Sweetwater's Rustic Rendition of Taylor's Flagship 814ce
Featuring an earthy Terra Cotta finish and all the upgrades of Taylor’s cutting-edge Next Generation series, this stage-ready Taylor 814ce Special Edition is available only at Sweetwater. As an 800 series creation, this instrument’s body boasts Indian rosewood back and sides, tempering the sweetness and clarity of the Sitka spruce top with a deep, full, and overtone-rich flavor. Atop the Standard Carve neotropical mahogany neck sits a smoky ebony fingerboard set with gleaming mother-of-pearl inlays in Taylor’s Shell pattern. You also get an elevated set of visual appointments, including maple binding, rosewood purfling, a beveled armrest, and smoked nickel Taylor tuners. Trailblazing Next Generation upgrades tie this exclusive 814ce together, including road-proven Claria electronics, an easily adjustable Action Control neck joint, and Scalloped V-Class bracing for a deeper and more responsive tone. It all adds up to a charming, Western-inspired take on Taylor’s most cherished model, granting you classic 814ce tones with a look that’s sure to draw in your audience.
Related Videos: Next Generation 814ce Special Edition Acoustic-electric Guitar - Terra Cotta, Sweetwater Exclusive
Time-tested 800-series tonewoods
Despite its distinctive finish, our Sweetwater-spec'd Taylor carries the traditional 814ce tonewood torch with a Sitka spruce top and rosewood back and sides. Sitka spruce’s round, responsive, and sweet-sounding voice makes it a superb selection for the ever-versatile Grand Auditorium platform. Next, Indian rosewood back and sides impart an overtone-dense character with deep lows and articulate highs. Paired with Taylor’s iconic Grand Auditorium body style, our Sweetwater-designed Taylor 814ce Special Edition sings with fingerstyle-ready balance, flatpicking punch, and a dynamic response.
Plug-and-play Claria System electronics
Road-tested and refined for over two years with the world's biggest touring acts, Taylor’s Claria System represents the next step in the brand’s ceaseless pursuit of acoustic-electric excellence. As opposed to the more sensitive and microphone-like performance of Taylor’s ES2, the Claria System features a single under-saddle piezo transducer paired with a powerhouse preamp to supply you with the warmest, most accurate acoustic-electric tone possible with the least amount of tweaking required — simply plug in, adjust your sound to taste via the Volume, Tone, and Mid-Contour controls, and you’re ready to go.
So, how does the Claria System differ from a typical under-saddle pickup? Taylor’s expert engineers built Claria from the ground up to overcome the most endemic challenges of standard under-saddle setups, allowing the system to perform free from piezo distortion and avoid unwanted frequencies with its clear and focused voice. Moreover, Claria also avoids clipping by gain staging the preamp and the controls within the preamp. As for tone shaping, Claria’s Mid-Contour control offers a vast sweep of dynamic sounds to explore, from smooth, rhythm-ready warmth to a midrange-forward timbre that promotes lead playing and fingerpicking to the forefront of the mix. For the guitarist seeking a plug-and-play system that preserves their guitar's inherent acoustic character and excels in any environment without a fuss, Taylor’s Claria System is as good as it gets.
Rich and responsive Scalloped V-Class bracing
First launched in 2018, Taylor’s V-Class bracing revolutionized the brand’s sound with one of the most innovative advancements in steel-string technology in nearly a century. Here, Taylor has changed the game once again, tweaking the forward-thinking formula of V-Class by precisely paring away material from key locations of each brace.
The result is Taylor’s Scalloped V-Class architecture, a design that preserves all the defining sonic features of standard V-Class bracing with a more muscular bass response and a softer, warmer blend among notes. Strum an open cowboy chord, and Scalloped V-Class delivers the familiar low-end thump and harmonic cohesion that’s most often associated with typical X-braced instruments. However, as a direct descendant of Andy Powers’s original V-Class design, Scalloped V-Class bracing preserves the former’s spot-on pitch accuracy, rich sustain, impeccable balance, and crisp note-to-note definition — especially as you venture farther up the fingerboard with complex chords, intricate fingerpicked patterns, and rapid-fire leads.
Cutting-edge Action Control neck joint
Taylor has led the charge in neck joint technology for decades, from Bob Taylor’s earliest bolt-on experiments to the dawn of the easily adjustable NT Neck at the turn of the 20th century. Under the leadership of Andy Powers, Taylor has once again pushed the boundaries of steel-string design with the Action Control Neck, a trailblazing bolt-on system that allows you to adjust the neck angle without requiring removal of the neck or strings.
From fine adjustments to optimizing the neck’s pitch over the top, the Action Control Neck gives you the power to set your string height from shred-ready specs to a higher, strum-friendly action with the turn of a bolt. Moreover, it also transforms repairs that generally require major surgery on traditional glued-in dovetail joints (such as neck resets) into a routine procedure. Best of all, the Action Control Neck’s long-tenon joint protrudes well into the heel to properly mate your guitar’s neck and body, increasing the stiffness of the heel and resulting in a deeper tone with greater low-end resonance, even on higher notes.
Taylor 814ce Special Edition Next Generation Features:
- A Western-inspired spin on Taylor’s flagship 814ce that you can only get at Sweetwater
- Vibrant Sitka spruce top with a handsome Terra Cotta finish rings with a rich, sweet, and balanced response
- Indian rosewood back and sides round out your sound with formidable bass and overtone-laden highs
- Scalloped V-Class bracing boosts low-end performance and results in a warmer, richer resonance
- Ultra-versatile Taylor Grand Auditorium body shape, complete with a comfortable Venetian cutaway for superior fingerboard access
- Fast-playing Taylor Standard Carve mahogany neck
- Smooth-as-glass smoky ebony fingerboard MOP Shell inlays
- Claria under-saddle electronics system provides acoustic-accurate tones and plug-and-play simplicity
- Beveled armrest is easy on your arm during long gigs and sessions
- Rock-solid Taylor tuning machines in a smoked nickel finish
- Action Control neck joint system gives users the ability to set the neck’s angle, allowing for easy action adjustment
- Long-tenon neck joint enhances your sound with a deep low-end resonance and a fuller-bodied tone
