El Cajon, CA (January 23, 2019) -- Today Taylor® Guitars expands the range of guitars outfitted with its award-winning V-ClassTM bracing, adding multiple models in the Grand Concert body shape -- a smaller-bodied guitar known for its physical comfort and intimate feel and sound. Offered in a breadth of musical flavors, V-Class bracing will now be featured in Taylor’s 300, 500 and 800/800 Deluxe Series Grand Concert guitars, with a number of different wood pairings to choose from, including both 12-fret and 14-fret editions as well as cutaway and non-cutaway models.
In 2018 Taylor launched V-Class bracing, its revolutionary new bracing architecture, developed by Master Guitar Designer Andy Powers, exclusively in the company’s Grand Auditorium body shape. The innovative bracing architecture acts as a new sonic engine, drastically enhancing the guitar’s volume, projection and sustain, as well as improving the instrument’s intonation. The response from industry experts and players of all levels has been overwhelmingly positive, and since its arrival, enthusiasts have been asking when the bracing system will be integrated into Taylor’s other popular body shapes.
The Grand Concert body’s compact footprint and shallower depth compared to other Taylor body styles create a natural feeling of intimacy that translates into a uniquely expressive playing experience.
“With those compact dimensions, it feels like you have a more direct connection with the guitar because physically it feels closer to you,” Powers says. “And its voice will match that feeling, so when you play a note, you feel like you have more control over it. So it feels like a more personal guitar.”
Another distinction of Taylor’s Grand Concert shape is that it is produced in both 14-fret and 12-fret configurations. While each offers its own unique feel and sound (due to different neck lengths and bridge positions), the V-Class architecture creates an even more dramatic sonic differentiation between the two. The 14-fret produces a vibrant sound with pleasing chime and articulation that will appeal to fingerstyle players, while the 12-fret adds warmth and sweetness. Together with the different wood pairing options, the result is an impressive breadth of V-Class Grand Concert musical flavors for players to explore.
Despite its intimate feel, the Grand Concert has developed a reputation as a guitar with surprising dynamic range — capable of punching above its weight — and that’s truer than ever with the V-Class design.
“It’s a little guitar with a big voice,” says, Powers of the new V-Class Grand Concert models. “You hear all this gorgeous charisma. The V-Class architecture allows every single note to be there, every note is in tune, and you get this warm, sweet character that’s really appealing.”
Taylor will launch the new V-Class bracing Grand Concert Models in the 800/800 Deluxe, 500, and 300 Series, which together encompass 15 different models. The 800/800 Deluxe Series feature a rosewood/spruce wood pairing; the 500 Series offers a choice of mahogany with cedar or all mahogany; and the 300 Series presents sapele/spruce and blackwood/mahogany options.
Today Taylor® Guitars is excited to introduce a brand-new body shape — The Grand Pacific. Developed by master guitar designer Andy Powers and leveraging Taylor’s new sonic engine, V-Class bracing, the round-shoulder dreadnought adds a dramatically different tonal personality to the Taylor line. As an alternative to what many consider to be “the Taylor sound,” the Grand Pacific adds a new voice to a dreadnought category defined by traditional, legacy models. The new body shape will be available in three new models: the Builder’s Edition 517, Builder’s Edition 717 and 317.
BUILDING ON SUCCESS
In 2018 Taylor launched its revolutionary bracing architecture, V-Class bracing. Guitars outfitted with V-Class produce greater volume, projection and sustain, with enhanced intonation and all-around musicality. Since then the V-Class guitars have enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive response, earning numerous awards from industry experts as well as high praise from professional musicians and amateur enthusiasts alike.
“It’s been so fun to watch and hear how musicians of every style have taken to the wide range of expression that V-Class guitars deliver since our introduction of these instruments last year,” says Andy Powers. “I’m thrilled to hear players exploring new reaches in their musicality and making good use of these guitars.”
One of the most impactful aspects of the V-Class framework is its flexibility as a voicing platform, one that has enabled Powers to shape an acoustic guitar’s tonal character in unprecedented ways — opening the door for dramatic new designs such as the Grand Pacific.
BUILDING ON TRADITION
In a dreadnought category known for traditional, legacy models, the Grand Pacific introduces a voice that is both familiar and unique. It combines warm, seasoned tone with modern Taylor playability, reliability and intonation.
“I wasn’t interested in building another version of an existing dreadnought,” says Powers of the design. “Those guitars already exist. This guitar makes sounds that are deeply familiar yet unattainable with any other guitar. With the help of our V-Class bracing architecture, we’ve captured everything we love about a venerable acoustic guitar sound and added other sonic improvements that we think will appeal to a wide array of players.”
With the debut of the new body shape, Powers has delivered on the promise of V-Class bracing as a powerful tone-shaping platform. In this case, the bracing system eliminates the problematic low-end woofiness often associated with dreadnoughts. With the Grand Pacific, players will experience clear power in the low end, which means a more musical, usable tone.
A VERSATILE NEW SOUND FOR TAYLOR
Over the years, the Grand Auditorium has become Taylor’s most popular body style, synonymous with what people identify as “the Taylor sound.” To many, it’s a modern acoustic voice — clear and vibrant, with notes that are well-defined. By contrast, the new Grand Pacific produces a sound with a different tonal character altogether — warm and seasoned, with notes that overlap and blend together smoothly. Using the V-Class voicing platform, Powers not only improved the bass response, he enhanced other frequencies to create consistently powerful notes across the tonal spectrum. This helps make the Grand Pacific a remarkably versatile guitar that will fit in among bluegrassers, singer-songwriters, and even fingerstyle players.
“This guitar isn’t confined the way a dreadnought guitar can be,” he says. “It has strength and power, but it also has clarity and playing comfort.”
Building on the success of Taylor’s Builder’s Edition V-Class models from 2018, the Grand Pacific launches with two inspiring Builder’s Edition models made from the classic tonewoods rosewood and mahogany, each paired with a torrefied Sitka spruce top, as well as a 300 Series model made from sapele and Sitka spruce. The new shape will be offered exclusively as a non-cutaway.
BUILDER’S EDITION 717 & BUILDER’S EDITION 517
The Builder’s Edition collection showcases Taylor’s envelope-pushing pursuits to create the most player-friendly guitars in both sound and feel. Distinctive features of both Builder’s Edition Grand Pacific models include:
- Compound carve neck profile: Designed to complement the way a player’s hand position shifts as it moves up the neck, the profile subtly transitions from a slight V at the nut to a rounded C, and features a rounded, ridgeless heel.
- Rolled fretboard edge: This is a subtle comfort feature that players will feel on both sides of the neck.
- Chamfered body edges: The rounded body edges enhance the playing comfort and feature traditional binding.
- New “curve wing” bridge shape: Rounded edges and other refined contouring update our signature aesthetic and make the bridge feel more comfortable against the pick hand.
- Silent Satin finish / Wild Honey Burst top: A careful color application process allows the burst color to penetrate the wood in a unique way that heightens the aesthetic appeal, artfully showcasing both the spruce wood grain and the depth in the color. (A natural top is also available.)
- New guitar case: The Taylor-manufactured case features an aesthetic upgrade to a luxurious exterior with a Western floral pattern that resembles tooled leather.
“It feels like the guitar has already been played for a while; maybe refretted once or twice,” Powers says of the rolled fretboard edge treatment. “That hard edge is just gone.”
The 717 and 517 will be available starting at street prices of $2,999 and $2,799 respectively. Both models will be offered with natural or burst tops as well as with or without electronics.
317e
Taylor’s 300 Series offers the most approachable entry point in the Taylor line to introduce the Grand Pacific, and Powers was eager to make it happen. “You can do so much with this guitar,” he says. “You can take it to your open mic night, to the club dates and bar gigs, busk on a street corner, play with friends.” The clear sonic focus of the sound of the 317 will benefit singer-songwriters playing solo and ensemble scenarios in other ways as well. The 317 features include:
- Sapele back and sides: As a tonewood, sapele’s sonic characteristics live comfortably between the dry, clear, woody sound of mahogany and the complex, overtone-rich character of rosewood.
- Sitka spruce top: The combination of a Sitka spruce top, Grand Pacific body, and V-Class bracing help make the 317 an incredibly dynamic and versatile guitar. Players can expect all the fundamental virtues of V-Class — power, projection sustain, consistent tonal output across the tonal spectrum, pleasing in-tuneness — along with a blend of seasoned warmth that comes from Powers’ voicing of the bracing with the body dimensions.
- 300 Series appointments: The 317 shares the same appointment package with its sapele/spruce 300 Series siblings, including black binding, Italian acrylic Gemstone inlays — featuring a peghead inlay and black graphite nut as emblems of V-Class bracing — satin-finish back and sides with a gloss-finish top, and Taylor Expression System 2 electronics.
The 317 will be available starting at a street price of $1,699 and will be offered with and without electronics.
For more information:
Taylor Guitars
The Gibson EH-185, introduced in 1939, was one of the company’s first electric guitars.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of electric guitar in shaping American popular music over the last half-century. Its introduction was a revolution, changing the course of modern musical styles. Today, when we think of the guitars that started the revolution, we think of the Stratocaster and the Les Paul, guitars held against the body and fretted with the fingertips. But the real spark of this musical mutiny was the lap-steel guitar.
In the early 20th century, guitar music was moving out of the parlors of homes and into public spaces where folks could gather together and dance. Guitarists needed to project their sound far beyond where their wimpy little acoustic instruments could reach. Instrument manufacturers began experimenting with larger body sizes, metal construction, and resonators to increase volume.
Around this time, George Beauchamp began experimenting with electric guitar amplification. He settled on a design using two U-shaped magnets and a single coil of wire. Beauchamp was in business with Adolph Rickenbacker, and they decided to stick this new invention into a lap steel.
If we put on our 1930s glasses, this decision makes perfect sense. The most popular music at the time was a blend of Hawaiian and jazz styles made famous by virtuosos like Solomon “Sol” Hoʻopiʻi. Photos of Hoʻopiʻi with a metal-body resonator abound—one can imagine his relief at being handed an instrument that projected sound toward the audience via an amplifier, rather than back at his own head via resonator cones. Beauchamp and Rickenbacker were simply following the market.
As it turned out, the popularity of Hawaiian music gave way to swing, and electric lap steels didn’t exactly take the world by storm. But Beauchamp and Rickenbacker had proven the viability of this new technology, and other manufacturers followed suit. In 1937, Gibson created a pickup with magnets under the strings, rather than above like Beauchamp’s.
“When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y.”
The first page of Gibson’s “Electrical Instruments” section in the 1939 catalog features a glowing, full-page write-up of their top-of-the-line lap steel: the EH-185. “Everything about this new electric Hawaiian Guitar smacks of good showmanship,” effuses the copy. “It has smoothness, great sustaining power, and an easy flow of tone that builds up strongly and does not die out.”
Picking up the 1940 EH-185 at Fanny’s House of Music is about as close as one can get to traveling back in time to try a new one. It is just so clean, with barely any dings or even finish checking. Overall, this is a 9/10 piece, and it’s a joy to behold. Speaking of picking it up, the first thing you notice when you lift the EH-185 out of the case is its weight. This is a much heavier instrument than other similar-sized lap steels, owing to a length of thick metal between the body and the fretboard. The catalog calls it “Hyblum metal,” which may be a flowery trade name for an early aluminum alloy.
This 1940 EH-185 is heavier than other lap steels in its class, thanks to a length of metal between its fretboard and body.
Photo by Madison Thorn
There are numerous other fancy appointments on the EH-185 that Gibson didn’t offer on their lesser models. It’s made of highly figured maple, with diamond-shaped decorations on the back of the body and neck. The double binding is nearly a centimeter thick and gives the instrument a luxurious, expensive look.
Behind all these high-end attributes is a great-sounding guitar, thanks to that old pickup. It’s got three blades protruding through the bobbin for the unwound strings and one longer blade for the wound strings. When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y. It was just crying out for a little crunch and a bluesy touch. It’s kind of cool how such a pristine, high-end vintage instrument can be so well-suited for a sound that’s rough around the edges.
As far as electric guitars go, it doesn’t get much more vintage than this 1940 Gibson EH-185 Lap Steel. It reminds us of where the story of the electric guitar truly began. This EH-185 isn’t just a relic—it’s a testament to when the future of music was unfolding in real time. Plug it in, and you become part of the revolution.
Sources: Smithsonian, Vintage Guitar, Mozart Project, Gibson Pre-War, WIRED, Steel Guitar Forum, Vintaxe
Editorial Director Ted Drozdowski’s current favorite noisemakers.
Ted Drozdowski - Editorial Director
My favorite is my Burns Buzz, a stomp custom-made for me by Gary Kibler of Big Knob Pedals. Gary specializes in recreations of old circuits, and this Burns Buzzaround-inspired box has four germanium NOS transistors and sounds beautifully gnarly. It improves on the original, which Robert Fripp favored in early King Crimson, by adding a volume control. I went a little stir-crazy acquiring fuzzes during Covid lockdown and now have an embarrassing amount. My other current darlings are a SoloDallas Orbiter (which balances fuzz with core-signal clarity), a Joe Gore Duh (a no-nonsense, 1-knob dirt shoveler), and my Big Knob Tone Blender MkII 66, which taught me how smooth and creamy fuzz can be with carefully calibrated settings. These pedals allow me to cover all of my favorite fuzz sounds from the past 60 years. I do have one more secret weapon fuzz that only travels to the studio: an original Maestro FZ-1 that I picked up used for about $20 in the early ’90s. It’s banged up but functional, takes two 9V batteries, and is righteously juicy.
Nick Millevoi - Senior Editor
The two greatest fuzzes I’ve ever played are a Pigdog Tone Bender build and a Paul Trombetta Bone Machine. Both experiences will stick with me for decades to come. But creations by those two masters of fuzz come with a price tag high enough to keep my time with those pedals fleeting.
Instead, my favorite fuzz is an inexpensive, mass-produced pedal that hasn’t left my board since I reviewed and subsequently purchased it in 2021: the Electro-Harmonix Ripped Speaker, designed to emulate the distorted tones on ’50s and ’60s records that were created with broken or misused gear.
Retro inspiration is not all it has to offer though. The rip knob, which controls transistor bias, is the star of the show, interacting with the fuzz level to deliver everything from a smooth, mild fuzz to sputtery mayhem that can evoke a faulty channel strip or old tube combo that’s been set ablaze. I prefer to crank the rip knob and feed it to a phaser and slapback analog delay, which gives me a bit-crushed-like gnarliness. Pull back on the rip or add a boost in front of the pedal, and it has a more organic but still gated sound, which, for me, can be just the thing to set my sound apart in a more traditional setting.
For a cool $116, the Ripped Speaker, which seems to fly under most fuzz freaks’ radars, might be the special something that complements the rest of your board or just a tone you turn to on occasion. Either way, it’s a great deal.
Luke Ottenhof - Assistant Editor
You could give me the most powerful-sounding fuzz in the world, but if it was in a stupid-looking enclosure, I don’t know if I’d give it a second look. This is just how we operate: Vision is the sense we privilege most, even in matters of audio.
Luckily, the most seismic, monstrous fuzz I’ve ever heard also happens to come in a beautiful package. The Mile End Effects Kollaps, built by Justin Cober in Montreal, measures an elephantine 7 3/8" x 4 5/8" x 1 1/2", and its MuTron-meets-’60s-Soviet aesthetic matches the sounds its guts produce. The Kollaps is modeled after the nasty Univox Super-Fuzz circuit, and carries a few of that pedal’s hallmarks, including its use of germanium diodes and midrange boost control. Cober added a switchable Baxandall active EQ circuit, with up to 12 dB of boost and cut to both low and high frequencies. Coupled with the mid-boost toggle, this gives the Kollaps a shockingly broad range of tonality to play with.With the mids off, the Kollaps is jagged and ruthless, a deafening turbojet of upper mids and chest-vibrating lows that yanks me toward the darker, less commercially successful corners of ’90s doom and noise rock. Kicking on the EQ circuit and boosting the lows turns it titanic. With the balance (volume) and expand (gain) controls maxed, the Kollaps starts to live up to its name, crumbling into a thick, overextended chaos in a way more polite fuzz circuits rarely do.
My favorite Kollaps sounds occur when the mids are engaged, for an articulate, deeply textured fuzz sound that retains your attack. Playing with your guitar’s volume knob, you can coax a range of EQ profiles and take advantage of the upper- and lower-octave content in the fuzz. With guitar volume lower, you can access some unbelievably emotive and sensitive sounds that still teeter on the edge of chaos and violence. It’s a rich, volatile circuit that gets as close as I’ve heard to a sound and physical feeling I’d call “planet-destroying.”
Charles Saufley - Gear Editor
My first fuzz, A Sovtek Big Muff, remains tied for first place among many favorites. The pedal’s most famous virtues—corpulence and sustain—are among the reasons I treasure it. But the way the Sovtek pairs with a Rickenbacker 330 and Fender Jaguar, which were once my two primary guitars for performance and recording, made it invaluable in various projects for a long time. Neither the Ricky nor the Jag are sustain machines, but the wailing mass of theBig Muff makes their focused voices an asset—inspiring tight, concise fuzz phrases, hooks, and riffs as well as articulate chords.
A silicon Fuzzrite clone built by good pal Jesse Trbovich (long-time member ofKurt Vile’s Violators) runs second place to the Sovtek in terms of tenure, and is a very different fuzz. It’s a piercing, hyper-buzzy thing, but a perfect match for a squishy 1960s Fender Bassman head and 2x12 I adore. Perversely, I sometimes couple it with a Death By Audio Thee Ffuzz Warr Overload or Wattson FY-6 Shin-Ei Super-Fuzz clone. These tandems create chaos and chance, but sing loud and melodiously too—at least when I’m not intentionally bathing in feedback. The Jext Telez Buzz Tone, a clone of the mid-’60s Selmer circuit, is often my go-to now. It’s a low-gain affair compared to the other fuzzes here, and I use it in its even-lower-gain (and vintage-correct) 3-volt setting. It’s pretty noisy, but it is thick, dynamic, detailed, raunchy, and plenty trashy when the occasion demands it. It’s also a very cool overdrive when you back off the gas.Jason Shadrick - Managing Editor
I rarely need fuzz in my everyday gigs, but it's one of the most fun effects to explore when I'm noodling around. At a NAMM show a few years ago I plugged into Mythos' Argo and as soon as I hit a note my eyes lit up. The sound of the fuzz wasn't unwieldy or hard to manage. It gave me the illusion of control while the octave was the magic dust on top. I knew right then I wasn't leaving the show without one. After I spent some time with it, I became enamored by how much more the Argo can do.
It's inspired by the Prescription Electronics C.O.B. (Clean Octave Blend), so the control set is similar. The octave is always present in the signal path, but you can dial it out with the blend knob. The fuzz and volume knobs are self explanatory, but dialing the fuzz and octave knobs all the way down gives you a killer boost pedal. I find my favorite settings are at the extremes of the fuzz and blend ranges. Typically, both are either all the way up or all the way down. Another great experiment is to turn the fuzz down and then pair it with a separate drive pedal. And in octave mode, Argo is one of those pedals that inspires you to head directly for the neck pickup and stay above the 12th fret.
