By David McCarty
The warm air of late December in the Texas Hill Country envelopes the craft production shop of Collings Guitars. It’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s and the shop, renowned worldwide as one of the world’s finest small production shops for acoustic guitars and mandolins, as well as some newer entries to the Collings catalog like ukuleles and electric guitars, is closed for business over the holidays and mostly empty. The air inside still smells faintly of pungent rosewood and mahogany dust, aromatic mandolin varnish and machine oil, but the distinctive buzz of a wellorganized instrument manufacturing operation working at full tilt is missing. Everywhere you look, stateoftheart jigs, fixtures, and other tooling hold instruments in various stages of construction, but they seem lonely without the skilled hands of Collings employees finishing the sanding, carving, gluing, clamping, spraying, and buffing needed to complete the legendarily highquality instruments Collings ships to about a hundred select guitar dealers around the world.
As the especially demanding year 2010 rolls to an end, Bill Collings, blocky and balding with the look of a wrestler, sits in his spacious, modern instrument production shop on 16 acres outside Austin, Tex., and looks at something quite rare. It’s a guitar he made in 1990, back when the company that now employs seventy was just a twoman operation. He and Collings general manager/vice president Steve McCreary are taking advantage of the downtime to handle the inevitable odds and ends that a busy, successful company generates that somehow never quite get done during normal business hours. And this guitar had come, if not exactly home, at least back to its creator.
Holding the twentyyearold guitar—the benchmark that divides “used” from “vintage” in the field of fine stringed instruments—the two old friends are feeling a little nostalgic, engaging in the typical endofyear reverie and review that most of us indulge in as one year fades to another. The guitar he’s holding doesn’t even bear the famous Collings script logo in the headstock; it’s one of a run of guitars the company founder made on special order for George Gruhn, founder of worldfamous Gruhn Guitars in Nashville. It was the first commercial order Collings ever had, and building guitars for a collector and instrument authority (as wellrespected as Gruhn) was a huge milestone in his career as a luthier. Notoriously perfectionistic and demanding, Collings is examining the guitar made when Texas native George H.W. Bush was President, and is pleasantly surprised.
“In 1989, we got a commission from George to build 24 guitars with the Gruhn name on the headstock,” Collings says as he looks over the historic guitar. “That was the first job where I was guaranteed to be paid. And these guitars were really hard to do, but this is a great guitar. In the last twenty years, it blossomed.”
The same can be said for the Collings company, which has blossomed from a tiny operation that started on the kitchen table of his Houston apartment into the modern, organized instrument production facility occupying a clean, white, modern, industrial building marked only by the name Collings on the mailbox and a few small handpainted signs bearing the company’s proud logo.
Achieving that record of growth and success while maintaining quality levels most individual luthiers would be hard to match in their finest custom instruments is a feat Collings and McCreary take special pride in. That they’ve done it through tough economic times, changing tastes in musical instruments, dwindling supplies of the rare topquality tropical tonewoods needed for many models, and other challenging circumstances makes their accomplishment doubly impressive.
The company’s core competency has been, and probably always will be, instruments aimed at a bluegrass or acousticinfluenced musician base. Killer bluegrass players from Kenny Smith, Steve Kaufman, Kym Warner, Jesse Cobb, and many more, as well as acoustic pros Lyle Lovett, Jerry Jeff Walker, Robert Earl Keen, have made Collings one of the most recognized marques in the industry. Starting with superb bluegrass dreadnoughts and smallerbodied instruments, the company expanded into mandolins in 1999. Bill Collings has always had a fascination for archtop instruments, and his exquisite, very rare, archtop guitars are among the most soughtafter and collectible Collings instruments. So when he saw an opportunity to expand the shop’s production into A and F mandolins, he combined his passion into an instrument that could be produced in greater quantities than the virtually handmade Fhole guitars. The result was a unique mandolin, one that had a clearer, more balanced tone with biting volume and perfect playability, one that offered the quality of construction typically only found in the finest handmade mandolins from Steve Gilchrist or Mike Kemnitzer. And his mandolin production went from a few instruments a month to an entire department in the new facility.
Now before the bluegrass audience gets its hopes up here, Bill and Steve are quick to note that it’s not in their current plans to begin manufacturing banjos or resonator guitars. “But I’ve learned from working with Bill so long, never to say never,” McCreary says in his soft Texas drawl. And indeed, in the mid’70s, Bill Collings did sustain his business in part by building fivestring banjo necks.
For the time being, however, the duo is concentrating on their latest endeavors: ukuleles and electric guitars. The ukes, it’s not hard to see, stemmed from the company’s longstanding excellence in acoustic instruments. And the upturn in the demand for the little fourstringed beauties (originally from the shores of Hawaii) came at the same time that, in general, the Great Recession of 2008 was making it harder for people to afford to drop $4,000 for a guitar or $7,000 on a Collings MF-5 mandolin. Much like Martin and Gibson before them, the Collings team found a new source of income by adding a new type of instrument to their catalogue at a time of economic uncertainty. But more than that, they insist, the instruments are just fun.
“They’re the most fun thing,” Collings says lovingly, adding with a his tongue firmly in cheek, “Those tens of dollars we’ve made building ukes really saved the company.” Introduced just before the financial meltdown of the autumn of 2008, ukuleles came along at a time when the company had a little excess production capacity in its body department, and building ukes became a great way to keep people fully occupied and creating fine instruments, McCreary explains. “We love them. They take a lot of labor, though.”
The other new entrant to the production lineup, electric guitars, might seem out of place for a company that had built its global reputation on making superb acoustic instruments. But just as electric guitar innovator and trendsetter Paul Reed Smith has branched out from making premier electric guitars for the likes of Santana and Al DiMeola to creating flattop acoustics being endorsed by bluegrass superstars Ricky Skaggs and Cody Kilby, Collings realized that the same woodworking and instrument production skills he’d perfected on acoustic instruments would enable his company to make a similar statement of excellence in electrics.
Basing his electric designs on classic examples created by Gibson in the 1950s, the Collings electrics take a modern and proudly Texasinfluenced approach to their new line of amplified instruments. Sporting gorgeous flame-maple tops with vivid stains and sunbursts, the colorful electric guitars seem like wild peacocks lured inside the Collings factory compared to the typically plainer, almost austere dreadnoughts and subdued mandolins.
Part of the motivation, Bill Collings explains, was that many of their dealers were looking to expand their inventory of Collings instruments, and the company simply couldn’t supply more acoustic guitars and mandolins than they were currently building. Adding electrics, he explains, let them offer a broader range of Collings products for their dealers to buy, while giving the everinquisitive, hyperinventive man behind the Collings curtain a new set of challenges as he set about applying the same remarkable standards of fit, finish, tone, playability, and quality he’d pioneered to an entirely new breed of guitars.
“Right now, mandolins and electric guitars are our hottest products,” he explains, adding that he anticipates a swing back to flattop guitars soon. “Rather than make cheaper guitars—which we would have no idea how to do—we opted to go that route.”
Collings dealers are often just as unique and memorable as the instruments shipped out of their pristine Texas factory. McCreary says the brand’s supporters have included some of the biggest and bestknown dealers in the country, and Collings has great relationships with businesses like Smoky Mountain Guitars and Artisan Guitars in Tenn., the Music Emporium in Lexington, Mass., Acoustic Music Works in Pittsburgh, Penn., and Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto, Calif. You could get similar comments from any of them, but one longtime dealer and supporter has been Cotten Music [www.cottenmusic.com], a landmark in downtown Nashville’s historic Hillsboro Village neighborhood. Unlike some bigname guitar dealers with expensive showrooms in exclusive buildings, Cotten occupies a cramped, narrow retail space that looks like the corner music shop of fifty years ago. Fine guitars, some rare and old, some modern, hang in rows from the ceiling and behind the cluttered counter. Coowner Kim Sherman has become a worldrenowned dealer, offering instrument assessments delivered with unflinching integrity and honesty, even to the point of sometimes telling a prospective customer they’re better off not doing the deal they want. In her years of instrument selling and trading, she’s seen the best of the best, handling vintage Martins and Gibsons and an assortment of fine guitars from the world’s boutique guitar makers both in the shop and online through their website. But Collings instruments hold a special place in her heart.
“It takes only a few seconds with a Collings to realize, as a musical instrument, it’s greater than the sum of its parts. It’s not hard to see the perfectionism and attention to detail that goes into its fit and finish, and it’s impossible to ignore the depth, volume, and clarity of tone when you play a Collings,” she explains. “But, when we see a customer find just the right Collings, the instrument seems to take on this alive quality in the player’s hands. It never gets old, watching this magical connection happen! Having sold Collings instruments for many years now, it’s obvious to us that Bill and his amazing team work hard to make what is already wonderful even better. Gotta love that.”
You’ve also gotta love the way Collings Guitars gives back to the communities that have supported it for the last twenty-plus years. Through cash and instrument donations, the company has sponsored a host of bluegrass festivals and contests, including the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kans., MerleFest, Wintergrass, Grey Fox, and many more. It works closely with top bluegrass and progressive acoustic players like Sarah Jarosz, Jesse Cobb of the Infamous Stringdusters, and Kenny and Amanda Smith to supply instruments, despite not having anywhere near the marketing budget of the giants of the acoustic guitar and mandolin industry. “We know the lifestyle and budget of these musicians,” McCreary says earnestly. “It’s blood, sweat, and years. So we’ve tried to help out where we can.” In some cases, they get a little celebrity push when a famous personality like Conan O’Brien buys a Collings guitar for their personal collection. But mostly it’s for the average player, the jam session player, or the woman sitting in her bedroom after a long day at the office just wanting to play a guitar that sounds and feels special because it makes her music sound special.
Like any company, Steve and Bill and the rest of the Collings crew have an eye on the future. They’ve recently introduced mandolas and just introduced a lowerpriced MTstyle mandola at the 2011 Winter NAMM Show. Mostly, they pay attention to the small details and the practical matters most other instrument companies don’t even recognize: how to improve the quality of their finish, what can they do to make their binding joints even more perfect, how they can improve upon an already nearperfect production process to make a better guitar or mandolin or ukulele. Mostly though, they think about how to keep the tightly knit and highly skilled group of artisans they’ve recruited and trained employed and keep the business operating at a successful level.
“We’re months out on backorders again. Things dropped off in 2008, and 2009 was a slow climb out, but it’s starting to look good again,” says the man whose name is on every headstock. “We have seventy people to keep fed and insured and put money in their 401ks. Even in the downturn, we learned from that, and that became its own challenge, keeping people working and being balanced out and keeping enough money coming in.”
Success in business, however, is clearly not what motivates Bill Collings or any of the people working for him. He still recalls the day in 1992 that Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Mich., ordered two guitars from him, and that order allowed him to make payroll that month. It’s always the instruments, the endless challenge of making something already great even better that drives everyone working on this hilly bit of land shaded by tall oaks in the brutal summer heat.
“We just like to build good stuff; if you make money, that’s great,” he says with a chuckle. That might as well be their whole business plan.
David McCarty, a staff writer for Bluegrass Unlimited, has reported expertly on the bluegrass instrument industry for more than thirty years. He plays mandolin and guitar in Indianapolis, Indiana.