[upsidedown]

Originally Posted by DukeX

From Bill Collings:

The price came about more as a result of the sound I was after, rather than trying to hit a certain price point. Making a guitar that is accessible to more players is a good thing, but that wasn't the reason I wanted to do it. The goal was to capture a particular sound by making the guitars like they were actually made back in the depression, and that meant stripping the process down to the bare essentials.

The challenge was to figure out how to put less hours in the guitar and still make it a great guitar. The hours that do go in it are very skilled hours, but it's probably one third of what it might take to build a very high end guitar where you obsess over every detail. This means you don't clean up your glue mess. You don't worry so much about sanding the braces. You forget about trying to make a guitar with a mirror finish. You put craftsmanship in the guitar, but only where it really matters. It ends up being a no-frills utilitarian guitar, but the tone and the intrinsic value are still there.

I knew going into it that it would be a departure from Collings Guitars, but it was an area that I really wanted to explore. Not all of today's players have seen these old guitars. Not everyone is searching for them, so they're not finding them. I think people are missing out on something unique and different. Some of the originals are out there, but they are really hard to find in good shape. So much so, that you will usually have more cost in the repair work than the cost of a new guitar. So having this guitar at an affordable price allows you to get some of that Americana history in a newer instrument that will last a lifetime. The lifetime of most of the originals is over, unfortunately.

That's cool, Duke. Thanks for the share.