Jumbo Sunshade, Blogpost - Taylor Classic SC Solidbody Electric Guitar

Jumbo Sunshade - Blogpost

Hand's Off! Review
Taylor Classic SC (Single Coil) Solidbody Electric Guitar
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        Oh man where do i begin?  I  should probably start by saying  that i am 
        a fan of Taylor acoustic guitars, but instead i think i'll say...  
        Déjà nu.Bob Taylor is constantly bragging about how original and unique they 
        are at Taylor guitars.  In talking about the inspiration for their 
        solid body guitars he said

        "...we've never strived to be a version of another manufacturer's 
        guitar. And with that as our legacy, I've always felt that an electric 
        guitar were a possibility  [sic] we would have to move into it with ideas that 
        we think are our own ideas..."
On the 
        Taylor website they state "Taylor's solid body electric was 
        designed entirely from the ground up,..."
And what does Taylor's "ground up" design team produce?  A 
        flat-top Gibson Les Paul copy.  It sports mini humbuckers and comes in three flavors: Classic,
        Standard & Custom.
It might be tempting to assume that when it came time for Taylor to 
        design a single-coil solid body electric guitar entirely from the ground 
        up, it'd look like a Stratocaster.  But no...

 

Behold the Taylor Classic SC electric solidbody guitar!

When i look at this guitar, what i see is a Taylor acoustic guitar neck bolted onto a Fender Stratocaster body which has been cut into the shape of a Gibson Les Paul. I'm not trying to be mean; that's just my own personal opinion on this guitar.

But i think that it's even worse with the 3 single-pole (i refuse to call these single coil) pickups because now this short scale guitar looks like something you might find at Walmart or Toys-R-Us. I'm serious: picture a built-in speaker or skulls (or flames) and "your little rocker is ready to roll."

Obviously Taylor has to contend with two things here: 1. Make sure this LP copy is dissimilar

enough from a Gibson LP for legal reasons. 2. Additionally create something that would make people want to choose the Taylor Les Paul copy over an Epiphone or Gibson Les Paul. At least that was the case with their dual humbucking models.

But even with that in mind, i'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the overall design of the Taylor solid body electric (dual humbucking and 3 single-pole models) including the shorter scale.

On a Les Paul, there is a huge neck heel to contend with and nowhere for your thumb to go, but the top of the body starts near the 16th fret which means the cutaway doesn't begin to

hit your hand until around the 20th fret.

On a Strat you have a different kind of neck heel and of course the upper cutaway can change things with thumb placement; but the lower cutaway starts near the 20th fret which means that you're basically

clear all the way up depending on how you wear your guitar (and the size of your hands).

On the Taylor Classic there really is no substantial "neck heel" to speak of (more on this later), however:
the top of the body hits the neck at the 15th fret

and the cutaway starts to curve down around the 18th fret. To make playability worse, the cutaway is not at all aggressive and immediately moves out away from the neck - you just can't avoid dealing with the lower body.

There is a very deep bevel within the cutaway, but that's probably only going to help with the E, B and G strings.

For those people who always play sitting down, and for those who wear their guitars higher up, i suppose Taylor's choice in cutaway design wouldn't be too much of a problem.

But i think for most other people, it would probably be a drag playing up on the E, A & D. I

can't imagine fretting barr chords up there - just seems like it would suck (think James Brown or Maroon 5).

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