Taylor Custom Aged Maple Grand Concert Long Scale Acoustic Electric Guitar- New

$5,800.00

Details

This Custom Taylor was designed by our own Jason Spathopoulos. Here's what he has to say about it: My primary objective with designing this guitar was to create a guitar that combines the immediate snap of a full 25 ½” scale with the comfortable contours of a concert body. Maple is a wonderfully clear tonewood with a crystal-clear sound that has an honest quality to it. With that in mind, I wanted to create a guitar that would serve as a perfect vessel for both solo fingerpicking and songwriting and boy did Taylor certainly delivered on that vision. One strum of the guitar reveals a lively tone with a clear top end and a surprisingly powerful balanced bass that punches way above its weight class. For a relatively small body it has a surprising amount of projection.

In terms of the aesthetics, it was important that the finer appointments helped to highlight the most striking feature of the instrument – the wood. I opted for a shimmery amber burst for the back and sides because I felt the golden hue would showcase the spectacular flame figuring on the maple. The top features a subtle aging toner and a single ring abalone rosette for a natural and stately look. The binding on the body and fingerboard is highly figured koa, which not only protects the extremities of the guitar from misadventure but also looks gorgeous to boot.

Ultimately this instrument is a great example of the fact that you don’t always have to sacrifice tone for playability. The genius of Taylor’s compact Grand Concert body affords the player perfect ease of play while the added dimensions of the longer scale length provide a familiar feel to players more accustomed to larger body guitars. All in all, the guitar is simply a blast to play. Well done Taylor. - Jason

About Gryphon’s Aged Maple:

The back and sides were milled from big slabs of figured maple Gryphon's co-founders bought fifty years ago when they were making a lot of banjo necks. This was before the retail store was opened, and once that happened repairs and restoration quickly put most building projects on the back burner, where they stayed as demand for repairs changed Gryphon's direction. This maple has been stored in Gryphon's attic ever since, but Andy Powers and the crew at Taylor has helped us finally put it to good use.