Maybe I’m just misinformed or naive, but I am primarily an acoustic guitar player and always frowned on a manufacturer cutting a guitar in half, slapping some pickups on and calling their product a replacement for an old-fashioned, full-sized acoustic instrument. I mean you need all that extra surface and interior area to get a great acoustic sound, don’t you? Well the answer, with Taylor’s T5 at least, is a resounding no!
To start with, Taylor came at the T5 from an entirely new direction. World-renowned and well-respected for their line of high-quality, great-sounding acoustic guitars, they didn’t enter the arena until they were confident their product would overcome the shortcomings common to other acoustic/electrics. The T5 has a pickup selector switch similar to what you’d find on a standard electric guitar, but one look at the front of the guitar shows only one visible pickup, and no sound-hole. The true beauty of the T5 is not what is visible, but that which is not: a humbucker pickup under the fretboard near the neck joint and a proprietary “body sensor” mounted on the sweet spot under the top. Apart from the high-quality tone woods and standard Taylor attention to detail, it’s really the combination of these unconventional pickup designs and placement and Taylor’s acoustic preamp that lets this instrument shine.
To say the T5 sounds like both an acoustic and an electric is true, but not entirely accurate. Convincing acoustic sounds can be obtained by using the first two pickup positions, and authentic electric tones can be achieved in the other three positions. What sets the T5 apart, though, is everything between the lines. The two tone controls don’t merely cut and boost frequency. This is not a “set it and forget it” kind of instrument. Taylor calls it their “Expression System”; I call it sheer versatility. By experimenting with these seemingly simple controls, you begin to realize that the T5 spans the acoustic and electric spectrum, and then some! Even the volume knob (which simply adjusts loudness on many instruments) plays an integral part in shaping the tone. Through an electric tube amp it captured the warmth and sustain of the best semi-hollow bodies. And through an acoustic amp I was amazed at how full it sounded, without the tinny “crispies” common to piezo pickups. For the live musician the T5 is a dream come true; no more lugging multiple guitars to a gig, only to use most of them on just one song. If you’re looking for a versatile instrument that will allow you to both capture acoustic and electric sounds, as well as expand your tonal vocabulary, the T5 is the only guitar you need!
