Taylor 614ce Builder's Edition - Natural Reviews

I decided I needed to add more details to my original review after spending the week playing.

Bar chords, for example a F, are easier to play. That, of course, is in part due to the Sweetwater setup I had done. The rolled edges and the beveled armrest really make the guitar comfortable to play. I love the brightness of the sound.

I just received my Taylor 614ce Builder's Edition and it is amazing. The flamed big leaf maple is beautiful and the sitka spruce top has a really nice grain. The quality of the construction is top notch. The binding and fretboard are perfectly smooth. The finish is beautiful and free of defects. The neck is as smooth as a baby's bottom.

I had Sweetwater do a setup and the results are exactly what I wanted. The string height is where I like it with a really nice feel.

Thank you to Matthew Langston, my sales engineer, for answering all my questions, putting up with my vacillating and helping me with my decision! It was a great choice.

Just buy one, and play it. This is an outstanding example of human capability. The designer and craftsmen are unnaturally gifted, and I'm blessed to have the means to own this work of art.

Guitar is beautifully made. The Builder's Edition is easy to play and feels very comfortable. The tone has just enough brightness with good mid-range sounds. It has become my favorite guitar.

I had been working with Ian to find a great acoustic. Months ago, I ordered a handmade Yamaha LL36. It was somewhere stuck in limbo at a port, or possibly not even made yet. They are rare birds.

So, looking for another option, I visited a local music store that had a good selection of classic acoustics. I began by auditioning a Martin HD-28e, Gibson 50s J-45, and a Gibson Studio Hummingbird. Classics. On a whim, I tried my first Taylor, a 714ce and was very pleased with how it sounded and how easily it played. Then, I saw the Builder's Edition 614ce. She looked engagingly at me, I at her, and it was on. One strum and I was transported. Just stunningly clear, delivering crisp harmony on complex jazz chords, beautiful with folk strumming, even surprisingly adept with classical bits and pieces. Easy, ridiculously so, to tune.

Made inquiries here at Sweetwater, but the guitar was snatched up before I could get my order in. Waited a couple weeks, and no more came in. In the meantime, I took a couple more trips to my local store to just look at her. Well, and to make more comparisons with top-rated classics. Finally, I knew I had to make the leap of faith.

I've not been disappointing for a second. Highly recommend this gal.

I've been playing guitar for about 35 years. I have two Martins, a HD28 and a D45, so I know what a good sounding guitar sounds, and plays, like, and this 614ce is a greeting sounding, and playing, guitar. I was pleased to find a the bevelled area on top, where my upper arm rests, never heard of that before - makes it real comfortable to play. The reason I originally bought 614ce was because it has a factory pickup in it, my Martins don't pickups and I'm not going to add any to them. I bought the 614ce, plugged it in to my Marshall amp and it sounds great. I was a little skeptical about buying a guitar with maple sides and back, but am very happy I got it.

The incredible part of this guitar is the impact upon first playing it. It is the first guitar that I played one chord and said, "wow". Its not just the sound, but how it feels. It is a joy to play. Yes, the sound is amazing, but let's be honest, at this price range, most acoustics are going to have good sound. We're really getting nuanced here. I love the maple warmth, but the brightness added by the Spruce top and v-class bracing is surprisingly high quality. My newest acoustic after this is is almost 50 years old. I'm a vintage guy, so this was a surprise buy for me. This is now my main axe, I love playing it.

Although I am primarily an electric-guitar player, occasionally, I play acoustic-guitar duets, mostly using my Martin Custom Shop acoustic (spruce top, cocobolo back and sides, ebony fretboard and bridge, mahogany neck), whose stellar intonation, sonic detail and focused, clear low-end presentation (that never gets too boomy) are extraordinary. Several weeks ago, I accidentally played a Taylor 614ce Builder's Edition made in January 2019. The first strums of now my Taylor 614ce Builder's Edition were sonically somewhat surprising, producing strong, focused, low-end sounds (very reminiscent of my Cocobolo Martin), which I never heard before generated by any maple-bodied guitar! This accompanied by its well-balanced and detailed middle-end spectrum and almost magic high-end sounds somehow stirred my soul so much that I impulsively decided to spend like a drunken sailor – yes, pricewise this guitar is not exactly a budget acoustic. Interestingly, some Taylor 614ce Builder's Edition guitars have 2-piece backs and some have 3-piece backs. The explanation provided by the Taylor Technical Support was: "Sometimes, the pieces of available wood are not big enough to make a 2-piece back, but the 2 types of back sound the same". FYI, there are 4 entities which (in my opinion) significantly augment the enjoyment of playing this guitar:
1) BEVELED EBONY ARMREST, which makes it more comfortable to play and decreases damping of the top by the picking/strumming forearm.
2) COMPOUND CUTAWAY, a non-negligible improvement over more typical acoustic guitar cutaways (Venetian, Florentine and squared-off) – further enhancing higher-frets accessibility.
3) GOTOH 510 TUNING MACHINES, whose higher-than-typical gear ratio makes tuning more accurate and faster.
4) BETTER PLACEMENT OF THE FRONT STRAP BUTTON, which is unlikely to produce the typical playing problems when using wider and thicker straps with strap buttons screwed into the side of the guitar neck"s heel.

Perhaps needless to stress that in general terms of overall quality, the higher-end Taylor guitars – such as this one – are comparable to McPherson, Bourgeois, Collings, Santa Cruz, Huss & Dalton, Goodall, Lowden, PRS (US-made), and higher-end Martin, Gibson and Breedlove acoustics – just to mentioned a few really good ones I played in the past. So far, I have been so amazed by this guitar that I not only bought it on a whim of that very first impression, but I"ve also written this mini-review for Sweetwater, mainly to inform acoustic guitar players about this gem. Sweetwater is by far the best online retailer of musical instruments I know of and although I have not bought this guitar from Sweetwater, undoubtedly, I would have bought it from Sweetwater, if my Taylor 614ce Builder's Edition was not for sale at the time when I fortuitously played it in a local music store.

I bought a 614 CE when I was trading some equipment and came across this guitar in a different reference.
I was at a guitar shop looking to compliment my 612CE.

It has the players shoulder (ebony) on the top side of the body.The sound of this guitar is an aggressive toning of a Martin D35 or D18. The bass notes rumble and the overall clarity is there. very clear

Through a Fish man amp this guitar gets it done. As i said this guitar exhibits the bottom end of a Martin D28/ D35 with a chiming top end and all strings and frequencies are well balanced.

I own this guitar and will definitely be keeping it.

Tim Harrington is my contact at Sweetwater and he is excellent!

God Bless, Ted