Collings Hill Country Guitars at TME
Last week I got to demo Collings’ new Hill Country guitars at The Music Emporium! No surprise, they’re awesome and play like a dream…
If you’re a fan of the liveliness and light construction of a Waterloo but want a guitar that has just more of everything tone-wise, I think you’ll really dig the HC series. They’re going for a strong, woody fundamental tone, and that is certainly what you get. As you can hear, they record cleanly and beautifully. With a straightforward, clear voice and perfect balance from low to high, these guitars demand to be played in jams, studios and at gigs, where they’ll sit in the mix exactly where a guitar is meant to be.
The first things you note as a player sitting down with them are the chunkier neck profile and the super light body. I’ve gotten so used to a slimmer fingerstyle neck profile I was worried it’d be a hard adjustment, but this isn’t some old Gibson baseball bat neck situation - it’s well carved and surprisingly comfortable (size matters, but design matters more!). Adirondack tops come standard, and the two OMs I demoed were both satin finish, though gloss is an option. In addition to some additional appointment distinctions, the biggest difference with these is the voicing and the longer build time. They certainly do feel like a perfect balance of large-scale and boutique, combining the refinement of tone with the consistently perfect set-up that make a Collings so damn good to play.
