414ce 2006 vs a new one?

[Professor420]

I learned from an enthusiastic sales guy at GC that elixer strings are coated so as to extend the string life by mitigating oxidation or what ever. I tried the strings out. To my ear the coating took the life out of the strings compared to the D'Addarios I was using.
That said we bought a nice Taylor 214 for a friend who lost everything in the Tubbs fire. So I had this Taylor in my posession for a week and a half. It had an old set of elixers I'm pretty sure and they sounded wonderful. So who knows?
I just bought a 2006 414 ce on ebay that is why I'm here ranting. Can't wait for some pandemic relief with a real guitar.

[Earl49]

Originally Posted by skewzme

.....It just sang when you played it. I would think the two would be more or less the same, assuming the 2006 models were made from the same woods......

Although Taylor build quality is universally excellent and consistent, the material itself -- wood -- is definitely not uniform. I recently sold a 414ce from 2001 that was head & shoulders above all others that I had tried previously (or since). While killing time between meetings on a day trip for business, I stopped into a music store to browse. My 414ce sounded so good that I bought it on the spot, but left it at the shop because I was flying commercially, and did not want to risk my brand new guitar on an airline. I went back and picked it up two weeks later.

Back on topic, the 2006 414 will be X-braced and any new one will be V-braced. You can do your own reading on that, but my choice would be X-bracing. Also the 2006 version will likely have ES1.3 (three knobs, 9V battery) which is the best sounding of all the factory Taylor pickups, IMO. I'm not a fan of ES2 here......

Elixir strings are put on Taylor's to keep strings fresher for longer in a retail environment, bot necessarily because they sound "better". And 53-12 light gauge is the norm. They were even sold for a while with mediums (56-13) but Taylor has gone back to lights. My 414 wore mediums for a significant portion of its life with me, and suffered no harm.