Taylor K24ce Builder's Edition - Kona Burst Reviews

I spent quite a bit of time reviewing options, online videos, etc. and narrowed down my choices between the Taylor 800 line and Takamine. Then I saw a video for the K24CE BE that made the decision very clear.

The balance of tone and rich harmonic structure of this guitar are.....incredible. Hold a chord and let it ring for sonic bliss. Pick hard or gentle finger or strum and this thing just sounds and feels amazing. I have some very nice electric guitars but this Taylor raises the level of what is possible in the player's soundscape. I cannot wait to track this through my Dangerous 2-Bus+.

I must give credit to my Sweetwater Sales Engineer Dave Brow - he helped steer me in the right direction on this amazing guitar! Highly recommended - get the Sweetwater Plek, tuned to your preferences, and they will pack it with care to arrive at your door! Thank you Dave and Sweetwater!

I really REALLY like this guitar. It is easily the best-sounding and most comfortable guitar I've ever played. Each string sounds balanced and it resonates forever. It looks pretty good too.

I could go on and on but all I'll say is that I've played a lot of high-end guitars and I own a bunch (an 814ce, a 717e, a T5z, an Ovation Celebrity Elite, and a GS mini, bought and sold a bunch more), and the K24ce BE is in a class of its own. I'm very happy with this one. You should pick one up! It's worthy.

I owned a true American guild, 1997, cut away with sadden finish and fishman electronics that I loved and played hard for many many years. This year my wife said I could replace it with a guitar that I plan to play forever. I've saved for a while, and now with basically a blank check, has faced with the proposition of what to buy for my forever guitar. I spent a very long time researching, watching videos, visiting music stores, and the more I came up with, the more confused I became about what I would purchase.

For a very long time I thought that my forever guitar would be a Martin or maybe a Gibson. My forever guitar definitely is not a Taylor; they are on the wrong side of the acoustic civil war. It's been hard for me to accept that the centerpiece of my music is a Taylor. And serious buyers remorse when I went home with it. I took it out of its case several times and stared at it; I played it put it back in the case; Even after purchase I watched more videos reviews about guitars.

After several hours over about a week of playing it became obvious to me. This is the greatest instrument I have ever held. It feels and sounds marvelous.

If I was building a one-off custom guitar, It would likely have a dark tone wood top, it would have a satin finish just like my guild, it would have a rich, warm middle. Despite some of my misgivings, this guitar checks off almost every box for what I would want. Literally the only thing I can think of, is that I would have asked for much less abalone. It's luster is more busy than my taste really accommodates. Despite this guitar is fairly ostentatious look, I really do like things to be fairly understated. I'm a sucker for beautiful wood grain, and this guitar has it and spades. But the abalone is a little much. I don't see it much while I'm playing it so it doesn't bother me, and the otherwise absolutely beautiful aesthetics make it so very very worth it. The non builders addition uses maple instead of abalone, and I would have preferred that probably here, but all of the other things including and especially the satin finish Make it well worth it.

Very simply, this is the finest instrument that I've ever held, much less played. I cannot believe I own it. If you are hemming and hawing over what to do, and this instrument looks interesting, just do it. It's that good. It was a slow burn for me at first, but I can tell you I am now in love.

After decades of playing and owning guitars I'd always told myself I'd get a really really nice guitar… someday. After seeing this guitar online and countless hours of research my gut feeling told me it had to be too good to be true. I took the gamble of a lifetime anyway and I could not be happier, because it is quite simply the nicest guitar I have ever seen or played. The playability is otherworldly, words and reviews don't do it justice and the purity of the sound and sustain are almost indescribable. Every detail is perfect, I keep noticing new great things about it every day. My Sales Engineer walked me through the entire process from selection to delivery and I will never go anywhere else but Sweetwater for my next purchase.

Stopped in the Taylor booth at Summer NAMM 2019 and played one of these for about an hour. I tried several different "Builder" models and kept coming back to this one. The comfort and tone of this guitar is simply hard to beat. This Builder model is on my wish list. The quality of the guitar is obvious to the eyes, ears, and hands. Nothing I picked up at NAMM beat it.

I purchased this Builder's Edition K24ce last September, 2019 when it first became available at Sweetwater. After nearly 3 month's of playing this guitar almost everyday, there's only word I could think of to describe it..from the craftsmanship to the sound, it's absolutely AMAZING! This is my 4th Taylor guitar and the one that will remain a family heirloom.
My special thanks to everyone at Sweetwater and to my good man who made all my request possible, Mr. Dennis Patrick..Thank you sir!

All the the things you've read are true. The intonation is superior, the hardwood top provides that compressed sound and it's voiced perfectly with no boominess regardless of attack. Truly an incredible instrument, that you will want to play, and I mean - you really want to hold it and play it. In addition, Mike Conyers and crew do such a great job and accommodated a last minute shipping change for me with no issues at all. You can't go wrong with Sweetwater. My fifth Taylor, btw

As an acoustic guitar, I find the K24CE Builder's Edition to be perfect in every way. Playability and tone are as good or better than anything else I played. Intonation is perfect and playing in the upper registers is literally music to the ears. If you are considering this type of investment in a guitar, you owe it to yourself to give a K24CE-BE a try. All the little Builders Edition upgrades / changes are excellent and worth the extra spend.

Cosmetically I had a few minor misgivings at first, which are slowly fading as each day passes:
1) I thought the liberal use of abalone shell for adornment seemed excessive (I'm looking at you binding), but I don't see it when I play it and everyone who watches me play seems to think it's pretty nice. I'm getting used to it and the acoustic excellent sound performance makes it easy to forget about a little extra bling.
2) I might have been happier if the KOA was left natural rather than stained (Kona Burst). But the darker parts certainly help all that abalone shell really stand out (hmmmmm.....).

Now I come to the ES2 system. In short, I dislike it. After a week of adjusting the pickups, experimenting with different pick types and eq adjustments along the signal chain the best I can get is a barely tolerable sound. I haven't tried different strings yet and probably won't. The K24 sounds great acoustically. Why mess it up trying to get better tone out of the ES2? I've got other acoustic electric guitars that sound much better plugged in (but not as good acoustically).

I find that the ES2 system seems to magnify string, pick and body sounds way more than it does the musical tone of the strings. Especially the D and G strings. It has a tendency to sound very harsh and metallic. Another annoying point is that the musical signal from the ES2 is very quiet (as opposed to the string and pick noise which seems plenty loud). I would never perform live plugged in with this guitar. Playing acoustically or with a good mic gives great results. If you have any intention of playing live plugged in, you absolutely need to try it plugged in before you buy.

Taylor tech support didn't really have much to offer in way of suggestions for taming the ES2.

Overall, I give it 4 stars. It's a 5 acoustically which is most important to me. The ES2 system is at best a 3 in my opinion. I can live with it solely as an acoustic guitar, but it does bug me that I paid for electronics that I just can't seem to be satisfied with. Knowing what I know today I'm glad I bought the guitar and I would do so again (only I would ask if I could get it without the ES2 system.)

I have a Taylor K26ce and I absolutely love it. I was waiting for this series of guitar to come out in the Builder's Edition with V Bracing. While I like the guitar, I do not like it as much as my K26ce. The K26ce to me is a much warmer sounding guitar though I will say this is a much louder guitar and has better fit and finishes. And it stays in tune!

The finish was a little darker than I was expecting and I've read reviews on other sites that said they didn't like it but it has sort of grown on me. I definitely do not hate it like another reviewer wrote on another site.

I am not a professional player (only play for my church) and am happy to be able to afford two Taylor high end models. If I didn't have another Koa guitar I probably would've gave this guitar 5 stars. I will definitely give Roq Martin and others on the sales team 5 stars, though. They have bent over backwards to make sure I am happy.