Taylor Tour yesterday

[beninma]

I am in San Diego this week on vacation, I got to go visit Taylor yesterday.

I did take pictures, if I get a chance maybe I can share some.

The tour was led by a long time employee who is in charge of managing the wood/lumber. I should have remembered his name but didn’t, he was great.

They didn’t hold back anything on the tour. No question went unanswered, nothing was off limits they let people walk up and talk to some of the employees, it was pretty amazing. One of the employees was working on a prototype GA with ebony back and sides that was absolutely gorgeous and they didn’t shy away from letting us see that. At the end of the tour I was talking with an employee and when he found out what I do for a living he gave me an extra visit to the electronics room which is not normally shown as it’s too small to fit the tour group.

Not much V-class hype. They are pretty excited about the Grand Pacific though.

Speaking of the Grand Pacific. There were 33 people on the tour and only 2-3 of us played guitar or were at all interested. I got too play 2 of the Grand Pacific guitars for more than an hour. They were the only guitars not for sale, these days you can buy the guitars in the showroom. I don’t consider myself a dreadnaught guy for comfort reasons, but I really liked them, to the point I didn’t even try any of the GA guitars. I did try a couple of the Grand Concert models but they still didn’t have any of the new V-class GC models. The launch of those seems really weird. I like them but maybe they don’t sell.

They also telegraphed pretty clearly that none of the T5/T3 guitars are selling much. They said they turn out about 800 guitars a day and only 10-20 of them were the T5/T3 electrics.

I had a good time trying out a bunch of stuff but nothing grabbed me in a way that makes me want to upgrade. I have an Academy 12e and most of the more expensive Taylor’s don’t actually seem much easier to play than mine.

That said. The Grand Pacific guitars really did play really really easily for full scale dreadnaughts. They said the neck is a new design and maybe it just matches my hand really well.

I got a T-Shirt and an Ebony Slide from Cameroon for souvenirs. I’m pretty excited to put some time in with the slide, I have a metal slide and the ebony plays and sounds very different which is a really nice option.

[Gjimmy]

Sounds like a fun tour. I will try to do it when I got to SD next.

Question, in your post you said they “turn out 800 guitars a day.” That’s got to be a mistake right?!

[beninma]

Well they said they made 200,000 last year.

They only run 5 days a week so the #s sound about right.

[zeeway]

I also toured the Taylor factory in El Cajon a couple of years ago. Besides guitar, woodworking is another passion of mine. That tour touched all the buttons. And they all seemed to enjoy making guitars.

[Stratcat77]

Thanks for posting! I'm planning on visiting while on a vacation out that way the first week of April. Very much looking forward to it!

[varmonter]

We had a very slim window of opportunity
on our trip in jan to san diego. We drove around
and around the plant but could not find a parking
place. Too bad.. maybe next time.