2020s Waterloo WL-S 0/00-Size 12-Fret Guitar

Collings guitars of all stripes are good stuff and this ladder-braced, Waterloo-brand fella is no slouch. It sounds a lot bigger than it is and is exceedingly-fun to play. It has a lot of the "Kalamazoo" charm going for it but with more bass response and oomph, runs somewhere between 0 and 00 in size, and looks killer.

It does have some of the ladder-braced wonkiness going-on, though, as it's settled-in and bumped around Vermont and the East Coast a while. The top has begun to belly a bit (which is why we had to reglue the bridge as it was peeling-up on the back edge) and the saddle (Jose made a new, low one to improve action) is almost bottomed-out on the bridge's top deck. For a new guitar, that's fairly frustrating, but if you know how ladder-braced stuff reacts as it settles-in over the first decade of existence... it's not at all unexpected.

Anyhow, I reglued the bridge and Jose did the setup work on it and it's playing nicely but does have a little zip to it up the neck. The frets could use some course-correction around the joint area due to its developing a bit of an S-curve in that part of the neck (this is common to Gibson-like guitars that share this same build style, mind-you!), but we're going to chat with the owner first to see if it's needed for his playing-style first.