My guitar collection - Acoustics
It seems to be common that aspiring acoustic guitar builders always bite their teeth on an archtop. For Bill Collings that was no different. Although not often built and usually requiring a custom order, the AT-16, AT-16 Deluxe, AT-17, and AT-18 archtops did become part of the Collings line, even though the AT-18 never seems to have gotten its own webpage. Other variations, even more rarely seen, are the AT-00 or any of the above models with an oval soundhole instead of f-holes or s-holes. Some of them have a pickup but many do not. It goes without saying only the highest quality tonewoods and materials are used for these rarities and each one receives a lot of attention. In general, construction of these archtops involved a lot of Bill’s personal effort, if not being build by him completely. Unsurprisingly given the model designation, the top and back grained ivoroid bound cutaway body is 17” wide, has a length of 20¼”, i.e. slightly shorter than the AT-16, and a depth of 3”, built out of a fully-carved premium solid spruce top, i.e. for this guitar’s age either Adirondack or European. with fully-hollow X-bracing and bound s-holes, bound ebony pickguard, custom floating ebony bridge and tailpiece, and fully-carved highly figured maple back and sides. The premium figured maple neck has an archtop C-shape profile. The 14”-26” compound radius ebony fingerboard has grained ivoroid binding and Mother-of-Pearl (MOP) double parallelogram inlays. With a 111⁄16“ wide bone nut, the scale length is 25½”. The bound deluxe flared “Haircut” headstock has an ebony veneer on both font and back, MOP triple parallelogram inlay, MOP logo, an ebony truss rod cover, and Schaller gold plated tuning machines w/tab, either with ebony or ivoroid buttons. The whole guitar has a high-gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finish, either a gorgeous sunburst or natural. With all this, the total length comes to 42”. Note that what has been described here is a typical appearance of an AT-17. Since every build is special, with many possible customizations and Bill’s personal involvement, many an AT-17 may (and will) differ from this. Although still included in the February 2025 price list, where an official Collings dealer is asked to inquire for the actual price, sometime during that year Collings stopped taking orders for any AT model, as is explicitly stated at the top of the current AT-17 page on their website (visit link below). The oldest snapshot mentioning the AT-17, and its then list price of $13,500, is from 1999 but does not provide any specs. A 2016 snapshot of the production AT-16 on the old Collings website can be found here.
Collings AT-17
The story behind this archtop
Ship date:
Serial number:
Customizations:
Strings:
I am not really a jazz player. So should my Tacoma AJF28CE archtop suffice? Or is my fandom of all things Bill Collings enough to go after a piece of art, just so happening to manifest itself in the form of an archtop? Questions, questions, questions, with no easy answers. Any Bill Collings built archtop does not come cheap. When writing this, a 2000 AT-17 had shown up in the Reverb marketplace at the end of October 2025 for just under $32k. Enticing, indeed. And it sold within a day or 2! A very early (1981) 7-string 18” archtop had been listed for sale in Japan for 10 months, setting you back $20k+. Although I am willing to believe its provenance, it is a bit of an oddity. As faith would have it, another gorgeous 1990 AT-18 (Custom?) miraculously showed up on Reverb the day after Halloween 2025 for slightly south of $37k. (I expect that one to go fast too.) With the AT-16 in The Netherlands, a rare occurrence of all 3 archtops models appearing in the same marketplace! And Bill’s contribution to the Blue Guitar Collection, basically an AT-18 Custom, was for sale in 2021. But not by itself. It could only be acquired when purchasing all 22 archtops in the Blue Guitar Collection, as originally curated by Scott Chinery. That collection went to The Archtop Foundation for several millions. With Bill Collings no longer among the living, there are not going to be more archtops built by him. Which make any of his archtops rare by nature. So for the longest time the question was whether this dream could come true. And then it happened. Whereas the aforementioned AT-17 on Reverb was just outside my budget, certainly when fees and taxes were added, Carter Vintage Guitars listed an almost pristine 1997 AT-17 for a price within my budget. I asked for more information and demo and Zach Daves was kind enough to provide me with it all. So the deal was closed. As a bonus, the archtop came in a black Calton case. And when that case was opened for the first time, I gasped. What. A. Beauty! This AT-17 does have a pickup which looks to be a Kent Armstrong (8.3kΩ impedance) Handwound PAF--Resin Cast--12 Pole--Side Mounted neck pickup mounted to the pickguard not by double sided tape or epoxy but with 2 flat head hex screws. The pickguard has a volume control on the top, nicely placed on the rounded lip, and a tone control somewhat hidden underneath. The output is to the right of the tailpiece. Hence, a standard strap button is used, providing a clean appearance to the butt, with the other strap button found on the heel. Although it has no serial number per se, the production date and Bill’s signature are visible through the s-hole on the bass side, proving it is from November 1997. Fortunately, Collings started keeping records in 1995. Unfortunately, those on early instruments, and archtops in particular, are sparse. Brett Serrell at Collings’ great customer support could only find shipping records for 2 AT-18 archtops, one in late-1998, the other in early-1999, but nothing on this AT-17. Hence, he was unable to tell me the specific spruce top on this guitar. Personally, I think it is European spruce, all in a gorgeous sunburst which looks like a modern Western Shade, complemented by ebony tuning machine buttons, and graceful binding all around. Although the current website, as well as this snapshot from 2009 (see the Specifications tab), lists a set of D’Addario EJ17 for strings, the 2016 referenced above recommends the lighter EJ16, i.e. .012--.053 with wound-G. This AT-17 came set up with EJ17s. And the (acoustic) sound is heavenly. Very clean and clear highs, which seems to be Bill’s trademark. Yes, that may make the guitar less warm compared to most archtops but again, the clarity is what you get back. This is all balanced with a nice midrange and deep low end. A guitar like this to me defines Bill Collings, the guitar builder, very much like Leo Fender for me is defined by ‘The Rembrandt’. All of their innovations and vision on what a guitar should sound like coming together into a single instrument. This is where Bill went further than both Bob Taylor or Richard Hoover (Santa Cruz), who stuck to flattops, and shared a space also occupied by the likes of Linda Manzer, John Buscarino, and Dana Bourgeois, whose A-360 model was the first high-end archtop I ever played. But now I play this one. Very, very happily so!
The story behind this guitar
November, 1997
Nov 1997 (hand written)
black Calton case
