Collings mandolin redesign

[Tom Ronan]

The music emporium store in Massachusetts

[Mainer73]

? Maybe autocorrect at work there, but this does not sound quite right, after having listened to the Mandolins & Beer Podcast with Tom Ellis. Some folks that worked at Collings, including Pava, may have contributed something to processes there [Ellis mandolins], but IIRC he was never with Collings, with a few intervening years of doing solely inlay work ("jobbing" for some big manufacturers) between mandolin production.

Yeah, phone is being weird, wouldn't even show the edit option now so I can fix it! Perhaps I had it wrong. I'd read a bio of Pava and it mentioned that she was recruited by Tom E. because he knew her from when they were both involved with the company. Who knows...

[CES]

TME: The Music Emporium, which is an awesome shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts…they take maybe the best instrument photos on the internet, and were very accommodating on my one visit there (to date…with a daughter in Boston, there are sure to be more in the future)…

[Perry]

From the Beat a Dead Horse Dept:

Perhaps the confusion with Will Kimble’s involvement stems from the fact that Peter Mix used Will’s top design when he made the molds for his New Mix Mad carbon fiber mandolins. If I remember correctly.

I own a Kimble A5 as my number one and a New Mad A5 as my back-up.
Some serious real world distressing on my Kimble.

Uses to own a Collings MT2 H. Was a fine instrument but mine was one that had the finish problem. The lacquer start peeling off the neck in sheets.

[keith.rogers]

Yeah, phone is being weird, wouldn't even show the edit option now so I can fix it! Perhaps I had it wrong. I'd read a bio of Pava and it mentioned that she was recruited by Tom E. because he knew her from when they were both involved with the company. Who knows...

I have to go back and listen but Collings and Ellis were possibly together in some way early on. It did not get covered in a way that left an impression on me as TE being an employee at the Collings company, but I may have misheard. (I’ve been wrong before… ask my wife )

[Mandolin Cafe]

A lot of speculation about the Ellis and Collings relationship is clearly evident on their web sites: Ellis - Collings

[ellisppi]

Here's a rundown of my relationship with Bill Collings. I met Bill in 1978 in Tacoma Wa. at a luthiers convention. I went and visited him in Houston in 78 or 79. I bought the guitar he is holding in the B&W pic on their website for $800. My brother still has it. I invited Bill to move to Austin and share my shop with me because the climate here is much better than Houston for building and I had a fully equipped 1000ft shop. He arrived in 1980 and the first day as he was moving in, he knocked a nearly finished mandolin off the wall onto the concrete floor. He apologized, and started packing up again to head off to California, but I made him stay to fix the mandolin. He worked here till 1985. During those years of the early 80's, there was a huge amount of learning going on in my shop. Me learning from Bill, Bill learning from me, and both of us learning from the other luthiers in Austin. We both learned how to go broke custom building. Around 92 or so I taught Bill CAD drawing, but not CNC programming. I have made every inlaid peghead veneer and fingerboard for Collings since 1980, but I never worked for Collings, I have my own company.