Acoustic Guitar Magazine | 7 years ago
Taylor Guitars has built its empire on changing how guitars are made—from the way forests are managed to instrument construction to sales. As it has shown before with its bolt-on neck and CNC-made models, players will show up if the guitars play and sound great. With its new V-Class bracing (see “V Marks the Spot” on p. 16), the company is betting that players will embrace its latest innovation the way they have those that came before it. This moment has been a long time coming for Taylor, as the new bracing system points to a future where all of the company’s major guitar components will come from the minds of its own visionary luthiers, and not be reengineered or modified versions of something Martin did a century ago.
While its sounds may not be a huge departure from what you might expect from Taylor, the company’s new Builder’s Edition K14ce, on review here, is a stunning instrument with a refined sound full of surprise and opportunity for guitar players. I spent a few months with the K14ce to see if it lived up to the build-up and reveal. During this time, I spent many hours playing and listening to it from the driver’s seat. I also wanted to hear it from the listener’s perspective, so I slipped it into the unsuspecting hands of nearly every guitar player I met, from Piedmont blues specialists to gypsy jazz experts, from modern fingerpickers to electric guitarists who rarely touch acoustic instruments.
Nearly all of us noticed that this new Taylor was different from any guitar we had ever played. You could watch the slow realization as each player noticed that it seemed capable of sustaining notes in the middle of the fingerboard that are usually ho-hum, or how its dynamic responsiveness was unusually even and smooth as picked notes went from delicate to vigorous and back. However, for all of these good things you want in a guitar—sustain, volume, and evenness—if my time with the K14ce is any indication, the chief benefits of Taylor’s new V-Class-braced guitars are the things that you don’t get: choked notes, dead spots, muddy chords, and imprecise intonation. We guitarists have learned to live with these eccentricities of our instrument, but the new V-Class bracing is showing me that I don’t have to. Unless I want to.
The new Taylor Builder’s Edition K14ce Grand Auditorium is a genuine innovation in the history of acoustic guitars. It doesn’t make every other guitar obsolete, nor will it suit every player’s tastes, but even dedicated vintage-guitar fans will have to recognize that its sustain, volume, and responsiveness ignite curiosity and playfulness. It takes the guitar’s sound to a polished place that makes you want to explore and see what it—and its player—are capable of. Over a few minutes you’ll likely discover that it’s not only one of the best-sounding Taylors you’ve ever played, it may be one of the best sounding guitars you’ve ever played.
