The Collings Forum

Hello to all of you from Nashville. So very happy to have the forum back. The forum had always been a great resource and I hope the info from the old one can be merged with it.
Happy trails!
Ellie

Hi Guys - Gold to see the board back online. I used to be Dr. F on the old forum.

So glad to see the new forum. I sure missed not having our regular Collings Guitar forum. Thanks to all who made this possible.

Happy to see this up and running. Missed the old Forum and excited for this new one. Hello from Colorado.

Apparently I'm a little late to the party, but glad to be here !!! I certainly hope all is well with all the comrades !!! Good job Gentlemen
Dan

Dear all,

This is Ed, the Admin/Host of the old Collings Forum. Thanks again for the good folks, elambo and many others for all these years' support (I believe over 15 years). I am so happy and glad that we have a new place that seems to run very well so far.... and I feel sorry for the sudden "out of service" of the previous forum.

The investment I put into the previous forum (approx. USD500 per month) was quite significant but I am happy to keep it active for over 15 years even I myself stopped playing guitar for 10 years since the birth of my first daughter (recently picked it up again!). Apart from the few rounds of fund raising (still feel very thankful), I insisted no ad, no banner etc. as to keep the forum clean with good usability. I thought the best is for dealers/members to contribute a small fee when they successfully sell a guitar via the forum but I almost never receive any contributions from members/dealers when they successfully sell guitar there (It is fine too as it is really voluntary) There's also questions and queries directly to me questioning the hosting cost during the few rounds of fund raising.... that gave me a very hard feeling... consider I personally put in over US$60,000 total into the forum.

But put the financial apart, it is getting very complex for me to host the forum remotely from Hong Kong. (e.g. The previous host forum company requested me to migration the forum to a new hosting platform with an additional fee and stopped the forum services with no other options, Paypal stopped my account twice for accepting donations etc.)

Add to the stress from work last year..... I feel difficult mentally to support the forum at one point.. Sorry again....

Anyway.. I am so happy that Collings Forum is back up and I look forward to participate again. The new forum restricted user ID to min. 3 letters.. I cannot have my previous User ID "Ed" back.. (Can someone let me have it back?) Thanks again for all the members, again elambo and other previous moderators too.

I hope I start play again actively... I really missed out a lot in the guitar scene...

BTW... this is a good memory when I started the previous forum... a link from UMGF.

https://umgf.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=1 ... 253#p15253

Glad to see you here Ed. Thank you for the wonderful contributions you made through the “old” Collings Forum. It is greatly appreciated.

It's great having you back on the forums, Ed! And I'm happy to read that work and fatherhood are keeping you busy.

Many of us here and elsewhere owe you a great thanks for the time, effort and financial support you invested into your forum. For many years it served as a meeting place for friends and as a library of knowledge and wealth of conversation about Collings, guitars in general, and countless other topics. For me, it was a great source of joy to participate (the occasional headache notwithstanding .

I do hope you're able to find time for playing guitar, and that you're active on this forum. Thanks for the years of support!

Thanks Haason and elambo.. may be I should redirect the www.collingsforum.com domain to this forum site as well.

Also thanks for fixing my name back to Ed.

After CollingsForum.com went away, I lost hope it would ever come back. What a fool I am that I was not aware of this new version. It’s great to be back (formally 97Taylor) with this great group of Collings enthusiasts!

Will you ever be able to merge the old site with the new?

JW