| It is certainly nice to see a steady flow
of Collings guitars being delivered to our store again! Now that
Bill Collings and Steve McCreary have moved their crew into their new workshop
I think we'll have an uninterrupted supply for quite some time!
I get a lot of questions from customers
along the lines of "what makes these guitars sound so much better than"
brand X, Y or Z? A question like that is not easy
to answer other than to point out that each builder brings different techniques
and a different skill set to bear when producing a musical instrument.
In the case of Collings guitars, one of the many processes unique
to this builder is his use of a convection oven to "bake" his tops!
Tonewoods have to be both dried (ie. moisture
content brought down to an acceptable level) and seasoned (ie. the natural
resins and saps crystallized on the cell walls). Reducing the
water content in wood happens relatively quickly, but the seasoning
can take many years. As sap crystallizes on the cell walls
of spruce and cedar, the top gets both lighter and stronger,
making the instrument more responsive and often louder. Bill Collings
has found a very simple but effective way to accelerate the seasoning process
on his top wood by baking them for a couple of hours before "stickering"
them for final acclimation to his shop. As Bill says, "our
tops are baked, not fried"!!!
The custom D1 Sunburst pictured above has
certainly got some kind of extra tone voodoo happening! Take
a pick to this beauty and it explodes out of the gate like a thoroughbred
with a burr under its saddle and then continues to respond to every subtle
pick dynamic you can throw at it! What an absolute JOY to play!!!
The Collings Convection Oven
(photo courtesy of Frank Ford's <www.frets.com> site;
the best guitar site on the internet!) |
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