Strikingly beautiful in its elegant simplicity, this guitar starts with the extremely dark Brazilian rosewood headstock overlay featuring the shockingly white Collings script inlaid pearl logo and the six shiny nickel plated Waverly tuners with the open-gears and butterbean buttons. The nut and saddle are bone, as are most of us. The jet black fingerboard is inlaid with three mother of pearl markers of decreasing size (wow – another similarity to ourselves). The sides and back are such a gorgeous shade of Jen-You-Whine mahogany that even seeing it makes one want to lick it like a mother cat takes care of her kittens. This unfathomably delicious wood is bordered in each side with tortoise shell celluloid and the front in additional buttressed with 4 plies of black and crème purfling.
The back of the headstock is all one piece – three cheers/no ears; the heel cap is ebony and so (possibly) is the end graft; the neck shape is “modified V” and the action is low and extremely tenable (capable of being occupied, possessed, held, or enjoyed – in this case you get all four meanings). Eight bright white side dots light your way into the next level. The sound of a Collings OM-1A (Adirondack) is exquisite – but to add the convenience and versatility of a cutaway while still retaining all of the pitch perfect punch and power combined with the kaleidoscopic color and acoustic celerity of the Collings constellation is to achieve a new level of creative contentment.