Oh here too, but I don’t know, it was almost frantic at one point ,we could not supply the need for the ukes, we’re just too slow at it ,and nothing we made ever made any money by any means, we put more in it than we should have ,but that’s what we wanted to do!įrom your point of view what are the key ingredients for making a really good uke So I think there is still a lot of interest in the UK, there are a lot of big festivals, same in Japan It’s still pretty busy in the UK, it’s like some cult -you know people are really, same thing with guitars, you have different price points, some people just go” how much?” and if we were sax or violin players we wouldn’t even be starting until it were a fair bit – ![]() Yes somewhere in there, might have been 2007 2008 yeah and I think the uke boom was going on at that time Ok, was that the first Namm show around 2007? Back then the economy was slow, and we thought let’s just go ahead and do what ukes did for a lot of companies through the years-they would fill in in the bad times -so let’s just use this as an excuse and try it-well it didn’t fill in anything but it did make some ukes! I think we made about 600 ukes or something like that! When I start to see some really nice ukes, like some Martin ukes, any time I would see a nice, a well-made uke ,and think “Wow that’s neat !”You know, you’d always want to go “I’d like to do that,” The last time we actually did start to make ukes,a lot of people had been asking us to make ukes ,and I think it was 2007. There are many times when I’ve thought about this. What made you first think about building ukes and when was this? Yes and probably 10 ukes- did you know that? I was saying to Alex that I was talking to Doug Chandler (European distributor for Collings)who I’ve known from years back, and he was saying “Nick, every artist I know that is a name has at least one Collings guitar and Pete Townsend has six of them…” ![]() Well I don’t think that is the universal accepted view The other day I heard from a dealer about electric guitars, that nobody cares about fit and finish in an electric guitar ,and I thought “you know, well I guess the world is done” I mean to say that if you don’t care about something like that ,you’ve given up, you know? Yeah well that’s what we try to do, so we’re supposed to care! NC I never intended to be even remotely interested in ukuleles, I was mostly interested in guitars, and it was Zeke in Mat Umanov in Bleecker street New York, who came back from the Namm show with Mat Umanov with one of your pre-production UC1 concerts ukes, and I thought -”What the hell is that?” I’ve never seen any Collings ukes so I bought this pre-production one and loved it and used it extensively on The Small Change Diaries album.īC Really nice! Ukuleles are a lot of work-that’s the stupid part you wouldn’t think that would you?Īs I was saying to Alex, (Bill’s right hand man who was kind enough to show us all around the facility at Collings)I’ve been all around the world, New York ,Japan and everywhere ,and I’ve never played any of your instruments which don’t sound great, and I can’t say that for any other builder. I was therefore really looking forward to finally meeting Bill in person in Austin this September.īefore I met Bill he spotted me walking across to his unit, carrying my treasured Collings UC1, and the first words I hear from him are “Ukuleles suck!” This is the start of a wonderful hour’s conversation with a master instrument builder, with a mischievous sense of humour and a very sharp eye on both the quality and business aspect of instrument building. I also have on very good authority from music industry insiders that many named artists have numerous Collings instruments which have become the gold standard when it comes to build quality. I knew that Bill has a terrific global reputation for building superb electric and acoustic instruments for many years, but many people were surprised at his foray into building ukuleles. NC The very first ukulele I bought was a Bill Collings UC1 prototype concert ukulele from New York, which has just sounded better and better over time. ![]() ![]() A great interview with Bill Collings about making ukeleles.
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