A sample page from the author’s analog log.
Seasonal changes are tough on your acoustic. Here’s how you can take better care of your prized instrument.
As you read this, spring is in bloom in most of the US, or maybe it has been for some time. I’m timing this column specifically to ask acoustic guitarists, in this season of increasing humidity and comfortable conditions, to prepare for what’s coming. It’s never too soon, and time flies. Before you know it, we’ll be back to the maintenance phase and you might be blowing up the phones of your local guitar shops, luthiers, and techs. I’m here to encourage a decidedly old-school approach to preventative guitar maintenance, and yes, it starts now.
Why, you ask? Well, as the lead luthier at Acoustic Music Works, I can tell you that in my nearly 15 years in this position, this was the worst winter ever for preventable repairs on acoustic guitars. Fret sprout, bridge lifts, top sink, soundboard cracks, back cracks, loose binding, general malaise… These hit us very hard in the winter that spanned 2024 and 2025. Am I complaining? On the one hand, no. This is part of how we make our money. On the other hand, yes! Repair schedules related to dryness and humidity issues can stretch into weeks and even months, and nobody wants to be without their favorite instruments for that amount of time. With a little thoughtfulness, however, you might get through next winter (and every one thereafter) without hefty repair bills or time apart from your musical companion.
Our preparation is going to start with an unlikely but very important guitar accessory: the humble notebook. Plain, lined, grid, day planner… it doesn’t matter. We all need to actively participate in our instrument maintenance, and in my experience, fancy apps that track humidity via Bluetooth breed a kind of laziness, a feeling of safety that might prevent us from actually physically looking in on conditions. Better we keep an analog, well, log, so that we know where things stand, and I suggest checking in daily.
“This was the worst winter ever for preventable repairs on acoustic guitars.”
Track your relative humidity, both in the case and in the room where your instruments mostly reside, but also take notes on your action height, top deflection (StewMac has some great tips for measuring this) and anything related to playability that you believe you can observe empirically.
Dryness is the root cause of most guitar issues that manifest in the fall and winter months. Symptoms of dryness include sharp fret ends, falling action and dead frets, sunken top around the sound hole, and cracks and bridge lifts. With your trusty notebook, you’ll get a feel for the sensitivity level of your instrument, and that knowledge is power!
A few other basic implements will not only assist you in your observations, but may also satisfy your need to buy guitar-related things (at least for a minute). Getting quick and comfortable with a fret rocker is a great skill to have, and is invaluable in diagnosing buzzes due to high frets or frets that have come unseated due to dryness. A well-calibrated relief gauge might seem luxurious, but it can prevent you from making unnecessary or extreme truss rod adjustments. A string action gauge, or even a simple machinist’s rule or set of feeler gauges, will help you keep track of your action. Get a three-pack of hygrometers so you can average their readings, rather than depending on one.
Lest we forget: A guitar can not only be too dry, it can also be too wet. By beginning your maintenance diligence in the spring/summer, you’ll also be able to tell if your instrument is the victim of a too-humid environment. The signs of over-humidification are subtle: Your action may rise from a puffed-up top, and in extreme cases, glue joints could begin to fail. In my experience, an over-humidified guitar will suffer from dulled tone, almost like a sock in the sound hole. If you’re sensing a lack of clarity in your guitar all of a sudden, start with new strings. If it persists, it might be due to over-humidification, and you may want to introduce a desiccant to the case for a time. The more lightly built your guitar is, the more sensitive it will be to seasonal changes.
By getting into these habits early, you’ll be empowered by knowing your instrument more intimately. You’ll understand when and why changes in tone and playability might have occurred, and you’ll hopefully save on repair bills year-round. Feel free to reach out with any questions. Who knows? I might just send you a notebook with an AMW sticker on the cover!
See and hear Taylor’s Legacy Collection guitars played by his successor, Andy Powers.
Last year, Taylor Guitars capped its 50th Anniversary by introducing a new guitar collection celebrating the contributions of co-founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug to the guitar world. The Legacy Collection revives five of Bob Taylor’s classic acoustic models, curated by the legendary luthier and innovator himself. “To imagine that we’re doing guitars that harken to our past, our present and our future all at the same time,” Bob says, “I really like that.”
In developing the collection, Bob preserved the essence of his originals while integrating performance and playability upgrades introduced during his tenure as designer-in-chief. “It’s an up-to-date version of what those guitars would be,” Bob explains, “but with the same sound.”
Visually, these guitars feel classic—clean, understated and unmistakably Taylor. While Bob’s original aesthetic preferences are showcased in his Legacy models, the nod to the past runs deeper than trade dress.
From his earliest builds, Bob favored slim-profile necks because he found them easier to play. That preference set a design precedent that established Taylor’s reputation for smooth-playing, comfortable necks. Legacy models feature slim mahogany necks built with Taylor's patented New Technology (NT) design. “My first neck was a bolted-on neck but not an NT neck,” Bob says. “These are NT necks because it’s a better neck.” Introduced in 1999, the NT neck allowed for unprecedented micro-adjustability while offering a consistent, hand-friendly Taylor playing experience.
What makes this collection unique within the Taylor line is Bob’s use of his X-bracing architecture, favoring his time-tested internal voicing framework over more recent Taylor bracing innovations to evoke a distinctive tone profile. Since Andy Powers—Taylor’s current Chief Guitar Designer, President and CEO—debuted his patented V-Class bracing in 2018, V-Class has become a staple in Taylor’s premium-performance guitars. Still, Bob’s X-bracing pattern produces a richly textured sound with pleasing volume, balance and clarity that long defined the Taylor voice. All Legacy models feature LR Baggs VTC Element electronics, which Bob says “harkens back to those days.”
The team at Taylor thought the best way to demonstrate the sound of the Legacy guitars was to ask Andy Powers, Bob’s successor, to play them. A world-class luthier and musician, Andy has spent the past 14 years leading Taylor’s guitar innovation. In addition to V-Class bracing, his contributions include the Grand Pacific body style, the ultra-refined Builder’s Edition Collection, and most recently, the stunning Gold Label Collection.
Below you’ll find a series of videos that feature Powers playing each Legacy model along with information about the guitars.
Legacy 800 Series Models
First launched in 1975, the 800 Series was Taylor’s first official guitar series. Today, it remains home to some of the brand’s most acclaimed instruments, including the flagship 814ce, Builder’s Edition 814ce and new Gold Label 814e.
The Legacy 800 Series features the 810e Dreadnought and two Jumbos: the 6-string 815e and 12-string 855e. Each model serves up a refined version of the Dreadnought and Jumbo body shapes Bob inherited from Sam Radding—the original owner of the American Dream music shop where Bob and Kurt first met. “I was making my guitars in the molds that Sam had made at American Dream,” Bob recalls. “There was a Jumbo and a Dreadnought. That’s all we had.”
All three Legacy 800 Series guitars feature one of Bob’s favorite tonewood combos. Solid Indian rosewood back and sides are paired with a Sitka spruce top, yielding warm lows, clear trebles and a scooped midrange.
Aesthetic appointments include a three-ring abalone rosette, mother-of-pearl Large Diamond inlays, white binding around the body and fretboard, and Bob’s “straight-ear” peghead design. Both Jumbo models also showcase a mustache-style ebony bridge—a nod to Bob’s early Jumbo builds.
Legacy 810e
The 810 Dreadnought holds a special place in Bob Taylor’s heart. “My first 810, the one I made for myself, was a thrilling guitar for me to make,” he says. “It’s the one and only guitar I played. It didn’t matter how many guitars we made at Taylor, that’s the one I took out and played.” The Legacy 810e brings back that bold, room-filling Dreadnought voice along with the easy playability expected from a Taylor.
Taylor Guitars | Legacy 810e | Playthrough Demo
Legacy 855e
Taylor’s first 12-strings found an audience in 1970s Los Angeles. “I was making guitars that would find their way to McCabe’s in Santa Monica and Westwood Music,” Bob says, “and these guitars were easy to play. Twelve-strings were a popular sound in that music. It was a modern country/folk/rock music genre that was accepting our guitars because they were easy to play. They also liked the sound of them because our guitars were easier to record.” The Legacy 855e, with its resonant Jumbo body, slim neck and gorgeous octave sparkle, carries that tradition forward.
Taylor Guitars | Legacy 855e | Playthrough Demo
Legacy 815e
The Legacy 815e revives Taylor’s original Jumbo 6-string, delivering a big, lush sound with beautifully blooming overtones.
Legacy Grand Auditoriums
In the early 1990s, Bob Taylor heard a consistent refrain from dealers: “Not everybody wants a dreadnought guitar anymore.” Players were asking for something with comparable volume but different proportions—something more comfortable, yet still powerful. This feedback inspired Bob to design a new body style with more elegant curves, more accommodating proportions and a balanced tonal response. The result was the Grand Auditorium, which Taylor introduced in 1994 to celebrate its 20th anniversary.
Thanks to its musical versatility and easy playability, Bob’s Grand Auditorium attracted a wide variety of players. “We came into our own with our Grand Auditorium,” he says. “People were describing it as ‘all around.’ It’s a good strummer and good for fingerstyle, but it’s not totally geared toward strumming or totally geared toward fingerstyle.” Also referred to as the “Swiss-Army Knife” of guitars or the “Goldilocks” guitar, the GA quickly became a favorite among guitarists across playing styles, musical genres and different playing applications including recording and live performance. “That guitar made studio work successful,” Bob says. It gained a wider fanbase with the debut of the “ce” version, which introduced a Venetian cutaway and onboard electronics. “That became one of our hallmarks,” says Bob. “If you want to plug in your guitar, buy a Taylor.”
Today, the Grand Auditorium is Taylor’s best-selling body shape.
The Legacy Collection features two cedar-top Grand Auditoriums inspired by past favorites: the mahogany/cedar 514ce and rosewood/cedar 714ce. Both models incorporate Bob’s original X-bracing pattern for a tonal character reminiscent of their 1990s and 2000s counterparts. Shared aesthetic details include a green abalone three-ring rosette, ebony bridge pins with green abalone dots, a faux-tortoiseshell pickguard and Taylor gold tuning machines.
Taylor Guitars | Legacy 815e | Playthrough Demo
Legacy 514ce
The Legacy 514ce features solid mahogany back and sides paired with a Western Red cedar top, yielding a punchy midrange and dry, woody sonic personality that pairs beautifully with cedar’s soft-touch sensitivity and warmth. It’s a standout choice for fingerstyle players and light strummers who crave nuance and depth. Distinct visual details include faux-tortoise body and fretboard binding, black-and-white top trim, and mother-of-pearl small diamond fretboard inlays.
Taylor Guitars | Legacy 514ce | Playthrough Demo
Legacy 714ce
The Legacy 714ce also features a cedar top, this time matched with solid Indian rosewood back and sides. The result is a richly textured sound with deep lows, clear trebles and a warm, mellow response. Inspiring as it is, this specific wood pairing isn’t currently offered in any other standard Taylor model. Additional aesthetic details include green abalone dot fretboard inlays, black body and fretboard binding, and black-and-white “pinstripe” body purfling.
While the Legacy Collection spotlights Taylor’s past, newer models from the Gold Label, Builder’s Edition and Somos Collections show the company’s legacy is always evolving. Explore the Legacy Collection at taylorguitars.com or visit your local authorized Taylor dealer.
Taylor Guitars | Legacy 714ce | Playthrough Demo
Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
As head of Breedlove and Bedell Guitars, he’s championed sustainability and environmental causes—and he wants to tell you about it.
As the owner of the Breedlove and Bedell guitar companies, Tom Bedell has been a passionate advocate for sustainable practices in acoustic guitar manufacturing. Listening to him talk, it’s clear that the preservation of the Earth’s forests are just as important to Bedell as the sound of his guitars. You’ll know just how big of a statement that is if you’ve ever had the opportunity to spend time with one of his excellently crafted high-end acoustics, which are among the finest you’ll find. Over the course of his career, Bedell has championed the use of alternative tonewoods and traveled the world to get a firsthand look at his wood sources and their harvesting practices. When you buy a Bedell, you can rest assured that no clear-cut woods were used.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.