For numerous reasons I would rather look at the itinerary and travel details and first work out if I would even bother taking a musical instrument. Then if I decided to take one, I would take the best one for the job at hand. Sometimes thats a laminated instrument sometimes its a solid koa instrument. Horses for courses.
A Collings instrument is not necessarily pricey. It can be quite cost effect effective to a professional musician who uses it to generate a good income stream, as they do. What is "high end", its just two words used by people who do not understand how a good guitar can be a benefit in the music business. If a professional guitar player is making good money even a $10K Collings Guitar is going to be worth taking on a road trip if it sells tickets and CDs and airplay. Collings make the guitars and instruments for professional use, not to hide in your shed or man cave and drool over. If a Collings instrument, guitar, ukulele, or other has the right sound and feel, it will taken out by professional musicians and will survive and will sell tickets and CDs and airplay.
Discussing the new Collings products is a great topic for Uke Talk. Thats what Uke Talk is for. Whether or not anyone actually will buy the instruments is a different matter, so far no-one has posted an intention to find one and buy it. We do see several threads where UU members are actually buying the products sold on Amazon for low prices. And recently there was a whole thread about how dreadful it is to charge $4000 for a ukulele. I suspect the Collings Marketing department would be targeting UU if they thought anyone here would actually buy one. I certainly am not interested in buying one, but posting opinions is an interesting activity.
