Taylor’s Sumptuous 814ce
Combining elegant aesthetics with sophisticated playability and tone-enhancing details, the 800 Series is Taylor’s incredibly popular class of premium rosewood guitars. The 814ce acoustic-electric plays very comfortably, thanks to its Grand Auditorium body, graceful Venetian cutaway, and ergonomically radiused rosewood armrest. Featuring beautiful premium solid tonewoods — a Sitka spruce top, Indian rosewood back and sides, a tropical mahogany neck, and a West African ebony fingerboard — the 814ce is the perfect studio and stage workhorse: brilliant in solo and sparse musical settings, and holding its own when tracked in thick arrangements. You’ll love the clear, balanced tone — a sound forged by Taylor’s revolutionary V-Class bracing and amplified flawlessly by the onboard Expression System 2 electronics. As your eyes drink in this instrument’s understated elegance, your hands savor its flawless playability, and your ears revel in its rich, organic tone, you’ll treasure your Taylor 814ce. It’s a feast for the senses.
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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 more in tune with each other. V-Class bracing 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. Pick up a Taylor with V-Class bracing and experience what guitarists at Sweetwater have already discovered.
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, 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. Slighted scooped in the midrange (as compared with mahogany), rosewood acoustic guitars are perfect for solo performance, vocal accompaniment, and tracking in sparser arrangements.
Grand Auditorium body style delivers exceptional presence
Taylor’s beloved Grand Auditorium body style, featured on the 814ce, employs the width and depth of a dreadnought, so it delivers prodigious volume that makes it a “tone cannon” in its own right. However, its waist is narrower, which gives Grand Auditorium bodied acoustic guitars more treble zing, along with improved playing comfort and a sleeker look. The 814ce’s Grand Auditorium body style also helps to sharpen the definition of each note you play, balancing out nicely with the excellent projection of its V-Class-braced Sitka spruce top.
Cutting-edge Taylor Expression System 2 electronics
If you play plugged in, you’re going to love the Taylor Expression System 2 (ES-2) electronics built into your 814ce. 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 guitar’s saddle, the ES-2 pickup provides you with remarkably clear and accurate sound. In addition to a master volume control, a pair of tone controls let you tweak your highs and lows to get the sound you need, and a discreet polarity switch offers vital onboard feedback suppression.
Taylor 814ce Acoustic-electric Guitar Features:
- Beautiful, solid premium tonewoods
- Sitka spruce top, Indian rosewood back and sides; gloss finish
- V-Class bracing with Relief Rout
- Venetian cutaway; maple binding; abalone rosette
- Tropical mahogany neck; satin finish
- West African ebony fingerboard, maple binding, MOP Element inlay
- Headstock: West African ebony overlay, maple binding, MOP Element inlay
- Ebony truss rod cover; black graphite nut
- West African ebony bridge, pins; Micarta saddle
- Taylor smoked nickel tuning machines
- Taylor ES-2 electronics
- Handcrafted by Taylor luthiers in California, USA
- Hardshell case included
