How Taylor Guitars captured a whole new audience by putting the musician at the heart of everything
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Taylor Guitars has always been a brand that listened to the player. But when Andy Powers became Taylor’s Master Guitar Designer over a decade ago, this mindset became even more central, evolving Taylor into something remarkable: a global guitar brand with the mindset of a bespoke luthier. Now a brand new Guitar.com Presents film gets to the heart of what this really means.
READ MORE: How Taylor Guitars became the world’s most innovative guitar brand
In Taylor Guitars: Crafted To Inspire we head to Taylor’s HQ in El Cajon, California, and sit down with both Powers and other members of the Taylor team to explore exactly what it means to bring the in-depth, player-centric mindset of a one-of-one luthier and how that can be scaled up to make better instruments for thousands of guitarists all over the world.
“I’ve never lived in a world where there was a separation between the builder and the player,” Powers explains. “Whether it was building an instrument for myself, or building an instrument for someone that I’m sitting across from, or even building an instrument for somebody who’s half a world away, we speak the same language, and we’re seeking the same kinds of things, which is musical inspiration. ”
This mindset has reached new heights with the Gold Label Collection – a range of radical new guitars launched just last year that showcases the bold and unconventional way that Taylor is responding to the needs of musicians like never before. And the proof of this is not just in the instruments themselves, but the artists who have embraced them already, from signature artists Trey Hensley and Ben Harper, to Nashville musicians who would previously have never picked up a Taylor.
“But I have a lot of long-time traditional guitar player, pre-war guitar players who are knocking down our door to get their hands on one of these,” explains Jay Parkin, Taylor’s director of artist relations and partnerships. “Andy had the foresight to create guitars that sound and look incredibly familiar, yet they have the playability of a modern Taylor, which is like none other.”
But the real magic of Powers’ design genius can be found in the way that the innovations that he uses to make guitars that have a particular sonic and visual style can be redeployed to enhance and evolve other guitars in the Taylor range. This is seen most strikingly in the evolution of Taylor’s classic Grand Auditorium and Grand Concert Next Generation guitars – which utilise many of the innovations found in the Gold Label, but result in a sound that is much more classically Taylor.
“I love that musicians don’t all sound alike,” Powers explains. “We have different interests. We have different influences, different inspirations, and I enjoy that. I don’t want instruments to all be just the same thing.
Watch Taylor Guitars: Crafted To Inspire at the Guitar.com YouTube Channel.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
