Jumbo Sunshade, Blogpost - Taylor Classic SC Solidbody Electric Guitar

Jumbo Sunshade - Blogpost

Hand's Off! Review
Taylor Classic SC (Single Coil) Solidbody Electric Guitar
page 2 of 5

THE BODY
Taylor calls this guitar a solidbody but let's be honest;
        this is not a true solid body.  In order for an electric 
        guitar to be considered a solid body i think that the body needs to be
        solid.  This line of Taylor guitars feature chambered bodies 
        "primarily to lighten the body weight" and also in order to "create 
        the optimal acoustic 'bloom'".
This guitar is already really 
        thin so i'm not sure why it would need to be lightened, but it's 
        all a matter of preference obviously.
Now i'm not saying that 
        chambering is a bad thing - i borrowed a Carvin Holdsworth H2 for 
        about a month and i loved it: i'm just pointing this out because 
        Taylor is often misleading in their claims (and literature).

 

The neck is held on by one bolt, which might not seem like a good idea, but with the way the joint is routed it apparently works out really well.

With Taylor's trademarked "T-lock" neck joint, the single neck bolt pulls the neck down into the body back toward the bridge.

Gotta admit that is really cool-looking. hehe
Anyway, this is what gives the Taylor electric guitars more of a set neck look and feel. It's great!

The guitar does look well-balanced due to the short scale length and the chambering. It's probably very comfortable. But as i mentioned previously; even with the lack of a huge neck heel on the Taylor Classic i just don't see this guitar being any easier to play up in the higher registers because the cutaway they went with isn't aggressive enough and that shorter scale means the body comes at you alot quicker up there.

If the Taylor engineers were already planning on going with a shorter scale then that's great that they'd also be able to easily develop the neck joint the way they did (even if they didn't really *need* to).
If on the other hand their first priority was to do something different with the neck joint and then they had to shorten the scale length to make it effective, i think it was a mistake.
Obviously you can have a short scale guitar where all the frets are basically completely accessible even while standing and/or for players who weren't blessed with long fingers.

I'd really like to know what role their market research had in the design choices they went with. If they didn't do any market research at that stage then they weren't doing themselves or their customers any favors.

I could be totally wrong on the short scale / neck joint / cutaway thing; but this all just feels like one big set of compromises to me.

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