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, they did become part of the Collings line including the AT-16, AT-16 Deluxe, AT-17, and AT-18. 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, many do not. It goes without saying only the highest quality tonewoods and materials are used for these rarities and each 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. All but the AT-16 are your “typical” jazz archtops ornately decked out and with a cutaway. The AT-16 is different in that it is intended to be a true alternative to a flattop and played as such but with its own response and sound. That feature makes this model interesting to me. As the name implies, its body width is 16” with a body length of 20½” and a depth of 2⅞” built out of a fully-carved premium Sitka spruce top with fully-hollow X-bracing and f-holes, bound ebony pickguard, ebony adjustable bridge, fully-carved highly figured maple back and sides, and grained ivoroid full body binding, all in a high-gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finish, usually a gorgeous sunburst. But the guitar neither has a cutaway nor an ebony tailpiece, harkening back to the early archtops appearing in the 1920s. In typical Bill fashion, he machined the nickel trapeze-style tailpiece himself. The premium figured maple neck has an archtop C-shape profile and matching (sunburst) finish. The 14”-26” compound radius ebony fingerboard has grained ivoroid binding and Mother-of-Pearl (MOP) graduated dots for position markers. With a 111⁄16“ wide bone nut the scale length is 25½”, the same as for a large body acoustic. The bound headstock has the Collings haircut, an ebony veneer with MOP logo, ebony truss rod cover, and Waverly nickel-plated tuning machines with ivoroid buttons. With all this, the total length of the guitar is 41⅛”. To get an idea of the wide range of genres one can play on this instrument, I can highly recommend this video by guitarist Jim Kelly for The Music Emporium. Although at the time of writing (Halloween 2025) Collings does not take any orders, you can browse the epitome of Bill’s guitar building prowess by checking the Archtops page on their website. For the AT-16 in specific, visit this webpage:
Collings AT-16
The story behind this archtop
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Any Bill Collings built archtop does not come cheap. When writing this, there is a very early 7-string 17” archtop for sale in Japan setting you back $20k+. A 2000 AT-17 showed up in the Reverb marketplace at the end of October 2025 for just under $32k. Enticing, indeed. But I am not really a jazz player and for that niche, my Tacoma AJF28CE archtop will suffice. 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 archtop guitars in the Blue Guitar Collection, as originally curated by Scott Chinery. That collection went to The Archtop Foundation for several millions. And with Bill Collings no longer among the living, there are not going to be more archtop guitars built by him. Which make any of his archtop guitars rare by nature. But one can dream, right?
