Taylor Gold Label 814e Hawaiian Koa Acoustic-Electric Guitar - Natural

Super Auditorium Body: Building on the versatility, balance and clarity that players have come to love from Bob Taylor’s Grand Auditorium body shape, consider the Super Auditorium an evolution of that playing experience that incorporates all the benefits of the V-Class bracing architecture developed by Andy Powers. With curves and contours that draw on Bob’s design but with a slightly longer body and wider lower bout, the Super Auditorium will feel familiar while adding a new sonic dimension inspired by guitars from the 1930s and ’40s. With a focus on warmth, the Super Auditorium produces an open, blooming voice that produces room-filling tone with a light touch while gaining power as you dig in. Inside, a fanned V-Class variant enhances the depth and resonance, enhancing the volume and sustain while ensuring pitch accuracy all the way up the neck.

Super Auditorium Body Specifications: Body Length: 20 3/16" / Body Width: 16 1/4" / Body Depth: 4 1/2"

Hawaiian Koa Body Wood: A dense tropical hardwood, koa blends midrange focus with extra top-end brightness and chime. The more a koa guitar is played and opens up — especially an all-koa guitar — the more its midrange overtones add warmth and sweetness to its voice.

Origin: Hawaii

Sound: Koa's tone profile blends the midrange of mahogany with the top end of maple. Due to its density, a new koa guitar tends to start out sounding a little bright and tight, somewhat like maple. But the more a koa guitar is played, the more the sound opens up, expanding the midrange and rewarding the player with a richer, sweeter, more resonant tone. A common mistake is when a bright player buys a koa guitar in part for its visual beauty, finds it to be too bright, and doesn't play it enough to allow the wood to warm up.

Goes Well With: Fingerstylists who play more with the pads of their fingers and tend to have a meatier touch. Bright players may want to experiment with different pick materials to produce a warmer tone.

Torrefied Spruce Top Wood: By far the most popular and common wood used for acoustic guitar tops, spruce has a long heritage in the music world. In typical Taylor style, Taylor developed their signature recipe for a process called “torrefaction” to make spruce sound even richer and more sophisticated, adding a new dimension to this much-loved wood.

Torrefaction is a process in which spruce tops (before being added to guitar bodies) are roasted in ovens typically used for drying out wood so that it can be worked. The roasting process lends the wood a slightly darker visual hue while also altering its structure slightly to give it new sonic traits. In particular, torrefied spruce tops tend to sound warmer and sweeter, giving them a played-in quality you would expect from a much older piece of wood. While torrefaction cannot replicate the effects of decades of age and play, it does provide a touch of extra sonic depth without losing spruce’s trademark clarity, articulation or volume.

Origin: Canada and Alaska

Goes Well With: Virtually all musical genres and playing styles.

LR Baggs - Element VTC: Taylor introduced the LR Baggs Element VTC acoustic pickup to Taylor's lineup with the Legacy and Gold Label collections, a choice that reflects the old-heritage sound and classic design inspiration of those guitars.

An undersaddle pickup similar to Taylor’s proprietary ES2 electronics, the Element system utilizes an ultra-thin sensor that minimizes the effect of string pressure and vibration on its tonal output, instead detecting sound from the movement of the guitar’s top. This results in a clear, warm voice that channels exceptional detail while dialing down the treble-range edge that players often associate with acoustic electronics.

VTC—Volume, Tone, Compression—refers to a studio-standard method of mixing acoustic sound that delivers remarkable warmth, balance and accuracy, mirroring the subtle changes in dynamics that give each player their signature sound. The Element VTC pickup boasts an onboard low-frequency compressor tuned specifically to the natural texture of acoustic guitar tone.

The Element VTC pickup features volume and tone controls tucked neatly under the top edge of the soundhole, making them nearly invisible to audiences—an ideal placement for musicians who prefer to preserve the traditional look of all-acoustic guitars. It is powered by a traditional 9-volt battery and includes an input jack mounted within the guitar’s end pin.

LR Baggs Element VTC pickups are manufactured in California.

General

• Number of Strings 6 String


• Orientation Right Handed


• Body Shape Super Auditorium


• Bracing System Fanned V-Class with Tonal Rout


• Cutaway Non-cutaway


• Color Natural


• Electronics LR Baggs - Element VTC


• Case/Bag Gold Label Hardshell Case British Cocoa

Body

• Top Wood: Torrefied Spruce


• Back/Side Wood: Honduran Rosewood


• Rosette: Custom Single Ring, Bound Sound Hole


• Back Configuration: 2-piece or 4-piece Simons Wedge


• Body Binding: .080" Grained Ivoroid, Round Over Edges


• Top Finish: Gloss


• Back/Side Finish: Gloss

Neck

• Neck Wood: Neo-Tropical Mahogany


• Fretboard Wood: West African Crelicam Ebony


• Neck Profile: Standard Carve


• Fretboard Inlay: Mother-of-Pearl Continental


• Fretboard Binding: West African Crelicam Ebony


• Neck Finish: Satin

Peghead

• Nut Width: 1-3/4"


• Peghead Veneer Wood: West African Crelicam Ebony


• Scale Length: 25-1/2"


• Peghead Inlay: Mother-of-Pearl Continental


• Peghead Type: Paddle


• Peghead Finish: Gloss

Other

• Bridge: Honduran Rosewood


• Nut & Saddle: White TUSQ Nut, White Micarta Saddle


• Bridge Pins: Bone


• Strings: D'Addario XS Coated Phosphor Bronze Light (.012 - .053)


• Pickguard: Ivoroid/Tortoise, with Engraving


• Tuners: Gotoh 510 Antique Chrome with Ebony EN01 Buttons


• Strap Pin: Black

Introducing the Taylor Gold Label Collection: Born with an Old Soul

Think this guitar is rad? Check out what else Bananas at Large offers in Taylor's Gold Label acoustic guitar series.

Boasting a new body design, new neck joint, new bracing, and a new aesthetic. Taylor's Gold Label Collection reveals a stunning old-heritage sound that's unlike anything Taylor has ever produced.