Taylor Guitars 326ce

Symphonic Power

Wildwoodians, we are proud to showcase the Taylor 326ce, a guitar that shows off Andy Powers's latest brilliant design innovation: the soundport cutaway. Soundport cutaways aren't new by any stretch of the imagination, but they've mainly been the purview of master builders doing one-off single builds. So, it's downright incredible that our friends at Taylor have managed to package such a high-end appointment in a standard model!

Soundport cutaways carry prestige for a reason, too. In this context, they certainly help the Grand Symphony model live up to its name. Originally, the Grand Symphony body shape was designed to be the ultimate "bold strummer," and the soundport cutaway pushes it over the edge into sonic perfection. Grand Symphony guitars have always had robust yet sculpted tone that fills the room without too much boom. The soundport cutaway creates a surround-sound effect that envelops the player and the audience in a three-dimensional, open acoustic tone. Truly, it rings out with depth and power that can only be called symphonic!

A V-Classic

We would be remiss if we didn't talk about Taylor's new V-Class bracing. It's an elegant solution to a problem that has plagued luthiers for decades. For years, acoustic guitar builders had to compromise between volume and sustain. Flexibility equals volume, and stiffness equals sustain. Obviously, a piece of wood cannot be rigid and flexible at the same time, so builders had to go for one or the other.

Andy Powers wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. After much tinkering, V-Class bracing was his elegant solution to the problem that has plagued luthiers for centuries. As the name implies, V-Class bracing features two long pieces of wood that make a "V" shape together. The bracing is quite thin and flexible near the rear bout, but it becomes thicker as you get closer to the soundhole.

So, you get volume from the flexible parts of the bracing, and sustain from the rigid parts! Many areas of the guitar neck that typically sound weak (ninth fret on the G string, for instance) have just as much presence, resonance, and sustain as the low E. As a result, the 326ce sounds supremely balanced and sculpted. When you hear one played live in the room, you'd swear a mix engineer had already done a bunch of post-production work on it. It rings out with orchestral richness while maintaining excellent note separation and clarity.

Intonation Station

V-Class bracing also does wonders for the guitar's intonation. Are you ready to have your mind blown? When I visited the Taylor headquarters in El Cajon, Andy Powers explained that an acoustic guitar's intonation is not necessarily just the sum of the typical adjustments like saddle height, nut slots, and neck angle (though they do play a part). The way that the actual guitar itself vibrates also has a lot to do with how in-tune it sounds.

Andy told me to picture it like this: when you take close-up slow-motion footage of a guitar's top with a high-speed camera as someone plays it, you can see the top move vividly. On a traditional X-braced guitar, the top vibrates in a disorderly, disjointed manner. This can cause a guitar with the perfect saddle height and neck angle to sound out of tune when you play a big open chord.

By contrast, guitars with V-Class bracing vibrate in a much more orderly manner. The graduated braces compel the energy from the player's attack to move from the thin outer part of the bracing to the thicker inner part in an efficient manner. If you were to take a high-speed shot of a V-Class top, you would see it rock back and forth evenly in a pleasing pattern. Because of that V-Class magic, the 326ce sounds so in-tune that it's scary.