Taylor is one of the most well known acoustic guitar manufacturers in the Country. Many famous musicians, including Dave Matthews, use their products. But as one goes farther and farther down the line of their products, the overall quality and workmanship of the product drastically decreases as well. One major example of this is with the Taylor 110e. This guitar is presented in Taylor’s 100 series. It has a full varnish dreadnought body with solid spruce top, and laminate back and sides. And every 100e comes with a built in ES-blue system. When one picks up this guitar, its brightness and punch is easily recognizable over other guitars of similar price range. A Martin D-15, for example, holds a much deeper sound but still does not live up to the full and loud sound put off by the Taylor 110e. For any beginning guitarist looking for a good, cheaper in price, upgrade, it is the perfect choice. But it still comes with some problems.
Taylor is partially famous for its high quality, custom, Expression System. The Expression System is a pickup, built in to the neck and body of the guitar which is designed to put off the smoothest of sounds. The 110e comes with ES-Blue System, which supposed to be a cheaper substitute for the famous ES System. Unfortunately, it does not live up to its name. When I first brought home my Taylor 110e, I was excited to plug it in begin hearing what this new pickup technology could do for my recording purposes. But after plugging in and playing for a while, I realized that all I could hear was Billy Joel singing, “Sing us a song your the piano man.” My brand new guitar, at a much over priced $700, was nothing more than an overly expensive radio when it was plugged into an amplifier or piece of recording equipment. I expressed my concern to the distributor, and after being laughed at and sent away without a fix to my problem, I decided I needed to replace the ES-Blue system that had come with the guitar. Another $200 later, my guitar worked like I had originally wanted it to, and it seemed that the ES-Blue system was not at all what Taylor said it was. The guitar itself was not a bad buy, but the addition of the ES-Blue added an extra $200 to the retail price. If anyone is planning on buying this guitar, it would be a much safer bet to buy the less expensive, but equivalent, Taylor 110, at $500, and put in a pickup later if needed. Doing this will guarantee a better pickup in the guitar, and a much cheaper price for it.
The only other problem with this guitar is extremely high action the guitar has from the factory. Though this is an easy fix, it still costs a small amount of money to change and if one does not choose to lower the action, it takes a bit of getting used to. Other than that, the guitar is a great buy for up incoming guitarists. It does seem though, that Taylor should stick to the quality of their higher end models, instead of wasting time on manufacturing cheap, malfunctioning products such as the Taylor 110e and the ES-Blue.
