04/24/2007
Bob Taylor is one of those guitar craftsmen who, in his 30 years in the trade, has never stopped researching and developing. Taylor Guitars is located in Southern California (where, as the song says, it never rains) in the city of El Cajon, a few miles from cosmopolitan San Diego. In a setting with a privileged climate, these guitars have been built for more than 30 years.
When the final product oozes the kind of quality and charisma that Taylor guitars do, you imagine that the way they're built must be something very special too. And it certainly is; throughout these lines I'll be confirming that assumption.
Today, Taylor has five buildings and a staff of about 500 people working in shifts around the clock. All production is based in El Cajon.
The magic of an excellent acoustic guitar starts with the quality of the material. Wood is the focus of every stage of the process and, as such, it is given vital importance and care. The exotic woods used are kept at room temperature in specially conditioned drying rooms. Among the most common species are African rosewood, koa, ovangkol and ebony. Many of these woods are shipped from Spain to the Taylor factory. Building an acoustic guitar begins with selecting the pieces. Cutting and the subsequent machining processes are fully automated. The days when cutting was done with routing templates are not far behind us. Even numerically controlled cutting has been retired in favor of laser cutting machines.
It all starts with joining and cutting the guitar tops, generally made of two pieces that are first joined and glued. Special attention is paid at this point, since all the pieces to be joined have to match perfectly in their grain. A precision thickness sander ensures that the thickness of the tops is always constant and even. The channels around the soundhole, into which the rosette inlay is set, are also cut by laser.
Making the sides involves bending the wood with heat. For this, Taylor has designed machines in which the sides are shaped with heat and pressure so they have the exact curvature of the body style in question. Flexible steel sheets press the previously moistened strips of wood against a heating element shaped like the outline of each body. Currently, in its acoustic guitar line, Taylor makes five different body styles: Grand Concert, Grand Auditorium, Grand Symphony, Dreadnought and Jumbo. The process of gluing the tops and sides is still done by hand. Even the clamps that hold the kerfed strips of wood reinforcing the inside edges are specially made by them.
During the assembly and gluing processes, humidity and temperature conditions are carefully controlled to prevent stress in the wood.
In parallel with the work on the guitar bodies, the necks are joined to the headstocks with a scarf joint that keeps the joint angle firmly fixed. In making the necks, the only work still done by hand is installing the frets. The recesses for the decorative mother-of-pearl inlays on the fingerboard (as well as the logo inlaid in the headstock) are also cut by laser, so the inlays are clean with no gaps whatsoever (another hallmark of authenticity in any Taylor guitar). A couple of craftsmen sand the edges of the assembled bodies to prepare them for the finishing stage.
This is where technology plays a key role. Once finished, Taylor guitars are exposed to ultraviolet light, which cures the finish in a couple of hours.
To ensure consistent sound and behavior across all its models, Taylor includes a truly curious step in preparing the bodies. The glue that holds the tops contains a component that reacts to black light, making it easy to spot any glue residue or smudge that would be impossible to see with the naked eye and that could prevent the finish from adhering evenly.
Now we've reached the point where another team of craftsmen buff the finish to achieve a glossy, solid look. It's a curious process to watch, since the bodies come out of the finishing stage completely matte.
We're ready to install the beautiful ebony bridge, the nut and the tuners, and let the quality control department check every single guitar, one by one, to make sure it performs properly. The acoustic-electric models are tested with a precision audio system.
If everything has gone well, we'll have reached the end of a working day with just over 300 units ready to ship, to turn many musicians' dreams into sound and magic. Over 30 years of constant innovation, Bob Taylor's guiding principle in guitar making hasn't changed: to create high-quality instruments with a story to tell.
The T5 Series
With the T5 series, Taylor ventures into a world it had not explored with its models until now: the hybrid between acoustic and electric. Once again, the T5 applies the principle of elegance to bring the concept to life. It all starts with a very distinctive body design and body openings. It's the first Taylor guitar to feature a classic electromagnetic humbucker pickup, which makes it sound like an electric. The acoustic side is handled by several sensors placed around the body, which has the depth of a thinline. The five-way switch provides an astonishing variety of sounds. Available in standard and custom versions, as well as 12-string. Something very different from anything you've tried before.
The GS Series
The most surprising innovations are the ones that come from fields where everything has supposedly already been "invented." 2006 saw one of those innovations that will go down in history: the Taylor GS. The initials GS stand for Grand Symphony, a new acoustic guitar shape, accompanied by an equally innovative manufacturing and assembly process. The GS series comes in four combinations of exotic woods: mahogany/cedar, maple/spruce, rosewood/cedar and rosewood/spruce. In addition to the new, sleek shape of the GS, their common features include the distinctive shape of the Taylor bridge, white binding and a multicolored pearl rosette around the soundhole of every one. The sound of a GS is something really special. When you play an acoustic guitar, you expect it to vibrate, to resonate, for the charm of the wood to produce that sonic magic. Just strumming the open strings, you get the impression that the guitar is "alive." The sound is clear and sparkling, the harmonics stay focused, and the sustain lasts much, much longer than on any other acoustic guitar. To achieve this magic, the manufacturing process uses a bracing pattern with the braces arranged in an unusual way. To join and glue these braces, Bob Taylor designed special machinery, in order to achieve maximum consistency of sound across every guitar in the series.