My guitar collection - Acoustics
In the line of archtops offered by Collings, the AT-16 takes a special place. All but this model, i.e. the AT-16 Deluxe, AT-17, and AT-18, are your “typical” jazz archtops, with a cutaway and ornately decked out. 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. The guitar has neither a cutaway nor an ebony tailpiece, harkening back to the early archtops appearing in the 1920s, e.g. the early version Gibson L-5 designed under the auspices of Lloyd Loar himself. It mostly resembles the so-called Type Two L-5 version produced between 1925 and 1929 (although without the gold hardware), most famously played by Maybelle Carter. No real surprise there as far as inspiration goes! Not being a true jazz player, its features make the AT-16 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 European spruce top (Adirondack spruce is an option) with fully-hollow X-bracing and f-holes, bound ebony pickguard, custom 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, either a gorgeous sunburst or natural. As an example of the high standards Bill Collings set for archtops he built himself, and 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 16:1 gear ratio 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. You can browse the epitome of Bill’s guitar building prowess by checking the Archtops page on the Collings website. The AT-16 still has an entry in the February 2025 price list which reads “INQUIRE”. However, note that at the time of writing (Halloween 2025) they do not take orders any on any AT models. The earliest informative snapshot available of the production AT-16 is from 2009 while the current website shows this:
Collings AT-16
The story behind this archtop
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As related in connection with my 1997 AT-17, Collings archtops of any kind are rare and only appear sparingly in a store and/or marketplace, certainly now Collings (temporarily?) does not take orders for them anymore. According to Brett Serrell at Collings’ customer support, the most recent AT-16 was shipped in 2024, a “normal-ish” (Brett’s word) NAMM instrument with a list price of $26k. Taking an inventory a week or 2 after my AT-16 arrived, Acoustic Music Works had just listed S/N 50 on their website for $26,750. This guitar has a Kent Armstrong humbucker, quite rare for this model. At the same time, Reverb had a month old listing for S/N 91 at The Fellowship of Acoustics in my native The Netherlands for just north of $34k, for the then Euro exchange rate, even more expensive than I paid for that AT-17. I received my AT-16 from That Rhythm Man, LLC who had a listing on eBay, Reverb, and their own website. I contacted proprietor Chuck Nicholson and we struck a great deal, beneficial to both. As indicated by the pre-2017 website, this guitar came in an Ameritage hardshell case. Otherwise, the only info Brett could find in Collings’ records on this guitar was that it is a Sunburst with a bound fingerboard and headstock, bound pickguard, and was shipped on the above date to Blue Moon. Does that imply that the fingerboard, headstock, and/or pickguard were not always bound? The records do not tell. In real life, this is a beauty to behold. And I can confirm the many nuances demonstrated in Jim Kelly’s video, referenced above, on how this instrument can sound differently depending on how the player approaches a tune. You can play with dynamics, or dig in for single note lines, or gypsy style, or just strum, or ... A very, versatile guitar indeed!
The story behind this guitar
March 14, 2006
18
Sunburst, bound pickguard
