Taylor Gold Label 517e review – “this is the most sonically compelling Taylor guitar I’ve ever played”
$2,599/£2,549, taylorguitars.com
If you’ve been paying attention over the last seven months, you’ll have probably heard the stir caused by Taylor’s Gold Label guitars. After 50 years of defiantly and obsessively looking forward in its guitar designs, the Californian guitar company – now under the watchful eye of master luthier Andy Powers – decided to look back.
READ MORE: Fender Acoustasonic Standard Telecaster review: “these are sounds you don’t hear in a live context very often”
The result was a guitar that somewhat changed the conversation about what we perceive as ‘the Taylor sound’. As Bob Taylor himself told me last year, when it comes to the tonality of Taylor guitars, “You have to like it, to like it” – and that for every person who loved the pristine, bright characteristics that are the brand’s trademark, another person would dislike it for exactly the same reason.
But by Powers’ own admission, the people who don’t vibe with the classic Taylor sounds aren’t wrong for doing so – they just have different tastes. The Gold Label Collection was Powers responding to that: “I’m thrilled that many people do love this,” he told me, “But for those who don’t, well, there can be other sounds too.”
The result was an all-new design in pretty much every way – new body style, new bracing pattern, new neck construction, new visual style and above all else, a new sound. Well, I say new – it was new for Taylor, but it was a sound that sprinkled a sheen of something very old onto the formula, and made our reviewer Michael Watts call the 814e an “important milestone” in the evolution of Taylor guitars.
Evolution doesn’t stand still of course, and there was always the sense that it wouldn’t be long before the Gold Label concept expanded further, and here we have it in the shape of another (sort of) new body shape, and a more accessible price point. Meet the Gold Label Grand Pacific.
Image: Adam Gasson
Taylor Gold Label 517e – what is it?
Those of you familiar with Taylor guitars will be aware of the Grand Pacific body shape already. Introduced back in 2019, the Grand Pacific was Powers’ take on a slope-shouldered dreadnought guitar. In a classic bit of foreshadowing, the Grand Pacific was the first Powers-designed Taylor that hinted at his desire to expand the tonal recipe in a more old-school direction.
The GP has since become a mainstay of the Taylor line, but for the Gold Label guitar, the body has been tweaked somewhat. The guitar retains the body dimensions of the original, but has upped the depth by ⅜ of an inch to be a full 5 inches at the soundhole. For reference, that’s deeper than a Martin Dreadnought or a Gibson Super Jumbo: a chunky boi indeed.
Otherwise we have much the same basic specs as the Super Auditorium-sized 814e – including the new fanned V-Class bracing, the revolutionary long-tenon Action Control Neck, and another notable appearance of LR Baggs’ Element VTC pickup in place of Taylor’s proprietary Expression system.
Visually it’s got the same tweaked peghead design and inlays, and the same 1930s-influenced pickguard and bridge shape… but elsewhere things are really rather distinct.
For starters, whereas the 814e was available with a torrefied spruce top, and either rosewood or koa back and sides, you can get a Gold Label Grand Pacific in spruce/rosewood configuration in the shape of the 717e. But the guitar we have here has tropical mahogany back and sides, to go with the neck of the same material.
And then there’s the colour of the thing of course – the initial run of Gold Label guitars were either available in natural or a smoky caramel sunburst, but the 517e also comes in this rather lovely gloss Blacktop.
A casual perusal of the festival stages across the world this summer will leave you in little doubt that shade- and painted-top acoustics are very much Having A Moment right now, and this guitar feels right at home in that world. That painted top is also a nice nod to the Depression-era guitars that informed the Gold Label’s sonic and visual character, and I must admit to being rather charmed by the whole package, visually.
Image: Adam Gasson
Taylor Gold Label 517e – build and playability
Back in that conversation I had with Bob Taylor, he emphasised to me that subjective opinions on sound were not something that concerned him – all he really cared about was that the build quality of his guitars was beyond reproach regardless.
Candidly, that’s often been my experience with Taylor instruments – they are invariably wonderfully and innovatively constructed guitars that reflect the care, craftsmanship and attention to detail that the company has become famous for, regardless of what price point you’re talking about. The 517e is of course far from a cheap guitar, and so you’d expect a first-class degree of build, fit and finish here – and that’s exactly what you get, pretty much.
The satin-finished neck is beautifully applied and supremely comfortable, with Taylor’s ‘Standard’ carve offering a slinky and accommodating palmful that welcomes electric players in the most classic of Taylor ways. It’s a reminder that for all the visual and marketing claims that this is a guitar with an ‘old soul’, it’s still a Taylor guitar first and foremost, and that’s no bad thing from a playability perspective.
String spacing is a fairly generous 38mm at the nut and 55mm at the bridge, giving larger hands plenty of room to operate, while the slim neck and accommodating profile mean it’s comfortable enough playing cowboy chords as it is more deft fingerstyle maneuvering.
I’m not a small guy, but unquestionably the extra depth added to the body here makes the already imposing size of a Grand Pacific feel even more so. Personally, I don’t have an issue with that but it should go without saying that those with smaller frames and shorter arms might want to try one out before you pull the trigger.
Put side by side with the Dreadnought-adjacent Martin HG-28 that I happen to have on deck here at Guitar.com HQ, the 517e looks like something of a kaiju – certainly by the usual svelte standards of Taylor’s instruments.
Image: Adam Gasson
The general finishing is pretty much flawless all over, though I did notice a small but uncharacteristically rough bit of finishing on the top brace. It’s the sort of thing that will have no bearing on the sound, and I likely wouldn’t have noticed if not for the fact that it was the brace sitting directly below the soundhole. It’s honestly nothing that couldn’t be fixed with 10 seconds of gentle sanding, but it’s also one of those things that once I did notice it, I couldn’t stop noticing it every time I picked up the guitar. It’s also in sharp contrast to every other bit of woodworking on the instrument which is utterly flawless.
Before we get into the sounds of the thing though, it is worth talking about the looks – spending time with a Gold Label guitar you can really get a sense of all the charming and unusual little touches that set these guitars apart from the regular Taylor line.
The subtle angled bevel of the headstock edge, the lovely matt-effect parchment of the pickguard, the appealing dark stain of the peghead and indeed the lovely thin application of the Blacktop finish, allowing the straight grain lines of the torrefied spruce top to catch the light in the way a proper old guitar does… it’s all rather lovely.
Image: Adam Gasson
Taylor Gold Label 517e – sounds
So does this guitar have the sonic character that can win over non-Taylor fans? Well, before we get to the subjective stuff, a word about the wood choices here. Spruce/mahogany is of course an all-time classic acoustic guitar pairing, but one that brings certain qualities to the party that we have to consider.
Rosewood, the other option in the range, absorbs soundwaves quite differently to mahogany, and without getting too deep into the weeds of the physics of the whole thing, a guitar with a mahogany tends to have an open and more airy tonality versus the deeper and more complex nature of rosewood.
With that in mind, I sit down with the 517e and the extra power and projection offered by that extra body depth is immediately apparent. It’s a similar basic sonic character to the 817e in that it has a warmth and richness I’m not used to hearing from a Taylor instrument.
It’s not exactly vintage in the way an old Martin or Gibson is of course, but there’s something pleasantly old-school in the bass frequencies – the extra air inside and that long-tenon neck presumably giving them a bit more body than I might have expected. It also doesn’t have the roundness and complex overtones that you’d generally get from a rosewood guitar, but it has more depth to the lows than you might expect.
Mahogany’s natural glassiness is also a good fit for the more Taylor-y qualities of the guitar – that Taylor sheen is very evident upon picking, and the string and note separation is further enhanced by the always-impressive V-class architecture under the hood.
As you move partial chord shapes up the neck or take more elaborate fingerstyle excursions, the remarkable in-tune-ness of the V-Class concept really does show its hand wonderfully. Whether you’re in altered tunings or standard, this thing really does stay in tune impressively and offers wonderfully clear and well-intonated single notes all the way up the neck. I can see this being a very fine recording guitar indeed.
The Baggs Element VTC pickup is a tried and true option, and while it doesn’t offer the fancier pseudo-modelling stuff that some of the more high-end modern pickup systems do, as a quality under-saddle transducer it does a nice job of replicating the sonic character of the guitar without too much of the nasty stuff that nobody likes from piezo systems.
Image: Adam Gasson
Taylor Gold Label 517e – should I buy one?
At this point I should probably confess that I am absolutely one of those people that Bob Taylor and Andy Powers was talking about earlier. I love everything about Taylor guitars – the playability, the craftsmanship, the innovation… the whole bag. But for whatever reason I’ve never truly managed to embrace the sound of them – though I’ll admit I’ve come close with a couple of instruments in the last few years.
From that perspective then, I’m the ideal target for these Gold Label guitars – and I can’t deny that this is the most sonically compelling Taylor guitar I’ve ever played. Part of me wonders if I might personally have preferred the extra warmth and bass response of the rosewood back and sides version, but there’s still plenty to love here for fans of more old-school acoustic guitar tones – and the way it weds that with the precision, clarity and definition that a Taylor V-Class guitar offers is hugely impressive.
Is it going to replace your well-loved old Martin in your arsenal sonically? Of course not, but the Gold Label Collection is still an important and intriguing avenue for Taylor to explore. Because it’s not just about winning over the doubters, though it does a very good job of that. Really, it’s about showcasing that Taylor’s ethos and craftsmanship defies the pigeonholes that we often put brands in, and expands the brand’s future horizons into even more exciting and broad territory.
Taylor Gold Label 517e – alternatives
The sub-$3k market is very much the heavyweight division when it comes to American-made acoustic guitars, so the Gold Label faces stiff competition from all the major brands. One prominent branch of the Bob Taylor coaching tree also occupying this space is Breedlove, and their Oregon Dreadnought Concerto CE ($2,999) – founded by ex-Taylor builders Larry Breedlove and Steve Henderson, the brand offers a smaller but similarly ethos’d approach to acoustic building. If you want a dreadnought guitar with a real retro vibe, Martin’s D-18 Standard Series ($2,899) is a spruce/mahogany monster with unimpeachable credentials. Another 50-year-old acoustic guitar company with a penchant for doing interesting things with bracing, the Larrivee D-44 ($2,899) is a spruce/mahogany dread that’s made in Oxnard, California – a couple of hundred miles up the coast from Taylor.
The post Taylor Gold Label 517e review – “this is the most sonically compelling Taylor guitar I’ve ever played” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
