If Bob Taylor can convince you, a maple acoustic is in your GAS future....

[Guitarsan]

Really interesting article in the November 2014 issue of GuitarPlayer magazine. "Bob Taylor On the Future of Tonewoods".

Pick up the issue if you can, it's a wide ranging interview that talks about wood sustainability and what Taylor's doing about it, but the most intriguing thing to me that he talked about is.... maple.

First, he said he wants to get folks away from GASing (my paraphrase) for another exotic "unobtanium" scarce tonewood for their 27th guitar and consider more widely available tonewoods [like maple].(I feel compelled to add here, yes, this is tongue in cheek, a colorful way to illustrate the demand out there for guitars.)

Turns out maple is grown in America (in 50 or 60 years, compared with 250+ years for spruce.)

Excerpts:

".... our project [Andy Powers and Bob] for this whole year has been to redesign the maple guitars. Why don't we sell more maple guitars? One, people think they're too bright sounding. Well, Andy can fix that. Two, 90 percent of people simply don't want a blonde guitar.......Andy figured that out. He just dogged it until he came up with a staining method that gives us beautiful colors......It's kind of funny how you've never seen a rosewood violin.....Andy said to me 'I know how to make a guitar out of maple that will sound like a guitar I want to play'......he changed the back bracing a lot...the top bracing is different too, in the way......"

Once again, Bob Taylor has taken on as his personal job figuring out the sustainability problem before he rides off into the sunset. Interesting to hear the guy talk about 100 years from now.....and yes, on so many levels Bob is one of my heroes.

[JimB1]

I'd be more interested in cherry and sycamore but maple is nice in large body guitars, never really liked maple in small body guitars. Really, mahogany seems to be in pretty good shape environmentally though so I'm good with that and
Sapele. Maple makes nice fretboards though...
-Jim

[Treenewt]

I remember seeing something about their project in maple a month or so ago...it's intriguing to me, as I've yet to play one that I really liked. Based on Andy's work with the 800 series, I'd love to see what he can do with maple.

[broken thumb]

I've wanted a 616 forever. It was the first Taylor I ever played that made me say, "I have to have one of those." But I never bought it because it only sounded really, really good to me when played with other instruments, and I usually play alone. Alone, it was just okay, and my 314 sounds more interesting.

[Joe F]

It will be interesting to see what Andy can do with Maple. I had a 614ce for a short time. One of the best plugged in guitars I ever had for cutting through a band mix with it's bright sound, quick decay and minimal overtones.

These same qualities however made it a miserable front porch/couch picker and I ditched it quickly.

[PTC Bernie]

I have an older 612 spruce over maple, and whole it's not the be all and end all, it's a great guitar and stones out in a crowd.

[Long Jon]

Originally Posted by PTC Bernie

I have an older 612 spruce over maple, and whole it's not the be all and end all, it's a great guitar and stones out in a crowd.

I've done that myself, a few times ...

[dgonz]

Well, I'm a former Taylor guy that switched to Martin. But, I have no problem saying that Bob Taylor is amazing at what he does. He runs his company well, makes amazing guitars that are arguably some of the best in the world, bar none. Beautiful works of art, top notch customer service and takes care of his customers. I haven't seen a guitar come out of his factory that was anything less than precision, perfection and beautiful. I have no doubt he'll rock these out and they'll do extremely well. Looking forward to seeing them!

[beachbum205]

Originally Posted by Guitarsan

Once again, Bob Taylor has taken on as his personal job figuring out the sustainability problem before he rides off into the sunset. Interesting to hear the guy talk about 100 years from now.....and yes, on so many levels Bob is one of my heroes.

To some degree I also admire Bob Taylor. He makes a very nice guitar, and is an excellent businessman and even better at marketing his product. But before we elevate him to sainthood, let's not be too naive. You can be sure that along with saving the planet, this is also a business decision. He may well care about all those poor exotic trees getting chopped down, but I'm pretty certain he cares even more about Taylor Guitar's bottom line.

I don't mean to sound overly cynical. What I'm saying is that his motives are not as purely altruistic as some might suggest.

[MBE]

Originally Posted by beachbum205

To some degree I also admire Bob Taylor. He makes a very nice guitar, and is an excellent businessman and even better at marketing his product. But before we elevate him to sainthood, let's not be too naive. You can be sure that along with saving the planet, this is also a business decision. He may well care about all those poor exotic trees getting chopped down, but I'm pretty certain he cares even more about Taylor Guitar's bottom line.

I don't mean to sound overly cynical. What I'm saying is that his motives are not as purely altruistic as some might suggest.

I'm pretty sure everyone recognizes that he's running a business. He is, however, making decisions that are clearly not solely motivated by profit - he could and would be making money either way, but has been making a series of changes to his business that are making it more environmentally sustainable, which is admirable in my books.

[Kilgore Trout]

"Going green" is huge money right now.
Bob knows what he's doing. Smart guy.

[djg]

Originally Posted by beachbum205

To some degree I also admire Bob Taylor. He makes a very nice guitar, and is an excellent businessman and even better at marketing his product. But before we elevate him to sainthood, let's not be too naive. You can be sure that along with saving the planet, this is also a business decision. He may well care about all those poor exotic trees getting chopped down, but I'm pretty certain he cares even more about Taylor Guitar's bottom line.

I don't mean to sound overly cynical. What I'm saying is that his motives are not as purely altruistic as some might suggest.

Cynical or not, is it not a good thing when private incentives can align, or be aligned, with public values?

Maybe I don't need to look into Bob Taylor's heart to appreciate at least some of what he's doing? And maybe that's just as well, because, I mean, I'm not a real doctor, plus it's probably dark in there.

Originally Posted by PTC Bernie

I have an older 612 spruce over maple, and whole it's not the be all and end all, it's a great guitar and stones out in a crowd.

Originally Posted by Long Jon

I've done that myself, a few times ...

It's so easy to tell who's using AGF on their smart devices with auto-"correction"

Originally Posted by beachbum205

To some degree I also admire Bob Taylor. He makes a very nice guitar, and is an excellent businessman and even better at marketing his product. But before we elevate him to sainthood, let's not be too naive. You can be sure that along with saving the planet, this is also a business decision. He may well care about all those poor exotic trees getting chopped down, but I'm pretty certain he cares even more about Taylor Guitar's bottom line.

I don't mean to sound overly cynical. What I'm saying is that his motives are not as purely altruistic as some might suggest.

But you did such a good job at it.

I've never understood why people feel compelled to make these kind of drag-down comments. The OP never compared Bob to other guitar company owners and set him above them or anything like that.

Also, unless you know the man personally and he has told you his inner thoughts about all his decisions, then it's best to not assume what his motives are. Last I checked, none of us are mind-readers.

Believe it or not, you CAN run a successful business and also make environmentally conscientious decisions at the same time simply because you think they're the right thing to do.

[Ted @ LA Guitar Sales]

Clearly any guitar builder would prefer to see folks "gassing" for tonewoods that are readily available, but in this case Maple happens to work incredibly well with the Taylor voice so I think Bob will get his wish.