A Guitar Quandary
Hello folks. I am writing this over the course of a short evaluation of the Taylor T5z. I’ve played one before in a comparison I did between it, a traditional acoustic guitar and a Fender Acoustasonic. I kept wanting to like the Acoustasonics and thinking that I was continually missing something. Time and trials passed and I decided that I was not missing anything and that despite trying many different models, in the end, they never passed muster. At that time, I used the T5z, graciously loaned by The Arts Music Store in Newmarket Ontario. I have done business with this store for over thirty years now and find their fabulous staff and incredible inventory options incredible for what started as a small town music store. But I digress as I often do.
Yesterday, an e-flyer arrived detailing the availability of a new Taylor T5z in Blackheart and Sassafras. In the photograph it looked stunning. It was also priced much lower than the beautiful denim version that I had tried about a year ago, so I made a request to try this one for the purpose of making a purchase decision, and not for doing a review, so this is not a review, just a story about what I learned and liked (ok that’s a review) and the purchase quandary I find myself in.
Day One
I picked the guitar up at the store. It comes in what Taylor calls a hard shell case. This bears no resemblance to the Taylor cases already in my storage area. It looks like a gig bag, but it is completely rigid and perfectly fitted to the guitar. It’s also quite lightweight. Sort of an interesting cross between a high end MONO gig bag and a classic hard case. Very impressive.
When I opened the case up, my stomach dropped. Where was the beauty I had seen in the photograph? While I believe a guitar should primarily be judged by its sound and playability, I do want it to be pleasing to my eye, like beautiful wood artistry. To my chagrin and disappointment, it is finished in what I consider cheap and ugly satin. I know that this is a trend that Taylor is following, and I was even told by a Taylor rep that a satin finish has less impact on the tone than a gloss finish. While I am not a chemist, I know enough to know that this is pure BS. It’s simply less expensive to apply and polish than a fine gloss finish. If the statements were true, the finest grand pianos would all be satin. They are not and I could find no science supporting this claim. Taylor is not the only company going the ugly satin route, but they are to me, the largest disappointment.
Crestfallen to the extent that one can be with a general availability retail product, I elected to play the guitar unplugged. I got what I expected. The tone is thin, overly bright and rather boomy in the low frequencies without any inspirational qualities. As I say, it is precisely as expected. A body this narrow in terms of depth with only cosmetic f holes in the top would not have a good acoustic tone, particularly when covered with a plastic feeling satin finish and a giant plastic plate in the back.
The back of the neck is smooth, and the fretwork superb. The ebony fingerboard looks like the ebony from Taylor’s African venture and shows the natural streaking of un-dyed ebony. If I may be so bold, it’s a standard Taylor neck with a 24 ⅝ scale length, smooth and very playable. I also noted that it was strung with electric strings. I have not at this time measured them or checked specifications but they feel like 11s or maybe 12s. Certainly playable, but heavier than I would normally play. I’ve done the recording and response test with different gauges and can confirm from actual measurement that the perception that heavier gauge strings produce better tone and sustain is not accurate. The late great BB King was right. There is no good reason to work too hard pressing strings to a fretboard. So note to self, if I buy the guitar, the factory strings come off and on go my standard set of Curt Mangan coated 9.5 - 44 strings. But not before that fretboard gets a good coat and buff of Monty’s Instrument Food.
I then plugged the guitar into my AER Tommy Emmanuel Compact 60. The only difference in the Tommy Emmanuel version is the that DI out is post effects and the generic delay is replaced by a very lovely representation of the Alesis Microverb Reverb / Delay that Mr. Emmanuel prefers. The AER is known for being completely pristine and transparent and as such is the bane of earhole piercing and nasal piezo pickups. My signal path to the amp is guitar to an EQ2 equalizer, then an Empress Mark II compressor then the amp. For my first play the EQ2 was bypassed as was the compressor. I set the tone controls to neutral and the volume on the guitar at about ⅓ and also left the AER’s brilliant tone stack completely flat and the effects all off.
The T5z has a hidden body pickup, an under the top neck humbucker and a visible bridge humbucker that looks from the front like the lipstick pickups in my old Danelectro. Definitely not a Dano pickup. There’s a five position selector on the upper bout side and after looking up what they did, I found the following deliverables
Body Pickup and Neck Pickup
Neck Pickup Only
Bridge Pickup Only
Neck and Bridge Pickups in Serial
Neck and Bridge Pickups in Parallel
While I could definitely hear the movements of my arm in position one, and any tapping of the body does come through, I find that I like that option best, and played in that and occasionally the second position for about an hour. I eventually raised the treble control about ⅓ from neutral to full on because I felt that it was getting overridden by the wonderful bass tone. My fingertips were feeling a bit sore, so I set the guitar on a stand and switched to my Boucher Adirondack Spruce over Claro Walnut small body acoustic. The Boucher sounds magnificent, but I am surprised in a very positive way by the sound of the Taylor. Very different, but the Boucher wins a side by side every time given that this is an unfair comparison.
Day Two
I started the day by plugging the guitar directly into an Apollo interface so I could record each pickup selection when playing the same chord progression. Science informs us that our perceived auditory memory is quite inaccurate and very malleable so I wanted recordings that I could keep coming back to and play off each other.
My setup was very straightforward. Flat tone on the guitar. Volume at the midway point. The line in on the Apollo was set high enough to stay in the green with heavy strokes going into the orange but never into the red where clipping occurs. I set up Logic Pro with a single audio track and no preloaded processing or effects. I then played each selector position back to myself several times. Without any engineering or production effects, I found the Neck Pickup only position to be preferable as the neck plus body got a bit woofy. The bridge pickup alone sounds not useful to me, although I have heard something like it on many records over the years. I cannot decide whether I prefer the serial or parallel pickup selection, over the other and without any production work, and no proper preamp plugin, the neck pickup position was the most preferred.
Of course, I could not leave it that way. So on the actual instrument track I inserted a UA Neve 1073 preamp. I left the eq on the Neve completely flat. I really like the tonal effect of the 1073 on acoustic guitars while I prefer other preamps for electric guitars and for vocals. There is a very subtle warmth to the 1073. I did not find that the frequency response was bad in the recordings and didn’t do any treble boost at all. I did employ a low shelf filter set to a rapid rolloff starting at 60 hz to reduce any ultra low frequency boom. In fairness to the Taylor, I did not see or hear any serious effect by engaging the filter but as I tend to use one as a matter of course, I left it on. I then split the track output sending to the stereo output in dual mono directly rolled off a bit and at full signal strength to a bus track containing a Teletronix LA-2A Silver compressor in Mono to Stereo mode. I found that I liked the effect of the compressor with the peak reduction at 40 and the gain increased to keep the volume level neutral when the compressor was engaged. I used the UA plugin, because it is the best of all the LA-2A plugins that I own, and the LA-2A because I prefer it on vocals and acoustic instruments given that it is an optical compressor and not an FET compressor. That track went on to another bus with the UA Ocean Way Studios plugin set for guitars and reverb and not re-micing. I used three virtual microphones in this plugin, all condensers. All were set in stereo mode and all had the same output level and completely neutral pan positions. The microphones selected were Neumann U84s in about 2 feet away, Neumann K184s about 12 feet away and Neumann U67s about 20 feet away. Reverb mix was at about 30%. These engineering settings gave life and space to the flat recorded signal and also gave a nice smooth mono to stereo conversion without the artefacts of a Widener plugin.
The final production step was to use a WLM plugin on the output stage to deliver EBU -9 level control as required by broadcast. I do this for all the different podcasts that I work on to ensure compliance with all online platforms.
I offer these final produced recordings in a single instance for your reference, played in the order of the pickup selector noted above. As Day Two ends, I have played again for about an hour, using the AER amp, with the effect setting to the Alesis Multiverb at about 25% mix, the eq section flat and the treble turned up marginally on the guitar. Played live, I have so far decided that the neck pickup plus body pickup is my favourite configuration. I figured out how to light the guitar for photography so the beauty of the wood comes through and that it is actually a plasticky satin is not evident. I will do photography of the instrument and post it here prior to the end of my evaluation period. As I put the guitar into its stand for the night, I am struck by how easy it is to play, how great it sounds through the AER amp and when a recording is produced to my liking and how appealing it is so long as I don’t look at it too closely. I am now starting the cost / value mental conversation given that of the five pickup positions, I see myself only using two the majority of the time, that my acoustics that have Pure Mini pickups sound better consistently and that I really dislike the satin. As of today, I would not spend $2899 for this guitar before tax. I think the massive price increases that happened during the pandemic are ludicrous, and this is true for all USA made instruments, so not just Taylor, and Taylor to their credit do not appear to have forsaken quality control the way that I have found Gibson and Fender to have done. They’ve all gone down the satin finish road, and that will generally be a show stopper for me, the same way that fake aging is a complete show stopper for me as well.
Day Three
On this day, I had little time to play being bound to the computer on a work project, but I did take the time to review all the different T5z models. It’s important to note that while the woods used and the finishes used vary by model, the core characteristics as well as the electronics are identical across all models. The Classic is what I obtained. The DLX is a Classic that is all mahogany with a gloss finish. The Standard models have a painted top, a couple of bursts and and an all black, and a gloss finish. The Pro series have figured tops with transparent colours, including Denim Blue and Borriega Red. The Standard and Pro models also feature neck and body binding in white plastic. Personally the white is VERY white, like over whitened teeth that sort of glows in a creepy way, so not my thing. I have played the Pro in Denim and it feels like the Classic and sounds like the Classic, so the choice to move up the line and to spend what can be a lot more money is all based around appearance. Wood always makes a difference in tone, but interestingly, in a high quality acoustic amplifier like an AER, I cannot hear any significant difference.
Day Four
My last day with the guitar, I spent the time mostly doing evaluations into electric guitar amplifiers. I found the body pickup position to be a very much a non-starter in an electric amp. The neck and serial or parallel positions were ok, but not special in any way. The bridge pickup position was, in my opinion, weedy and horrible into a clean amp, and was only useful if you had an overdrive pushed a bit hard in the path. I used a Nobels ODR-1 and it was ok. Using an Effectrode Mercury Tube Fuzz it was actually pretty darn good. I then moved from my Hot Rod IV Deluxe / Bassman wet / dry right to the Tone King Gremlin. Into the clean channel the guitar was ok, into the lead channel which is always pushing the preamp into overdrive it was better, but it couldn’t compare, in my opinion, with even a Strat bridge only position, which is rarely a playing choice for me.
Conclusions
So what did I get from this exercise. First a confirmation that I really dislike satin finishes on guitars and while I own a couple of guitars like this, I would be dissuaded from any instrument at this price point that has a satin finish. They just look cheap and incomplete. The maker commentary that satin breathes better and delivers a richer soundscape doesn’t stand up in practice and just sounds like marketing foo foo dust. Second, a confirmation that regardless of finish, the T5z beats every iteration of and Fender Acoustasonic so far into the ground, that this isn’t even a contest. If one is looking at an electric acoustic, there is no need to waste any time on an Acoustasonic when the T5z exists. It is superior in every way and doesn’t have that really grating modelled Fishman sound that makes the Acoustasonic so unappealing. Third, electric acoustics strung with electric strings are more balanced and easier to play at any level of skill. Another win for Taylor. Fourth, while they do sound ok acoustically, for any kind of proper tonal response you need an acoustic amplifier and to do justice to the guitar, that means an AER, or in the unlikely event that you can find one a Da Capo 75. Fifth, the guitar sounds really nice but at nearly $3000 CAD for the simplest model and over $4000 CAD for one of the nicer finished models, you could get two guitars. One an acoustic electric that is excellent without an amplifier and a great electric built for the purpose. One guitar does not replace two, despite a strong effort to do so. I really appreciate the opportunity to go deep on the instrument but the Classic finish does nothing for me, and the Standard and Pro pricing is to my mind way over the line. I will look at the DLX when it comes in to see if the gloss finish changes my mind. It may but it’s a poly finish and they do not appeal to me the way that nitro does. Again, if you do want a single instrument, that is an electric acoustic, I think the T5z is your best option.
