Lyle Lovett onstage with his 2008 cherry-sunburst D2 flattop. “Bill’s guitars just get better and better. You can’t pick one up that you don’t like.” Lovett also plays a 1992 CJ.
Photo by Michael Wilson
both A Mighty Wind and This Is Spinal Tap
on the Unwigged and Unplugged Tour with
Michael McKean and Harry Shearer. Guest’s
Collings addiction seems to be fairly serious.
“I got my first one . . . I guess it was about 20
years ago. And then I bought a mandolin, and
then another guitar, then another mandolin,
then another guitar, and then another guitar.
And I’ve been playing them since then.”
Collings’ guitars gained a reputation for being
simply spectacular, and if not perfect, they started to come as close as humanly possible. “You
can’t do it anyhow,” says Collings, “so you just
try to come as close as you can. Can you pick
the perfect piece of wood? No, but you can get
really close. Can you make it the perfect thickness? No, but you can get really close. Can you
scientifically do it? No, but you can get close.
So we do it all—buy the best wood, intuitively
making a judgment on it, weighing it, banging
on it, and roughly coming to the right thickness.
We do whatever we can.” And he’s adamant in
that quest for perfection. “Every day we try to
make a better guitar, every day. And every day
there are tops sitting in bins that will be braced
soon, and they will all become a better guitar
than yesterday. You’re trying to reach for more,
trying to do better, not trying to do the same. A
lot of companies are trying to do the same, and
that’s okay—that’s their deal. We’re trying to
stretch that. Our goal is a little more.”
The Art and Science of Wood Selection
Wood selection is Van Wart’s area, and his
philosophy is a mix of exacting standards, intu-
ition, and the experience of having thousands
of board feet of wood pass through his hands
over the past two decades. “What you’re trying
to do is maximize the piece of wood that you
have. It’s not a perfect world and every piece of
wood is different, so you’re just trying to make
that piece of wood as excitable as you can get
it. You have to do it individually, each piece is
different.” As far as top woods are concerned,
“I’m not looking for so many grains. You can
have a piece of wood that has pretty wide grain
that can be just as good as a piece of wood
that has really tight grain. Sometimes if the
grain gets too tight, it adds too much weight.”
Like many acoustic builders, Collings has tried
some different woods in recent years, but he
feels pretty strongly about staying close to tra-
ditional woods. “Every time we think they will
work for us, there’ll be a reason to not use them.
Say, ziricote–you get it to the right thickness and
it’s cardboard. You get into all these alternatives
and, well, there’s a reason they aren’t traditional
woods. The reason is that they’re not as good
