I love the full sound and balanced tone of Taylor acoustic guitars, and I’m continually impressed by the detailed, natural sound of the Rupert Neve designed Taylor Expression System pickup that comes installed in their acoustic electric models. With the ES’ sonic leap and bound behind me, I was sceptical of the ability of a little box touting itself as a relatively simple “EQ” to have a dramatic effect on my Taylor’s plugged-in sound. However, once the Rupert Neve designed Taylor K4 entered into my signal chain, my scepticism was no more.
I plugged my ES-equipped Taylor into the K4 and recorded the resulting signal into my Roland VS-2480 for testing purposes. Listening to my signal through my Mackie HR824’s, I had the EQ dialed into a great Taylor acoustic tone within seconds. After recording about 30 seconds of playing, I then removed the K4 from the signal chain and recorded another 30 seconds of playing. The A/B that followed was surprising. The K4 not only made a difference in the sonic qualities of the recording, but it made a significant one. I was impressed. The highs were crisper without being harsh, the midrange was natural and clear, and the low end was rich and pure from any “boominess.” The track without the K4 still sounded good, but the K4 added a whole new dimension to the sound of the guitar.
Just for kicks, I followed up my test with another A/B with a non-ES equipped acoustic guitar and found the results to be very similar. The direct signal was pretty good, but the K4 added clarity to the entire frequency range of the guitar.
If you’re looking for a great way to “clean up” and enrich the sound of your acoustic guitar in either live or recording scenarios, then definitely give the Taylor K4 some serious consideration.
