Taylor Guitars K26ce

Bob's Favorite Tonewood

Bob Taylor knows a thing or two about acoustic guitar tone, so it really means something when he says that his favorite tonewood of all time is koa. When you look at the beautiful grain patterns on Taylor’s koa series guitars and hear their sweet voices sing out, it’s tough to disagree! But, don’t just take Bob’s word for it: koa is so beautiful that, in the late 1700s, Hawaiian King Kamehameha declared it illegal for anyone but the royal family to possess it! Of course, that soon changed, and Hawaiians built everything out of koa: traditional umeke bowls, tools, fences, canoes, and even the first surfboards!

Somewhere along the way, somebody discovered it was a marvelous tonewood for instruments, too. Ever since, koa’s sparkling, chiming highs, warm midrange response, and sculpted low-end have brought delight to guitar players all over the world. It provides fantastic note separation, and it is quite dynamic and responsive to player input. And, it projects like nobody’s business!

But, to focus on koa’s tone right as it comes out of the box is to miss half the story, because Taylor’s koa series guitars sound better and better the more you play them. Their overall voice opens up, their midrange becomes richer with warm overtones, their high end becomes more lush and crystalline, and their bass response deepens. So, even though these guitars sound gorgeous today, they’ll be even more amazing down the road if you invest enough playing time in them.

Perhaps that is why koa is Bob Taylor’s favorite wood: it grows and changes over time with its owner, and it encourages you to play more. Not to mention, it looks fit for an art gallery. We’re proud to showcase these beautiful guitars that grow with you as you play, and we hope you find a koa series Taylor that inspires you to reach new heights on your fretboard journey.

Awash in Symphonic Sound

The sweet tone of koa sounds positively magnificent in the context of Taylor's Grand Symphony body, which is a revolutionary design that allows the guitar's natural reverberance to fill the room in an atmospheric way. It makes for a wonderfully lush tone, yet it sounds well-defined with excellent clarity--a truly amazing feat of engineering! Basically, playing one of these guitars is like taking a bath in the delectable sound of koa. It emphasizes koa natural sunny warmth and sweetness in a wonderful way. Chords sound full and rich, while single note lines have exceptional presence. As a result, the K26ce sounds as beautiful as it looks!

A V-Classic

I would be remiss if I did not mention how the K26ce utilizes 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 K24ce 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. And, it gives the guitar piano-like note separation and crystalline clarity even when you play fancy jazz chords!

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 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 K26ce sounds so in-tune that it's scary.