A newly designed koa wonder that packs a punch.
Incredibly easy to play. Well-balanced tone.
Not as visually stunning as other koa models.
$3,499
Taylor 724ce
taylorguitars.com
How did Taylor pull off this trick? Well, back in 2015 Taylor formed a partnership with a tonewood company called Pacific Rim Tonewoods. The collaboration strengthened the forestry stewardship projects that are always a Taylor priority. It also allowed Taylor to cut the logs themselves, leading to discovery of a supply that wasn’t as spectacularly flamed as traditional koa, but retained the sound the wood is famous for. The new wood supply enabled Taylor to build a koa instrument that sells for nearly $2,000 less than their normal koa offerings. Dubbed “select-grade,” this new crop of tonewoods is now one of the foundations of the company’s 700 series.
Koa Chameleons
In my experience, Taylor’s guitars are usually impeccably playable. Sure enough, the neck on the 724ce is comfy and fast. It feels inviting and the 1 3/4" nut width lends itself to fingerstyle. The 724ce is built around Taylor’s most popular body size, the Grand Auditorium, which in this case, features a Venetian cutaway that also opens up a lot of the fretboard for exploration. The neck is tropical mahogany and is capped with a West African ebony fretboard that goes well with the dark amber of the koa and the Indian rosewood binding. The guitar also comes with Taylor’s Expression System 2 preamp.
When I first picked up the 724ce, two things stood out. One was how light and balanced the instrument felt. The other was the finish on the body. Normally, I associate koa instruments with deep, glossy finishes, but designer Andy Powers went for an extremely thin (2 millimeter) matte finish here. It’s so thin that you can feel the pores in the wood, and the thin finish arguably adds to the instrument’s liveliness. Another feature of the 724ce is the updated V-Class bracing, which Powers tweaked a bit to make the ends a bit stiffer across the back of the guitar. And at first strum, I could hear the pronounced midrange that is a Taylor trademark as well as airy top end. Together, the tone profile reminded me a bit of a modern, midrangey dreadnought with more focus. And though it doesn’t have the headroom of a full-bodied dread or jumbo, it’s balanced in a way that would fit in with a broad range of styles. When I played a bit harder with a pick, I could sense how the koa top and, most likely, the bracing tweaks widened the dynamic range, and enhanced the guitar’s responsiveness.
The tone profile reminded me a bit of a modern, midrangey dreadnought with more focus.
Express Yourself
Taylor’s proprietary Expression System 2 preamp does a fine job of representing the 724ce’s detailed sound without enhancing the high-mid frequencies and harsh attack typically associated with undersaddle pickups. Taylor achieved this improved tone in part by moving the transducers behind the saddle. The sensors can also be adjusted with an Allen wrench, which means the pickup tone you hear isn’t necessarily the tone your stuck with.
The Expression System 2 certainly makes performance more worry free. I recently worked a stage musical production that required a fair amount of acoustic work, so I brought the 724ce and plugged into a Line 6 Helix that fed the front of house. I didn’t have much tone processing going on, but the raw sound from the board through the theatre was magnificent. I kept the guitar’s tone controls mostly flat and ended up boosting the high end just a bit to cut through the band. And overall, the Expression System 2 did an admirable job.
The Verdict
The 724ce works, sounds, and plays almost exactly as advertised. The koa tones are complex and nuanced, with a little touch of mahogany midrange and maple sparkle that add up to a practical and satisfying balance. At $3,499 it’s a long way from being a budget model, but if you're considering a koa instrument, it does allow you save a few bucks in exchange for a slightly less flamboyant look. As with all high-end tonewoods, the 724ce will likely sound much better after a decade of solid strumming. But even in its infancy, the rich tones are there.
It’s built to better fit pedalboards—but three switchable voices make it more versatile, too.
RatingsPros:Wide range of wah voices. Smooth sweep. Torque-adjustable treadle stays parked when you want it to. Top-mounted jacks. Bypass LED. Cons: Voice switch could be bigger and easier to see. Street: $129 Dunlop Cry Baby Junior jimdunlop.com
| Tones:  Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value: |
Wah pedals lagged so far behind in the scramble to become “pedalboard friendly" that I came to relish the stubborn resistance to shrinkage. Dunlop went a long way to undoing big-wah design entrenchment with their Mini Wah. But they've really refined the wah's relationship to the pedalboard with the Cry Baby Junior.
The 8"-long Junior shares a few features with the Mini—most notably the 3-position voice switch. But where the Mini's switch was stashed inside the enclosure, Junior's is on the enclosure's right side. The easier access is welcome because switching between the three distinct voices—the high-focused GCB95, the midrange-y vintage setting, and the low-frequency voice—opens up many tone options. The low-frequency and vintage voices, in particular, reveal many cool parked-wah tones through the pedal's sweep, especially in the toe-down position. And speaking of sweep, Junior's is as conducive to slow, controlled filter sweeps as quick-flickin'quack-funk moves.
While clearly more compact than a full-sized wah, its footprint—which was developed with help from Pedaltrain—isn't the only board-optimizing feature. Top-mounted jacks, a flat, rubber bottom panel, and a bright bypass LED on the heel of the enclosure also help make the Junior a wah that space-conscious players can love.
Test Gear: Fender Telecaster, Fender Vibro Champ
Watch our First Look demo of the Dunlop Cry Baby Junior
Sub-octave, fuzz, phase, and envelope filter collide in a potent pedal that brings the weird, but dishes many powerful, practical tones.
RatingsPros:Monstrous octave fuzz sounds. Many practical, easy-to-control tones. Vicious and unique fuzz. Rewards intuitive tone exploration. Cons: Interactivity and sensitivity among controls can make some tones difficult to repeat. No clean octave-down effect. High gain reduces filter sensitivity. No option to remove modulation. Street: $199 Way Huge Atreides jimdunlop.com | Tones: Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value: |
Take a gander at Way Huge's Atreides Analog Weirding Module. Then recite that name back to yourself. If you didn't know that Jeorge Tripps was behind it, you'd probably guess it's another mutant glitch machine from the stompbox industry's lunatic fringe. And you'd be partly right! The Atreides does indeed get bizarre. But as appropriate as the Weirding Module name may be, it also undersells the pedal's practicality and versatility.
The Atreides is a fantastic fuzz. It's an earth-shaking sub-octave effect. It's also a highly idiosyncratic phaser and envelope-controlled filter. All of which can be re-combined, twisted, and mixed via an elegant set of slider pots that make unearthing its secrets an intuitive joy.
Cosmic Machinations
Way Huge's Atreides Analog Weirding Module is named for a weapon wielded by Paul Atreides, the protagonist in David Lynch's film adaptation of Frank Herbert's
Dune. In the film, the Weirding Module uses thoughts and sounds generated by the user to unleash destructive power. Sadly, Way Huge's Weirding Module isn't telepathic, nor voice-control augmented. But its control array, which is inspired by Electro-Harmonix's short-lived Mini-Synthesizer from 1981, often feels both intuitive and alchemical—inviting creative and unorthodox approaches to tone shaping.
The seven sliders all have mid-point detents and exhibit a firm resistance that ensures settings stay in place. Each one is capped by a blue LED that illuminates when the pedal is on. Messing with the Atreides' sliders in random, chaotic fashion is great fun, and just about any setting sounds interesting. Generating predictable, reproducible results takes more practice—partly because the controls are highly interactive, but also because Atreides aggregates an uncommon assemblage of controls.
Whipped by the Winds of Arrakis
The Atreides' sub control adds one- or two-octave-down tones, depending on how you set the internal slider switch. If you've ever used an MXR Blue Box, you'll note the similarities in touch, feel, and tone in Atreides' sub function. According to Tripps, the similarities are not coincidental. If you're a dedicated Blue Box user, the many twists on that legendary MXR's tone available here are worth the price of admission alone. Fat, funky synth-like lead tones abound when you use a neck pickup and play above the 12
th fret. But you can also subtract bright tones entirely, crank the fuzz, and detune your guitar a few steps to replicate the gargantuan sound of tectonic shifts.
The rate slider controls the rate of the phaser. This effect is always on. And though the feedback or intensity of the phase can be dialed back to a subtle wash or up to awesome extremes via an internal trim pot, it is almost always perceptibly present. I suppose this might be a deal breaker for some who want to hear the fuzz, octave, and envelope effects sans modulation.
But I find it's usually a welcome texture and can add unexpected wobbles and gurgles as it interacts with the fuzz, sub, and filter. The phase can also be quite smooth and liquid at many settings, save for its maximum levels, where it takes on a very pronounced pulsing-ray-gun effect.
The fuzz is one of the Atreides' best and baddest features. It's always present in some form, even at the lowest fuzz levels. And it's truly menacing—particularly when you add a heap of high-end sizzle from the bright slider. It's capable of surprising sustain, depending on where you play a given note on the fretboard (the 5th and 6th strings are especially resonant, particularly around the 1st through 5th frets), though even the longest-sustaining notes will shut down abruptly in the fashion of a gated fuzz. I found that low-output single-coil pickups generated the smoothest fuzz, while fatter humbuckers tend to make the output more sputtery. The Atreides may be a touch too unpredictable to be a frontline, go-too fuzz for a traditional player. But its ability to communicate string and overtone detail makes it capable of covering many such duties, if you're further out on the freak spectrum.
The Atreides' envelope is less intuitive than the other functions. And the envelope sensitivity control in particular can feel vague if you leave your guitar volume wide open. These limits in envelope sensitivity are a tradeoff for the mammoth quantities of gain on tap—largely because high gain tends to reduce a filter sensitivity pot's range. But I don't think I would trade the savagery of the Atreides' fuzz for a little extra sensitivity in the envelope, and it's still very responsive to guitar volume attenuation. A little less gas from your guitar makes the output tighter and more focused, with fewer glitchy, splatty overtones. At these settings the pedal produces punchy, concise tones that are great for staccato picking or funky bass lines. Classic, vowel-y envelope sounds can also be found at these settings, though single-coils seem to generate them most easily.
The Verdict
The Atreides' tones range from arresting and unusual to downright deviant, but its sensitive, well-considered, and smartly designed features make the pedal surprisingly varied and forgiving. While the Atreides welcomes and rewards a chaotic approach to tone shaping, you can still craft precise tones with practice. The big variable in the Atreides' performance envelope is the interactivity among controls, because one little shift in, say, the sub, can totally change the way the fuzz relates with the phase.
Humbuckers and higher-output pickups, too, can change those relationships. And at times, these sensitivities can leave you longing for a preset option. On the other hand, the presence of digital control would have probably elevated the Atreides' price well beyond the $200 threshold. Given how many wild and wooly sounds you get for $199, we'd argue that Way Huge settled on a cost/performance sweet spot.