx you guys ! mised that one .. What a great topic read the whole thread till now i think i got lucky with my batch of tk's i bought two mounth ago
well it's true that it is matte, but once you play it for a bit, it's getting glossy. Plus, it's not tacky, it's realy icy & quite hard to balance. The bevel & tama hole is bigger than the recent tk16but spike is short so it's gonna be not as good doing multi jsticks....
The new keyaki TK16, is the tama polished similar to the keyaki Ozora? Or is it similar to the keyaki Sanga with a slightly rough/raw texture?
Only have the beech ones and they are a bit rougher overall so I'd guess their Keyaki is similar. If you're looking for a reasonable priced Keyaki that has some grab see if you can find the Minna no Kendama (from the makers of Shinfuji). Been jammin one of those for a month or so and like it.
I'd say they're somewhere in between. The Ozo keyakis are very polished! TK keyakis are not quite so slick. @Shadoshi the Terra online shop has them in stock, you can snag a small discount with the DOWNSPIKE discount code too