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.