Elegant Cedar-topped 714ce with V-Class Bracing
Combining elegant aesthetics with tone-enhancing details, the 700 Series is Taylor’s incredibly popular class of rosewood guitars. The 714ce acoustic-electric Grand Auditorium features revolutionary V-Class bracing, which boosts volume evenly across the tonal spectrum, increases sustain, and improves the natural intonation of the instrument by creating a more synergistic response from the soundboard. This fosters a more harmonious relationship between the notes you play, helping chords to ring out in cohesive splendor. What’s the best tonewood for fingerstyle guitarists? Thanks to cedar’s quick response and midrange overtones, Sweetwater regularly recommends cedar-topped acoustics for fingerstylists and other players with a light touch. And if you’re a guitarist who appreciates the robust lows, crisp highs, and the glassy sustain of rosewood, you’ll relish how well-mannered the overtones are as your notes bloom. While you delight in its beautiful tone, your eyes will savor the 714ce’s tasteful appointments.
Related Videos: 714ce V-Class - Natural Cedar Top
V-Class bracing: a sonic revelation
Bracing is the internal framework of an acoustic guitar that helps shape its sound. Although X-bracing has been standard in acoustic guitars for over a century, it creates an innate conflict between two key elements of a guitar’s sound: volume and sustain. The guitar’s top (its soundboard) contributes to both. The flexibility of the top generates volume (projection), while its stiffness generates sustain. And with X-braced guitar tops, here’s where the trade-off comes in: when something is made stiffer, its flexibility is reduced (and vice versa).
V-Class bracing changes all that. With Taylor’s V-Class bracing, an acoustic guitar top can be both stiff and flexible — for more volume and sustain. V-Class bracing provides stiffness parallel to the strings for more rigidity and, hence, sustain. Flexibility on either side generates the air movement necessary for robust projection. It’s the best of both worlds. This groundbreaking innovation also improves intonation — not only producing notes that are louder and with longer sustain, but are also more in tune with each other. Guitarists at Sweetwater are gobsmacked. But don’t take our word for it — pick up the superb Taylor 714ce and experience it for yourself!
Grand Auditorium body style delivers comfort, presence, and projection
Taylor’s beloved Grand Auditorium body style, featured on the 714ce, employs the width and depth of the Dreadnought. But its waist is narrower, which gives Grand Auditorium bodied acoustic guitars a sleeker look, with more treble zing. The Grand Auditorium body style also helps to sharpen the definition of each note — a quality desirable in any musical style. You’ll also find your Grand Auditorium guitar to be incredibly comfortable, whether you’re playing seated or standing.
An ideal tonewood combo for players with a light touch
For guitarists with a lighter touch, nothing beats the sound and response of a Western red cedar top. Less dense than spruce, cedar’s relative softness imparts warmth to the guitar’s sound. In contrast to Sitka’s full dynamic range, cedar amplifies quieter tones while imposing a natural limiting effect on high volume levels driven by aggressive string attack. That’s why players with a lighter touch — and especially fingerstylists — love cedar-top guitars. The dynamic range is ideal for them: their light touch is amplified a bit, and their attack never hits the ceiling. Conversely, flatpickers who tend to dig in with a heavy-gauge pick are likely to hit the ceiling quickly and may be frustrated by the inability to achieve a tonal output that matches the intensity of a strong attack.
Used for the back and sides of the 714ce, Indian rosewood’s extended frequency range and rich, musical tonality have elevated it to premium status among tonewoods. Its potent low end can serve up a throaty growl, while sparkling treble notes ring out with bell-like clarity. Slightly scooped in the midrange (as compared with mahogany), rosewood acoustic guitars are perfect for solo performance, vocal accompaniment, and tracking in sparser arrangements. Combine a large Grand Auditorium rosewood body with a cedar top, and you have a fingerpicker’s delight that’s also great for light-touch flatpickers.
Cutting-edge Taylor Expression System 2 electronics
If you play plugged in, then you’re going to love the Taylor Expression System 2 (ES2) electronics built into your 714ce. The key to this fantastic system is the three-section proprietary pickup located behind the saddle. Because of where it’s positioned and how it’s integrated into the 714ce’s saddle, the ES2 pickup provides you with remarkably clear and accurate sound. In addition to a master volume control, a pair of tone controls lets you tweak your highs and lows to get the sound you need, and a discreet phase switch offers vital onboard feedback suppression.
Taylor 714ce Acoustic-electric Guitar Features:
- Cedar top; Indian rosewood back and sides
- Bracing: V-Class with Relief Rout
- Venetian cutaway
- Koa binding
- Douglas fir herringbone rosette
- Tropical mahogany neck with satin finish
- West African ebony fingerboard with koa binding
- Abalone Reflections fingerboard inlay
- Headstock: ebony overlay, Reflections inlay
- Black graphite nut, Micarta saddle
- Scale length: 25.5 inches
- West African ebony bridge pins
- Taylor nickel tuning machines
- Gloss top, side, and back finish
