An Exotic Rendition of Taylor's Ultimate Grand Auditorium
Built with a bevy of Next Generation upgrades, the Builder’s Edition 914ce LTD modifies Taylor’s flagship 900-series Grand Auditorium with a distinctive arrangement of tonewoods. It all starts with Scalloped V-Class bracing — a feature originally introduced in Taylor’s Next Generation series that opens up this Grand Auditorium’s low-end response with a deep, rich character. Instead of standard spruce, the Builder’s Edition 914ce LTD wears an exotic cypress wood top that rings with dense overtones and a fingerstyle-ready response. Around back, the walnut body provides a fundamental-focused chime to balance against the complexity of the top, keeping every string’s response ideally balanced across the sonic spectrum. Plug in, and Taylor’s refined Claria electronics faithfully capture the Builder's Edition 914ce’s robust acoustic voice with plug-and-play simplicity, supported by soundhole-mounted Volume, Tone, and Mid-Contour controls. You also get a neotropical mahogany neck, joined to the body via Taylor’s trailblazing Action Control neck system, and a Crelicam ebony fingerboard. Finally, a high-class arrangement of artful touches ties the Builder's Edition 914ce together, including a beveled armrest, paua/koa purfling, chamfered body edges, sea forest vine inlays, and Gotoh 510 tuners.
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Top-of-the-line tonewood elegance
Taylor’s Builder’s Edition series is a favorite of Sweetwater’s tonewood obsessives, as it often combines exotic tonewoods you’d rarely find on a standard-issue Taylor. This Builder’s Edition 914ce LTD furthers that reputation with a cypress wood top that Taylor describes as having a balanced, overtone-rich voice that lends itself well to fingerstyle playing. For the back and sides, Taylor opted for the crisp clarity and midrange focus of walnut, which plays perfectly against the top's harmonically rich complexity.
Rich and responsive Scalloped V-Class bracing
First launched in 2018, Taylor’s V-Class bracing revolutionized the brand’s sound with one of the most innovative advancements in steel-string technology in nearly a century. Here, Taylor has changed the game once again, tweaking the forward-thinking formula of V-Class by precisely paring away material from key locations of each brace.
The result is Taylor’s Scalloped V-Class architecture, a design that preserves all the defining sonic features of standard V-Class bracing with a more muscular bass response and a softer, warmer blend among notes. Strum an open cowboy chord, and Scalloped V-Class delivers the familiar low-end thump and harmonic cohesion that’s most often associated with typical X-braced instruments. However, as a direct descendant of Andy Powers’s original V-Class design, Scalloped V-Class bracing preserves the former’s spot-on pitch accuracy, rich sustain, impeccable balance, and crisp note-to-note definition — especially as you venture farther up the fingerboard with complex chords, intricate fingerpicked patterns, and rapid-fire leads.
Plug-and-play Claria System electronics
Road-tested and refined for over two years with the world's biggest touring acts, Taylor’s Claria System represents the next step in the brand’s ceaseless pursuit of acoustic-electric excellence. As opposed to the more sensitive and microphone-like performance of Taylor’s ES2, the Claria System features a single under-saddle piezo transducer paired with a powerhouse preamp to supply you with the warmest, most accurate acoustic-electric tone possible with the least amount of tweaking required — simply plug in, adjust your sound to taste via the Volume, Tone, and Mid-Contour controls, and you’re ready to go.
So, how does the Claria System differ from a typical under-saddle pickup? Taylor’s expert engineers built Claria from the ground up to overcome the most endemic challenges of standard under-saddle setups, allowing the system to perform free of piezo distortion and avoid unwanted frequencies with its clear, focused voice. Moreover, Claria also avoids clipping by gain staging the preamp and the controls within the preamp. As for tone shaping, Claria’s Mid-Contour control offers a wide range of dynamic sounds to explore, from smooth, rhythm-ready warmth to a midrange-forward timbre that brings lead playing and fingerpicking to the forefront of the mix. For the guitarist seeking a plug-and-play system that preserves their guitar's inherent acoustic character and excels in any environment without a fuss, Taylor’s Claria system is as good as it gets.
Cutting-edge Action Control neck joint
Taylor has led the charge in neck joint technology for decades, from Bob Taylor’s earliest bolt-on experiments to the dawn of the easily adjustable NT Neck at the turn of the 20th century. Under the leadership of Andy Powers, Taylor has once again pushed the boundaries of steel-string design with the Action Control Neck, a trailblazing bolt-on system that lets you adjust the neck angle without removing the neck or strings.
From fine adjustments to optimizing the neck’s pitch over the top, the Action Control Neck gives you the power to set your string height from shred-ready specs to a higher, strum-friendly action with the turn of a bolt. Moreover, it also transforms repairs that generally require major surgery on traditional glued-in dovetail joints (such as neck resets) into a straightforward, routine procedure. Best of all, the Action Control Neck’s long-tenon joint protrudes well into the heel to properly mate your guitar’s neck and body, increasing the stiffness of the heel and resulting in a deeper tone with greater low-end resonance, even on higher notes.
Taylor Builder’s Edition 914ce LTD Features:
- A limited-edition take on Taylor's flagship Builder's Edition 914ce, built with an inspired collection of exotic tonewoods
- Cypress top provides an overtone-dense sonic canvas with fingerstyle-ready balance
- Walnut back and sides balance against the top with a fundamental-heavy character and a midrange-focused chime
- Scalloped V-Class bracing boosts low-end performance and results in a warmer, richer resonance
- Claria under-saddle electronics system provides acoustic-accurate tones and plug-and-play simplicity
- Soundhole-mounted Volume, Tone, and Mid-Contour controls for quick tone sculpting
- Neotropical mahogany neck in Taylor’s always-comfortable Standard Carve profile
- Action Control neck joint system gives users the ability to set the neck’s angle, allowing for easy action adjustment
- Long-tenon neck joint enhances your sound with a deep low-end resonance and a fuller-bodied tone
- 15-in.-radius Crelicam ebony fingerboard laden with sea forest vine inlays
- Artful touches include a beveled armrest, koa/paua purfling, chamfered body edges, and Gotoh 510 tuners
- 1.75-in. nut offers a just-right width for fingerstyle players, strummers, and flatpickers alike
