The Taylor 916ce Acoustic Electric Cutaway, a premium-grade Sitka and Indian rosewood GS model, is robust without sacrificing any tonal definition.
Taylor's rarest, high-grade Indian rosewood is reserved for their 900 Series. In fact, every material used on these guitars is premium quality, from the hand-selected Sitka spruce tops to the iridescent pieces of abalone used for the inlay work to the elegant Gotoh tuners. The 900 Series guitars are true Taylor masterworks.
Top: Sitka Spruce.
Back and Sides: Indian Rosewood.
Cutaway and Taylor's Expression System Pickup are standard appointments on the 916ce.
Taylor Guitars
Look at that.
Seated in his neat, spacious office in Taylor Guitars' factory complex in El Cajon, California, company co-founder and CEO Kurt Listug cannot stifle a laugh as he studies a faded snapshot. The photograph, mined from the depths of an old cardboard box filled with dusty memorabilia, depicts the original Taylor shop on its very first day of existence -- October 15, 1974.
On the left, pony-tailed, 22-year-old employee Tim Luranc is examining something, while then-part-owner Steve Schemmer shovels water from the floor into a bucket. A companion photo shows the adjoining room on the same day. Crude, garish, overhead lights illuminate a funky old refrigerator amid indistinguishable clutter; a "humidity-controlled" booth with plastic-film walls; and a rough concrete floor pocked with puddles of standing water and clumps of soggy sawdust. "Primitive" and "wet" aptly describe both scenes
"That place was so bad," Listug recalls, shaking his head. "The roof leaked like crazy, and whenever it rained, the place flooded. It rained hard the night before we opened, so we spent the entire morning of our first day in business trying to get as much water out of there as we could."
"See those clumps of wet sawdust? When it flooded, we'd take all the sawdust that we'd already swept up, and sprinkle it around the floor to soak up the water. It made the place even more of a pig sty," he says, laughing. "But it was fun. What did we know? We were just kids. Somehow, we'd skirted having to get real jobs. We didn't have a boss, we were making guitars. What could be better?"
Despite the semi-aquatic conditions and inauspicious circumstances of Taylor's first few days of life, Listug's voice betrays a genuine wistfulness as he recalls the "hungry years" that made it possible for the company to be celebrating its 25th Anniversary in 1999. Listug enjoys reminiscing about the long, painstaking process of co-shepherding Taylor Guitars from its humble, naive beginnings to its current status as one of the world's most successful and highly regarded acoustic guitar manufacturers.
In one respect, there is no escaping the company's history, thanks to numerous human and material reminders of the company's scuffling days that can be found throughout Taylor's modern, high-tech facility. Primary among these, of course, are Taylor and Listug, who have made musical-instrument history by becoming the first American luthiers in this century to take an acoustic guitar company from one-off shop to production-level manufacturer without relinquishing ownership or creative control. Other first-decade Taylorites who are either still on the job, or who have left and come back, include Luranc (profiled in the Summer 1994 issue of our quarterly newsletter, Wood&Steel), Steve Baldwin (1983--), and Bob Zink (1984--profiled in the Fall '98 issue).
Among significant relics are a few early-vintage Taylor guitars that have been re-acquired over the years, and which repose in a safe place known only to Bob Taylor. Several tidy binders and scrapbooks on file in the current building's conference room contain articles and advertisements that delineate Taylor's progress from baby steps to leaps. Still, it's the cardboard box that provides Taylor and Listug their best opportunity to relish the sometimes poignant, often hilarious chronicles of the firm's first two decades. Looking at photographs of the duo as long-haired, bearded teenagers, Listug effortlessly spins anecdotes, punctuating his commentary with frequent, almost reflexive chuckling.
"I remember, as a teenager, driving with my parents past this guitar-repair shop called the Blue Guitar, in the Old Town area of San Diego," he said. "I thought guitars were the coolest thing, and I couldn't imagine anything cooler than working on them for a living. So, I pestered Sam Radding, owner of the American Dream shop in Lemon Grove, to hire me, even though I didn't have any of the necessary skills. Eventually, a work bench opened up, and I quit my job painting buildings at San Diego State University and started doing finishing work. That was in August 1973.
"A week or two later, Bob Taylor got a bench there. He'd been coming around for a while, buying guitar parts and showing Sam the guitars he'd made. At the time, Bob was 18 and I was 20."
In spite of his hirsute appearance, the young Taylor was quiet, reserved, and very "straight," and, for a while, the rest of the American Dream employees more or less ignored him. One day, Bob abruptly put an end to that.
"He came in where a few of us were eating lunch, sat down, and firmly announced, 'Well, I'm Bob Taylor,'" Listug remembers. "It was a real ice-breaker, and after that we all got along great."
"I remember being quite the odd duck in a real hippie shop," Taylor admits. "My hair was a lot longer, and I had a beard, but otherwise I was just a clean-cut boy in a white t-shirt who went to church three times a week with his mom and dad and sister. My whole life experience up to that time was just being a 'good boy.' I'd never been in trouble in my life; I spent my time in school doing projects and getting straight A's, winning industrial-arts expositions. I didn't know what alcohol or drugs were. Still don't. Didn't know about college, or girls, or anything except tools, and working with things. And here I was, working with these kids who, compared to me, were partying, wise-to-the-world, guitar-building, hippie musicians. So, Kurt, Bob Huff, Michael Stewart, Steve Hilliard, Sam Radding, and Barbie Cousins -- they'd be off to the side, giggling at me."
You might say that Taylor ended up at American Dream partly by default, partly by provident design. As a 17-year-old, he had seen a 12-string acoustic guitar in a local store window, and, lacking the funds to purchase it, had decided to make his own. He built three guitars while still in high school, working on them at night in the back of a service station, in between filling gas tanks and wiping windshields. Eventually, Taylor took his finished instruments to Sam Radding at American Dream. Radding was convinced that he had a future in the trade.
During their first year at American Dream, Taylor and Listug made a few guitars, but mostly did repairs. When Radding decided to sell the business in 1974, the employees split into rival purchasing groups of two, each team jockeying for position while trying to figure out how to come up with the requisite capital. Finally, a triumvirate of Taylor, Listug, and Schemmer bought the American Dream. Euphoric with ambition, they renamed it the Westland Music Company.
"We thought that would sound impressive, and make people think we were bigger than we really were," Listug laughs. "But Bob was the real guitar-maker, and, besides, we had to have a logo that would fit on the headstock, so we soon named the guitars Taylor guitars."
By the time the fledgling company hoisted its