My guitar collection - Acoustics
The great late Bill Collings was not just one of the greatest small scale acoustic guitar builders. He and his company are also responsible for highly regarded mandolins. Or at the end of his life, guitar cases for that matter. Whatever Bill’s endeavor may have been, it needed to be done in the best possible way within certain operation parameters, e.g. cost/value. In 2009, he decided to dip into the ukulele (properly pronounced as OO-koo-leh-lay) market and his shop in Austin, TX built 70 prototypes of which this is one. This run consisted entirely of concert ukuleles, with a 15” scale length the smallest they produce, with 17” scale length tenor ukuleles added shortly thereafter. The body for this concert ukulele has a width of 7½”, a length of 11”, and a 213⁄16” depth. It’s total length is 24”. This prototype is a more understated 1-style and has an all Honduran mahogany construction with a satin nitrocellulose lacquer finish. The rosette is tortoise with black and white purfling and it uses an East-Indian rosewood bridge with bone saddle using a 1.73” string spacing, a neck with C-shaped profile and the finish already buffed to a gloss due to all the playing, a 12” radius East-Indian rosewood fingerboard with 18 frets and ivoroid dot position markers, 1⅜” wide bone nut, “Single-Point” headstock with gold Collings logo on an East-Indian rosewood veneer, 4:1 gear ratio Pegheds planetary gear tuning machines, and a Collings case. This instrument has an L.R. Baggs FiveO ukulele pickup installed. A 2016 snapshot of the relevant page on the old Collings website can be found here.
Collings UC1 prototype
The story behind this ukulele
Ship date:
Serial number:
Customizations:
Strings:
This is the third ukulele I purchased. Ever since the UT1K proved how much fun ukuleles are, the though existed of adding either another tenor with a low G-string and/or a concert ukulele, either with a koa or mahogany body. It just so happened the UT1 was added at the beginning of February 2021 and this UC1 at the end of the same month. It would take another 4 and a half year before the set was completed by the UC1K. There were a couple of other mahogany concert ukuleles listed, one even a prototype signed by ukulele master Jake Shimabukuro on potentially the only “Haircut” headstock on any ukulele. But Glenn Weatherley listed this prototype at a much better and reasonable price point on Reverb. And it is even one of the first 50 ever built! Beyond the type of ukulele, one notices a couple other differences with my tenor ukuleles. First, when consulting their FAQ on the previous version of their website, Collings mentions a serial is ‘... printed on the Collings label inside the instrument which van be seen through the sound hole’, see e.g this 2024 snapshot. After navigating to the Serial Number & Dating section of the Ukuleles tab on the current Collings FAQ page, ‘printed’ has been replaced by ‘handwritten’. For this prototype, the latter is indeed the case. But it should be noted that ukuleles built later, i.e. for most out there, the serial number appears on the neck block and hence these FAQ pages are incomplete. And second, although Collings’ records indicate the provided case is by Ameritage, it has different dimensions and interior than the cases used later. Nor does it have the special rounded-corner rectangular ukulele plate but rather a miniature version of the oval Collings plate found on other instrument cases. What should also be mentioned is that although this ukulele does not have binding on the top nor back, the edge coloring of the mahogany is such that it appears to have black binding, something which became apparent only upon close inspection. Very cool. Prior to April 2013, Aquila Nylgut Soprano(!) strings were factory installed and the referenced Savarez string after that date. The tuning of a concert ukulele is identical to a tenor. However, the strings on a concert have a larger gauge and are under slightly more tension, even though the scale length is 2” shorter. This gives the concert a feel entirely its own with a rich sound. Since the experiment was so successful, in retrospect it is no wonder Collings kept building ukuleles. Even if they only build them in limited batches, I guess when enough orders have come in.
