“The guitars we made back in the day were the wellspring of the designs”: Taylor celebrates its 50th anniversary with the Legacy Collection – a new range that revamps the spirit of its earliest acoustic designs
Five acoustic electric guitars have been crafted, bringing together the old and new in order to celebrate half a century of craftsmanship
(Image credit: Taylor Guitars)
Taylor Guitars is celebrating 50 years of acoustic guitar craftsmanship with the Legacy Collection – a quintet of guitars that honor its heritage with contemporary flourishes.
Of the bunch, three are reimagined 800 Series builds, uniting rosewood and spruce tonewoods in an effort to revamp the spirit of some of founder Bob Taylor’s earliest designs.
The collection is completed by a duo that shines a spotlight on the Grand Auditorium body shape, which has become Taylor’s most successful creation over the last half-century. Those instruments have been pivotal in defining the Taylor sound.
Inspired by Bob’s original builds, the five-strong Legacy Collection, Taylor says, “reflects the full scope of our history by blending foundational design elements with key developments along the way”.
The Legacy 810e ($3,399) centers around a dreadnought body shape and X bracing for “exceptional volume and projection”. Solid Indian rosewood back and sides, and a Sitka spruce top, are paired with an LR Baggs Element VTC under saddle pickup and soundhole-mounted controls.
(Image credit: Taylor Guitars)
A contemporary Taylor neck and straight-ear peghead shape helps merge the old with the new, while the aesthetic flourishes – including a three-ring rosette in green abalone and mother-of-pearl inlays – are smart and understated.
The Legacy 815e ($3,399) and 855e ($3,499) models, meanwhile, are six- and 12-string versions of the same recipe, utilizing rosewood/spruce tonewood combinations for its jumbo body shape, classic mustache bridge, and straight-ear pegheads.
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The same under saddle pickup returns, with Bob Taylor's preferred X bracing pattern featuring on the non-cutaway acoustic-electric. The 12-string edition has been championed for its “exceptional octave shimmer”.
Final touches come via non-engraved Large Diamond fretboard inlays in mother-of-pearl, ebony bridge pins with green abalone dots, a faux-tortoiseshell pickguard, and nickel tuners.
(Image credit: Taylor Guitars)
Things get a little different with the grand auditorium models, with the Legacy 514ce ($3,399) pairing solid mahogany back and sides with solid Western Red cedar top. By comparison, the Legacy 714ce ($3,499) swaps mahogany for Indian rosewood but keeps the cedar top.
They both feature Venetian cutaways, the same electronic appointments of its siblings and are voiced with X bracing. For the 514ce, that pattern Taylor used throughout the '90s and '00s has been utilized, and combined with its modern neck shape for a contemporary twist.
(Image credit: Taylor Guitars)
The 714ce, then, sees a more traditional bracing approach for “a richly textured sound that adapts effortlessly across genres and playing styles”.
(Image credit: Taylor Guitars)
The 514ce gets classic detailing via faux tortoiseshell binding and a matching pickguard, Small Diamond fretboard inlays in mother-of-pearl, and a three-ring rosette in green abalone. It's rounded out with ebony bridge pins with green abalone dots and gold Taylor tuners.
The sleek stylings of the 714ce include black binding with black and white pinstripes, dotted inlays in green abalone, and a matching three-ring rosette. There are also ebony bridge pins with green abalone dots, a faux-tortoiseshell pickguard, gold tuners, and a gloss body with a satin neck.
(Image credit: Taylor Guitars)
“Something sort of magical happened in me at 50 years,” says Bob Taylor. “All of a sudden I thought I could legitimately talk about a legacy. Our guitars were always changing and advancing. The guitars we made back in the day were the wellspring of the designs of these guitars.”
The first 100 of each model feature an interior label personally signed by Taylor founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug.
A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.
