Unsoft's List

h a r d w o o d

I bought one of these as sort of a graduation present for myself, back in 1993. They are handmade instruments, with consistent playability, a distinctive sound, and understated good looks. I wanted a lifetime instrument, in the tradition of my grandfather's Martin D35®. Something that would see my fingers and wrists through to the end of their serviceable life, and possibly even serve the (as of then unmaterialized) next generation.

Handmade instruments aren't as cheap as I am, so I ended up selecting one of the lower-high end models and opting for some inexpensive customization. I had played one in my local dealer's showroom, and the overall tone is very bright, if a little lacking in presence. To compensate for this, I asked that the spruce top be satin finished like the rest of the guitar. The glossy finish tends to make a nice hardwood take on some of the tonal characteristics of a laminate top. Plus, it looks cool. Nobody can mistake that for some kind of plywood, even at a distance.

Additionally, I speced out a pickup for it that I theorized would be slightly more sensitive to the compression waves traveling through the body, making the "plugged in" sound more rich. It's such a disappointment to listen to a really fine acoustic instrument get plugged in to an amp and be instantly transformed into Fisher-Price My First Guitar™.

Well, the Taylor people were fantastic. They put it together exactly like I imagined, and I've been playing it nearly exclusively since 1993. The surprise came a few years later, when I walked into a showroom in another city and saw literature for a new model (in one of their cheaper machine-made series). It was the same body style and size, and the exact same pickup I speced out for mine.

Inadvertently, I had stumbled onto a decent configuration. The company literature promoted the guitar as an affordable means of acheiving high-end sound. The cheapo knockoff was one of their most successful production models, and its legacy can still be easily discerned when browsing the most recent catalogs.

I've seen the bastard progeny of my pedigreed lifetime instrument ever-increasingly through the last decade, with their multi-piece designs, laminate tops, machine-cut joints and other telltale signs of genetic inferiority. Oh how I should hate them. Hate them with the convition of a thousand Hitlers. I should hate them like the Klan hates. Mindlessly. Completely. Categorically. I should hate them for how they're made, and what they propose to be.

But, I don't.

As a matter of fact, I'm kinda proud.

I can't help but open my ears, and apparently my mind eventually follows them wherever they go. The guitars that are based on my custom model sound great. What's more, people can afford them and some of the coolest people out there making music share my appreciation.
Not all gifted musicians have gifted bank accounts, right?

In the end, I see it an an access issue. Why shouldn't nice sound and sexy playability be something we all can enjoy? Plus, they record nice, so quality gets added to the archived workbase of artists worldwide.

Even cooler is this. Because of the success of Taylor Guitars™, Late 90's business models (you remember them? the ones where small investors and other regular people made money as opposed to late 80's/early 21st century models where nearly all money is accumulated under corporate leadership) were a growth environment for handmade high-quality musical instruments with innovative design. Today's musicians have many choices of investment purchase that we could have never imagined in the 80's.

These days, when I see and hear a cheapo knockoff of my expensive investment being used at some trailerpark bar to thrill the panties off a local cutie with big silver earrings, I imagine the hardwood grandfather of it all, at home in its case, gathering age and weather, smelling like smoke and old wood, and sounding better and better every day, and my little heart swells up with pride at what I used to think might have been the greatest contribution I would ever make to the world.

Now, of course, I know better.