Crafting the Taylor Sound

You're known as much for innovation in the building process as for design.

Yes. Building a guitar can be really arduous if you decide that your tools are just going to be a chisel, a saw, and a hammer. If you do it completely by hand, you can make a nice guitar, but you can't make a living. So what's the point? I've spent my life making a factory so we can make guitars.

A Taylor employee oversees the CNC machine responsible for pocketing the guitar bodies for Taylor's New Technology necks

In 1989, you switched Taylor production from all hand built to CNC machines. What are the advantages of this process?

Actually, we switched the types of machines we used and replaced them with more accurate machines, but the amount of hand work that goes into a guitar is still gross even today. We are actually only now getting our first true robotic equipment that does things automatically. Instead of taking machines that are designed to make furniture and using them to make guitar parts, these machines are more flexible in what they can accomplish. When three-axis CNC mills became affordable for people like me, that one machine could replace all the guitar-making machinery I had in my shop, with the advantage of higher quality and total flexibility. If I was going to make guitars all by myself in my basement, I would have one machine, a three-axis CNC mill.

What sets the Taylor sound apart?

It's the design of our guitars. The fact is that I can't make a guitar that sounds like a Martin or a Gibson. Believe me -- if I could have, I would have. We got pestered for 15 years about how "if it sounded more like a Martin…" I tried. I can't make those guitars. When I take them out of the oven, they always taste like a Taylor. So, it's sort of hard to put your finger on.

Do you have a favorite Taylor model?

I don't have a favorite, but I can tell you what I'm partial to these days. A 514ce, which is a mahogany guitar, cedar top, grand auditorium -- I just love that guitar. It has fabulous response. It's a good finger-picking guitar. It's loud. It's not a thrash box, though. If you want to play rhythm guitar, you have to start thinking dreadnought. But for an all around guitar, I just love the 514ce.

The Taylor 514ce Grand Auditorium guitar features, a cedar top with mahogany back and sides, and Fishman electronics.

I really look at it like which one is your favorite kid. Today, Big Babies [Golden Axe: Guitar Best Value Division] are another favorite, because I know that I'm going to be putting some really great guitars in the hands of some people who are only going to spend $395 to get them. I'm really happy about that. Any of the guitars with our new neck joint I'm really happy about, because they are just so darn good. They really are achieving what we have been driving at for 25 years.

Do you have any favorites from other builders?

I absolutely love Bill Collings' guitars. I have one. I always go see him at the NAMM show and pay homage, every time. His guitars are very different than mine: Bill's guitars are a little heavy and robust-sounding. Making a light guitar that really moves is easy. Making a big, heavy guitar that really moves, now that's a trick. At Collings, they just do it.

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