Collings Guitars

Absolutely fantastic quality. Love the sound, the quality of the craftsmanship, and man are they beautiful to look at. Great guitars and mandolins.

Collings guitars are amazing. I own an SJ and D3. I own a number of other guitars from a variety of manufacturers and I find there is no comparison. Even versus Gibson Taylor or Martin, my Collings’ stand out.
Whether fingerpicking or flatpicking, aggressively strumming or picking out a delicate melody, they feel and sound great. The sound is well-​balanced, with nuanced articulation in the mids/​treble and a rich clarity on the base end.
I also know from personal experience that Collings stands behind their product. Great guitar. Great company. You cannot go wrong.

Went on a factory tour recently. The factory is close to Southwest Austin. Great FREE tour! Guide and staff were all friendly. Learned a lot: everything from the woods selected for the guitars and mandolins to seeing how they are finished. If you play, or are interested in stringed instruments, I highly recommend a visit. If you don’t own a Collings guitar, you will want to after seeing the quality of materials and craftsmanship of their products.

I recently took my 6-​month-​old Collings D-​1A (that’s a «normal» dreadnaught style acoustic guitar with an Adirondack Spruce top in place of the less expensive and less spectacular sounding Sitka Spruce top) to a friend of mine who has been playing guitar for decades and has probably owned and played more acoustic as well as electric guitars than 30 normal people. He proceeded to practically rip the strings off it with hot licks, kickin’ chords, about 10 different styles of play, and then looked up at me and said, «This is the best guitar I’ve ever played.» Naturally I was thrilled, especially since I’m a relative beginner compared to him.
I ordered my Collings the summer of 2007, and picked it up January 2008 after taking a fascinating tour of the factory (just east of Dripping Springs, TX., towards Austin). They give tours once a week at 3:00 p.m., and anyone who plays guitar, regardless of what kind (s) they own, or is interested in seeing how guitars are made, should take a couple hours out of their day and pay the Collings folks a visit. The tour is free, by the way, and they let you take pictures (which I did by the score). Don’t expect to see a showroom full of guitars for sale since the demand for them is such that there are simply none sitting around, and don’t expect to see a lot of machines cranking out guitars like Willie Wonka’s «Everlasting Gobstoppers». What you WILL see are a bunch of true artisans creating works of art which are absolutely flawless.
Now…the sound. When I open the case and look at my Collings I am consistently amazed at how benign it looks: it simply looks like a normal guitar… nothing fancy, nothing out of the ordinary. Then I begin playing it and it is simply astounding. Whenever I put a new set of strings on it and play it I do not want to quit. It’s insanely loud with so much bass and midrange… oh…and top end, and it’s so easy to play. What more can I say?
One more thing: Collings guitars are expensive. You won’t find one for less than $ 3,500 and they go much higher than that depending on choices of wood and decoration. But when you own one, you won’t look beyond to your next guitar because you’ll have arrived where you need to be.
Oh…they also make electric guitars as well as mandolins.

If you know Collings Guitars, then I cannot imagine a debate on 5 stars. Truly spectacularly well made, fine instruments that grace this Earth and occasionally my humble hands.
I found Collings years ago through a Texan friend and Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto, CA (an incredibly wonderful guitar store). I don’t know about you. but I over-​think larger purchases and Collings ain’t cheap, Skipper. So I analyzed the options to death. Finally I hid in a practice room and A-B’d the crap out of a Collings and a Santa Cruz. An easy decision.
It’s all about the tone in the end. Collings’ fine materials and careful craftsmanship end up producing superior sound time and time again. I want another Collings but then I also want to meet Marilyn Monroe.
One year I played an $ 18K carved top f-​hole jazz guitar Bill Collings was about to deliver to Gary Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury. The fact that Bill let me play it says something about what a nice man he is. This quality is in every Collings guitar. I love saying Hello to the Collings guys when I can get a pass into the NAMM show.
They have started making electrics, which is a scary thought, because they look and play incredibly as you might expect. There is God and then there is Bill Collings. Case closed