Taylor Guitars is an American guitar manufacturer based in

El Cajon El Cajon ( , ; Spanish: El Cajón, lit. 'the box') is a city in San Diego County, California, United States, east of downtown San Diego. The city takes its name from Rancho El Cajón, which was named for the box-like shape of the valley tha ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. The company was founded in 1974 by Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug, specializing in

acoustic guitar An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked, its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...

s and semi-hollow electric guitars. It is one of the largest manufacturers of acoustic guitars in the United States and sells guitars in 65 countries around the world.

History

Bob Taylor, aged 18 in 1972, began working at a guitar-making shop owned by Sam Radding called American Dream, where Kurt Listug was employed. Radding sold the business in 1974 and Taylor, Listug, and a third employee, Steve Schemmer, bought American Dream and renamed it the Westland Music Company. Needing a compact logo for the guitars'

headstock A headstock or peghead is part of a guitar or similar stringed instruments such as a lute, mandolin, banjo, ukulele and others of the lute lineage. The main function of a headstock is to house the tuning pegs or other mechanism that holds the s ...

, they changed the name to ''Taylor,'' which they thought sounded more American than ''Listug''. Kurt Listug said, "Bob was the real guitar-maker." Listug became the partnership's businessman and Taylor handled design and production. They began selling their guitars through retailers in 1971. In 1981, facing financial difficulties, Taylor Guitars took out a bank loan to purchase equipment. By 2012, Taylor Guitars had more than 700 employees in two factories; in

El Cajon, California El Cajon ( , ; Spanish language, Spanish: El Cajón, lit. 'the box') is a city in San Diego County, California, United States, east of downtown San Diego. The city takes its name from Rancho El Cajon, Rancho El Cajón, which was named for the ...

, and in

Tecate Tecate () is a city in Tecate Municipality, Baja California. It is across the Mexico–United States border, Mexico–US border from Tecate, California. As of 2019, the city had a population of 108,860 inhabitants, while the metropolitan area ha ...

, Mexico, where lower-priced models and guitar cases were made. In early 2011, the company opened a Taylor distribution warehouse in the Netherlands to serve the European market. In January 2014, the U.S. State Department honored Taylor Guitars with an Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE), citing the company's commitment to responsible practices in obtaining ebony for its instruments, which included purchasing a sustainable ebony mill and increasing its output of usable timber from 10% to 100%. On January 1, 2021, the company became fully employee-owned. In May 2022, Andy Powers was made CEO, President, and Chief Guitar Designer of the company.

Innovations

In 1995, Bob Taylor became interested in finding out whether using exotic tonewoods in quality guitars was more important than

luthier A luthier ( ; ) is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments. Etymology The word ' is originally French and comes from ''luth'', the French word for "lute". The term was originally used for makers of lutes, but it came to be ...

techniques and good design. He built a

dreadnought The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's , had such an effect when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts", ...

guitar's back and sides with oak from shipping pallets he found at the factory, used a nondescript piece of 2x4 timber for its top, and made of neck out of pallet oak. The fretboard's Formica-and-pearl inlay depicted a fork lift. He named the resulting instrument the "Pallet Guitar", and in 2000 a limited edition of 25 Grand Auditorium-bodied Pallet Guitars were made, with aluminum inlay included to accentuate the original nail holes in the wood. These guitars were sold to collectors, but the first Pallet Guitar remains on display at the Taylor Guitars factory in El Cajon, California. In January 1999, Taylor began making guitars with a patented, bolt-on neck called the NT (new technology) neck. This differed from conventional guitar necks in using one continuous piece of wood from the headstock to the 19th fret to support the

fretboard The fingerboard (also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments) is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. The stri ...

. The usual practice in guitar neck construction was to support the fretboard up to the fourteenth fret and glue the unsupported remaining length to the soundboard. The NT neck fitted into a slot on top of the guitar body, achieving the desired angle with small shims. Guitars sometimes require neck angle realignment (neck reset), and the NT system achieved this by changing shims. Prior to 1999, Taylor Guitars had a simple bolt-on neck design which could be adjusted without the complex process of ungluing the neck joint. The Taylor company uses its own pickup, the "Expression System", which is a

humbucking Mains hum, electric hum, cycle hum, or power line hum is a sound associated with alternating current which is twice the frequency of the mains electricity. The fundamental frequency of this sound is usually double that of the local power-line fre ...

induction pickup mounted in the neck, and a pair of dynamic soundboard transducers wired to an onboard preamplifier, designed by

Rupert Neve Arthur Rupert Neve (31 July 1926 – 12 February 2021) was a British-American electronics engineer and entrepreneur, who was a pioneering designer of professional audio recording equipment. He designed analog recording and audio mixing equipment ...

. The entry-level 100 and 200 series of guitars have an externally similar system, known as ES-T, which uses a single under-saddle pickup and no soundboard transducers. The first-generation ES system was introduced in 2004. It had two transducers, one mounted to the bridge and the other on the lower bout of the sound board, with a small, single-coil pickup mounted in the neck joint, all wired to the onboard preamp, which had knobs for volume, tone and blend. This early ES system was available on the higher-end 500 series and above, as well as the 30th-anniversary limited-edition series, starting in the fall of 2004. It was a custom order for the 300 and 400 series, and could be retrofitted to some older Taylor guitars with the NT neck design.

Factory

Taylor's 145,000-square-foot manufacturing facility is located in El Cajon, California, about 20 miles east of downtown San Diego. A free guided tour of the Taylor Guitars factory is open to the public at 1:00 p.m., Monday through Friday except some holidays. Premier Guitars published a four-part tour of the Taylor Factory, narrated by Bob Taylor, in 2008.

Notable players

William Ackerman William Ackerman (born November 16, 1949) is an American guitarist and record producer who founded Windham Hill Records. Career Early years Ackerman was born in Germany. His adoptive father was a professor of English at Stanford University. ...

Axel Bauer Axel Bauer (born 7 April 1961) is a French singer, composer, guitarist, and actor, born in Paris. A figure of the French rock scene, he was discovered in 1983 with the song "Cargo". Several times awarded a gold record, he has sold three million r ...

Jade Bird Jade Elizabeth Bird (born 1 October 1997) is an English singer, songwriter and musician. Bird's music has been influenced by many folk and Americana artists. The media, when describing Bird's music, have drawn comparisons with pop, American ...

* Dave Carroll *

Steven Curtis Chapman Steven Curtis Chapman (born November 21, 1962) is an American contemporary Christian music singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, author, and social activist. Chapman began his career in the late 1980s as a songwriter and performer of cont ...

* Russ Freeman *

Vic Fuentes Victor Vincent Fuentes (born February 10, 1983) is an American musician. He is the co-founder, lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the post-hardcore band Pierce the Veil, which he formed with his brother Mike Fuentes in 2006. Early life F ...

Michael Hedges Michael Alden Hedges (December 31, 1953 – December 2, 1997) was an American acoustic guitarist and songwriter. He was known as a virtuoso who used unorthodox playing techniques, and much of his output was classified as new age music. Hedges ...

Susanna Hoffs Susanna Lee Hoffs (born January 17, 1959) is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and actress. With Debbi Peterson and Vicki Peterson, she founded the Bangles in 1981. Their debut album, ''All Over the Place (The Bangles album), All Over ...

* Jewel *

Leo Kottke Leo Kottke (born September 11, 1945) is an American acoustic guitarist. He is known for a fingerpicking style that draws on blues, jazz, and folk music, and for syncopated, polyphonic melodies. He has overcome a series of personal obstacles, i ...

Dave Matthews David John Matthews (born January 9, 1967) is an American musician and the lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for the Dave Matthews Band (DMB). Matthews was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and moved frequently between South Africa, ...

Jason Mraz Jason Thomas Mraz ( ; born June 23, 1977) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He rose to prominence with the release of his debut studio album, ''Waiting for My Rocket to Come'' (2002), which spawned the single "The Remedy (I Won't Wo ...

Dolores O'Riordan Dolores Mary Eileen O'Riordan ( ; 6 September 1971 – 15 January 2018) was an Irish musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead vocalist of the rock band The Cranberries. O'Riordan was the principal songwriter of ...

* Gabriella Quevedo *

Richie Sambora Richard Stephen Sambora (born July 11, 1959) is an American musician, singer, and songwriter, best known as the lead guitarist of the rock band Bon Jovi from 1983 to 2013. He and lead singer Jon Bon Jovi formed the main songwriting unit for the ...

Steve Stevens Steve Stevens (born Steven Bruce Schneider; May 5, 1959) is an American guitarist. He is best known as Billy Idol's guitarist and songwriting collaborator, and for his lead guitar work on the theme to ''Top Gun'' – " Top Gun Anthem" – for ...

Taylor Swift Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Known for her autobiographical songwriting, artistic versatility, and Cultural impact of Taylor Swift, cultural impact, Swift is one of the Best selling artists, w ...

Snuffy Walden William Garrett Walden, known as W. G. Snuffy Walden (born February 13, 1950), is an American musician and composer of film and television soundtracks. Walden is an Emmy Award winner for the theme music to ''The West Wing'' ( NBC), has been nomi ...

* Billy Joe Walker

References

External links