Difference in Taylor ES2 systems for effects chain

[Jimi2]

Alright, so I don’t if anyone can help with this, but I’m going to try asking anyway. I have two Taylors with es2s - a 214ce from 2017 and 2016 812ce that I picked up for the ease of fingerstyle and better tone about two years after the 214. I don’t really play the 214 anymore as the body is too big, the neck is too narrow, and the tone isn’t as good as the 812. Both sound fine plugged in on their own, but I am doing some unusual things with splitting the signal chain with a splitter- one output goes clean or just with delay to an amp, and the other output goes though a EHX pog2 to remove the attack, then goes through delay and reverb. This gives me a synth pad like sound that follows my playing and sits behind the clean guitar on the other channel. Unfortunately, though they both have an es2, the 214s pad channel is much more distinct and louder than what I’m getting with exactly the same setup on the 812. It feels like the signal doesn’t get picked up enough on the smaller guitar- it just kind of lacks volume and punch.

I don’t know why this would be, as the pickups should be the same, and both sound ok in a normal plugged straight into the amp kinda situation. Any thoughts on how I can get the 812 to behave more like the larger guitar? I’d love to get rid of the 214 altogether if I can figure this out.

[Marty C]

This would be a somewhat educated guess for me. The 812 is all wood and a very lively guitar compared to the 214, which has laminate sides. Even though you have the same pick up, the wood difference and even the size difference, will show up in the pick up. The energy in your guitars, being different in size and wood, still is transferred to the pick up. I wouldn’t expect them to be exactly the same. You can even have a difference in two guitars of the same model.

[Jimi2]

Originally Posted by Marty C

This would be a somewhat educated guess for me. The 812 is all wood and a very lively guitar compared to the 214, which has laminate sides. Even though you have the same pick up, the wood difference and even the size difference, will show up in the pick up. The energy in your guitars, being different in size and wood, still is transferred to the pick up. I wouldn’t expect them to be exactly the same. You can even have a difference in two guitars of the same model.

Good points. That could well be the case. On the other hand, I’m not noticing such a huge tonal difference when simply plugged in and amplified normal- not that they sound exactly the same, but also not as completely different as they do with the effects setup. Interestingly, I tried a Martin with a fishman pickup through the same setup, and that was even worse than my 812....

I’m wondering if should muck about with the screw adjustments on the es2 and see if that helps....