Hey folks. Hoping all are doing well. A day or so ago, I received my weekly e-flyer from The Arts Music Store, and as always i perused it, looking for something actually new, and to survey what had come in to used that week. Not to be snarky (much) but new to me does not mean yet another Strat or Les Paul in a different colour paint with the signature of someone I’ve never heard of before. To me, new, means actually new and different. In this flyer was a limited edition Taylor Grand Symphony body 8 string baritone acoustic. It’s marked GS because I suppose that takes less space than Grand Symphony, but being a cranky fellow I much prefer real names to yet another acronym. The guitar is a 3 series carrying the designation 326ce.

The Taylor 326ce Baritone 8 String

I enjoy baritone guitars, but I have only had success so far with baritone electric guitars. My most engaging is a Gretsch Electromatic, actually the upper neck of a double neck, but I also own a couple PRS SE 277 Baritones, one a semi-hollow with P90s and one a solid body with humbuckers. So I bring some experience to the table along with some baritone acoustic trials that did not work for me. The Taylor intrigued me enough to go try it out and I am grateful to the team at The Arts Music Store for affording me the time on my own, to play it for a while, do some quick field recordings and make an image or two.

The Taylor 326ce is a guitar made of solid woods, no veneers or laminates. The sides and back are marketed as Tropical Mahogany and the top and neck are marketed as Neo-Tropical Mahogany. As there are many different variants of mahogany, I cannot tell you exactly what variants are used, and unusual for the brand, the specs are not clear. According to Taylor, Tropical Mahogany originates in either Guatemala or India. From a wood expert perspective these would be subtly different but with consistency in characteristics in general. Taylor has a link to define Neo-Tropical Mahogany, but it goes nowhere and as Neo implies new or recent, it’s not clear what this means in real life. For the majority, it is irrelevant because the body sounds like an all mahogany guitar.

Taylor continues to use Crelicam ebony for their fingerboards, which as a great feel and a very natural ebony look. Real ebony is not jet black and the fingerboard on the guitar that I played has this character. With so many makers going to recycled paper based fingerboards like Richlite, I was personally enthused by the presence of actual wood. The body is finished in a darker burst with a satin top coat. The back of the neck is also satin and is very smooth to play. This body has a plastic pickguard/scratchplate. The tuners are black satin finished of a closed back design. They are consistent with other closed back Taylor tuners and are very smooth.

The nut is Graph-Tech Tusq and the bridge saddle is Micarta which is a typically epoxy dipped composite of other materials including possibly linen, canvas, paper or fibreglass. Micarta is very durable and is dimensionally stable.

The electronics are Taylor’s own Expression System 2 which uses sensors mounted to the underside of the bridge plate behind the saddle. The system still uses piezo electric crystals but places the sensors in the same orientation plane as the movement of the saddle, whereas most other piezo systems place the sensors under the saddle, perpendicular to its actual movement. Volume and tone controls are found as common on Taylor instruments on the outside of the forward upper bout. Power is delivered via an easily accessible 9 volt battery.

The guitar is shipped with Elixir Baritone Acoustic strings. Elixirs are coated for longer life, which is beneficial to many players.

The guitar has the common Taylor Grand Symphony body size but a longer scale length of 27 inches, appropriate to a guitar whose standard tuning is B to B, a perfect 4th below common E to E tuning.

This means that the chord shapes that you know all work as usual albeit a perfect 4th down. A capo on the 5th fret moves everything into regular E to E, but I confess I would wonder why one would invest in a baritone just to use it as a traditional six string.

Unlike my other baritones, and the acoustic baritones that have tried, bought, and not succeeded with, this instrument has eight strings. The third and fourth strings, counting towards the high B string, so A and D, have an octave pair string. The idea here is to add a shimmer to this lower tuned guitar reminiscent according to Taylor of a 12 string.

Playability

I find most all Taylor guitars comfortable and easy to play. I have bought Taylors in Grand Concert, Grand Auditorium, Grand Symphony and Grand Orchestra body sizes and retained all of them. The only body shape from Taylor that has never struck me is their Grand Pacific, possibly because I have other dreadnought style bodies that suit me just fine. The GS-326ce 8 is very comfortable with the expected comfortable Taylor neck carve. Fretwork is very good, and I experienced no fret sprout and the setup out of the box was excellent. Elixir strings have a feel and you either like them, don’t like them or don’t care. I could tell that they were Elixirs and they sounded as expected. Factory string gauge was not documented but these didn’t cause any pain or fatigue and I did not measure their gauge but they felt like a set of 12s.

The guitar has a traditional front sound hole and sounded as I expected a baritone to sound. The room I was in was enclosed for acoustic playing and I would say that the tonal response was neutral. There was less low end than I expected, and I had to work to hear the effect of the two octave strings. While auditory memory is never fully accurate, I could not hear anything fundamentally different from a six string acoustic baritone that I had tried out relatively recently.

I started with my usual heavier pick, in this case a pick made of amber buffalo horn, and things were fine. The thicker the pick, the less high end you tend to get. I tried a thinner flexible pick, but has is common for me, did not like either the feel or sound so went back to the horn pick. You really do have to try for yourself as preferences in picks varies enormously.

The range of acoustic amps available was limited and I did not plug in the guitar. I am aware of the characteristics of the available amplifiers and I do not like any of the ones in the room. I was concerned that an amp that I find to have tone that I dislike would colour my impressions of the guitar. Plus, I have a number of Taylor’s with the ES-2 system and know it well. For a piezo based system, it is usable, with a good EQ pedal and a proper compressor in the chain. However good they are, they still do not compare, from my perspective, with a K&K Pure Mini or an LR Baggs Lyric pickup system.

Audio Samples

I brought with me, a Zoom H6 field recorder. I used the clip-on XY microphone with each microphone set to 120 degree fields of coverage recording in 96Khz/24 bit WAV format. The unit was sitting on a padded cloth couch arm, as I did not have access to a stand that would provide a ¼-20 stud on which to mount the recorder. Note to self, get an adapter to convert that to a standard mic stand female thread. This is not how I would normally do a test recording which would involve a matched pair of RODE M5 microphones on a frame but needs must.

I disabled all the processing on the recorder, so any work done is noted below. As I had limited time before someone would fire up an amp in the next room, I had to do all the test recordings in a single take. I know my limitations, but you should know that there is no post production faffery going on here to fix my screwups. The samples were edited in Logic Pro. There is a Century Tube Channel Strip on the guitar track and a Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor used to preserve the dynamic range of the guitar on the final mix down.

My Conclusions

Not to be a smartass, it’s a Taylor. Excellent build quality, terrific neck, extremely neutral sounding, made of good woods. I think it is overpriced for what it is, but I think that is true for a lot of assembly line built guitars, although I give Taylor high marks for quality assurance for a USA built instrument. I didn’t hear the lower frequency response that I would want and expect from an acoustic baritone, and cannot blame the body size because GS is on the larger end of the scale. While the recordings picked up the ring of the octave strings, I cannot call their contribution shimmery or 12 string like. I think that a 10 string variant would be more effective in the baritone space, perhaps with a deeper lower bout. I did not try the guitar with the ES-2 pickup and if I had one here and could plug it direct into a decent preamp in the desk or to an AER amplifier, I might have a completely different perspective.

I did not find anything at all wrong with the guitar. But I have to confess that I did not hear, or feel anything that would compel me to find the money to buy one. I know Taylor makes guitars that do that, I own several, but this isn’t it. I’m also not a fan of satin finishes in general. I find that they make a beautiful instrument look like cheap offshore bolt together furniture. I’ve heard all the BS lines about why satin is better, but the statements do not hold up to science facts. An excellent gloss finish is harder work, takes longer and may cost a bit more, but makes an enormous difference in visual appeal. The finish should have no apparent difference in audio quality, however the porosity and nature of the finish materials definitely will impact the sound.

In fairness, I have not yet found any acoustic baritones that have made me want to crack my wallet, even though I play my electric baritones regularly. My understanding is that these Taylors are VERY limited instruments, so I would encourage you to try one out quickly before they are gone. Taylor has built 8 strings before, but none are ever standard run instruments.

Thank you as always for reading and listening. If you have any questions or comments, please send them in, I read and respond to all. Until next time, I am Ross Chevalier, and I bid you peace.