The Collings Forum

Hello All,
I’m new here, but have posted about this elsewhere. I figured I’d post it here’s too as there seems to be quite a bit of knowledge and enthusiasm regarding Collings guitars on this forum!
About a month or so ago, I picked up a Collings OM1 T with a baked sitka top. What ended up leading me to this instead of the other instruments in my post on finding an OM were a couple of YouTube videos. The first was from Eddie's Guitars and the other was the one featuring this very guitar on the Artisan YT channel. In both videos, the players were strumming and it dawned on me that THIS was the guitar sound I wanted.
Did it hurt that the top has all of that 3D silky goodness? Not one bit. Still I like the plain overall aesthetic. The neck is perfect for me and for the life of me, I cannot find a single note on the neck that isn't equally as beautiful as the last. I've never experienced this level of balance and perfection in an instrument. Anybody else have one of these? Here are a few pics:

Beautiful guitar - congratulations! I don’t have one, but have played one and it was fantastic. I think Collings mahogany guitars are magical and I’m a huge fan of the T Series.

Lovely!

Thanks for the kind words, folks! I have a question about this guitar: how many of these does Collings build ? I just haven’t seen a whole lot of them out there and was wondering if this is because people tend to hold on to them or because there simply aren’t that many.

Welcome and congratulations on a great guitar. I know that you will enjoy it and the music you will make with it.

As to your question Collings is on the smaller end of the BIG guitar companies and the bigger end of the small boutique shops so they don't make a "lot" of any guitar.
On another thread a poster wondered that same thing about a different model. We didn't have a handy answer.

The folks at the Collings shop in Austin are usually very helpful. I'd suggest that you send an E-mail with any questions you might have to customerservice@collingsguitars.com

Welcome to the forum!

W, Congratulations on a great new Collings guitar. I got my first one in 2000, when they produced under 1000. Here are some numbers from JT Foote who used to post in the original Collings Forum:
1995 575 Guitars
1996 710
1997 816
1998 883
1999 863
2000 755
2001 1150
2002 850
2003 988
2004 1,122
2005 (at the time this information was obtained from Collings) 951

2003 244 Mandolins (97 A’s, 147 F’s)
2004 558 Mandolins (185 A’s, 373 F’s)
2005 407 Mandolins (162 A’s, 245 F’s) (Est for year total c. 2004's)

Of course in those years there were no ukeleles, no electrics and no Waterloos being built, and Bill was building the occasional archtop by himself. The numbers i heard tossed around were 1400-2000 acoustics per year in the 2015-2018 era. Maybe someone can add more accurate recent numbers?

Welcome to the forum and congratulations on a fab guitar. bert

Wproffitt wrote: ↑Mon Dec 28, 2020 8:13 pm Anybody else have one of these?

Yep, you've got my favorite Collings guitar. Still have one, but I've owned three others just like it; all were great, but this one is the greatest. Enjoy!

Wow! Let me get this straight. You’ve had 4 of these in all? Tell me more! What tops did you go with? Which top did you stick with in the end? I’m loving the baked Sitka, but don’t really have a point of comparison for this particular model.