Taylor’s Superb 814ce DLX with V-Class Bracing
Combining elegant aesthetics with tone-enhancing details, the 800 Series is Taylor’s incredibly popular class of rosewood guitars. The 814ce DLX 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. If you’re a guitarist who appreciates the robust lows and crisp highs of rosewood topped with Sitka spruce, 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 814ce DLX’s tasteful appointments and deluxe upgrades, which include a comfortable radius-style rosewood armrest, rosewood top trim, maple binding and fingerboard/peghead purfling, precision 21:1 Gotoh 510 tuners, and a silky-smooth smoky ebony fingerboard with mother-of-pearl Element inlays.
Related Videos: 814ce Deluxe V-Class Acoustic-Electric Guitar - Natural with Sitka Spruce 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.
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, producing notes that are not only louder and have 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 814ce DLX and experience it for yourself!
Grand Auditorium body style delivers exceptional presence
Taylor’s beloved Grand Auditorium body style, featured on the 814ce DLX, 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 814ce DLX’s Grand Auditorium body style also helps to sharpen the definition of each note, balancing out nicely with the excellent projection of its Sitka spruce top.
A classic tonewood combination
Nothing beats the sound of rosewood topped with spruce. As a top tonewood, Sitka spruce offers a combination of strength and elasticity that delivers a broad dynamic range with crisp articulation that’s ideal for a wide range of playing styles, from delicate fingerpicking to aggressive flatpicked strumming. Used for the back and sides of the 814ce DLX, 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.
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 814ce DLX. The key to this fantastic system is the 3-section proprietary pickup located behind the saddle. Because of where it’s positioned and how it’s integrated into the 814ce DLX’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 814ce DLX Acoustic-Electric Guitar Features:
- Sitka spruce top; Indian rosewood back and sides
- Bracing: V-Class with relief rout
- Venetian cutaway
- Radius-style rosewood armrest
- Maple body binding; abalone rosette, rosewood pickguard
- Tropical mahogany neck with satin finish
- West African ebony fingerboard with ebony binding and mother-of-pearl Element inlay
- Headstock: West African ebony overlay with ebony binding, mother-of-pearl Element inlay
- Maple fingerboard and peghead purfling
- West African ebony truss rod cover
- Black graphite nut, Micarta saddle
- Scale length: 25.5"
- West African ebony bridge pins with abalone dots
- Gotoh 510 tuning machines with 21:1 gear ratio
- Gloss 3.5 top, side, and back finish
