Bob Taylor Interview

Guitar Legacy, Innovation, and Personal Insights

In this exclusive interview, Cosmo Music CEO Mark Hebert and Neil Shukla chat with Bob Taylor about the newly announced Taylor Legacy Collection, his favourite guitar, guitar building, AI’s role, and the past and future of Taylor Guitars.

Time to read: 44 minutes

In this exclusive interview, Cosmo Music CEO Mark Hebert and Neil Shukla sit down with Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars for a virtual chat about the world of guitar craftsmanship. Bob shares stories about a unique gift to Cosmo Music—a topless guitar that gives an inside look at the art behind Taylor Guitars. They also discuss Bob’s favourite guitar they’ve built, the innovative new Legacy Series, and what the future holds for Taylor Guitars. Plus, get a glimpse into how Bob spends his time outside of guitar building.

Topics

0:00 – Intro
1:22 – The start of Taylor Guitars in Canada
3:55 – A gift from Taylor Guitars
5:42 – The next 50 years for Taylor Guitars
9:02 – Bob Taylor’s favourite Guitar they’ve made
10:53 – The accidental Taylor sound
17:05 – Is there a place for AI for guitar builders
20:37 – The difference between Bob Taylor and Andy Powers
21:51 – Bob’s last visit: “Cosmo Music is a destination”
23:06 – Taylor Legacy Collection guitars
31:54 – Bob Taylor’s personal legacy
40:56 – How does Bob Taylor spend his personal time
45:16 – Outro

A full transcript can be found at the bottom of this post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOfZfI0w2Q8

Taylor Legacy Collection

Own a Piece of History

Guitar enthusiasts, get ready to embark on a journey through time with Taylor Guitars’ stunning Legacy Collection! As part of Taylor’s year-long 50th anniversary celebration, this exclusive lineup pays homage to the Taylor’s rich heritage while incorporating modern enhancements that every player will appreciate.

Get ready to experience the Legacy Collection firsthand! Orders begin on October 15, 2024—don’t miss your chance to own a piece of Taylor’s history.

👉Shop the Taylor Legacy Collection (they are on their way to Cosmo)

A Tribute to Tradition

The Legacy Collection is more than just a set of guitars; it’s a celebration of Taylor’s journey in the world of music. This collection features three meticulously reimagined models from the classic 800 Series—the Dreadnought 810e, the Jumbo 815e, and the 12-string Jumbo 855e. Alongside these are two beloved Grand Auditorium models: the mahogany/cedar 514ce and the rosewood/cedar 714ce. Each guitar reflects Bob Taylor’s personal history and craftsmanship, offering a unique blend of traditional design and contemporary performance.

Innovative Features for Modern Players

While the Legacy Collection models are rooted in Taylor’s storied past, they also showcase contemporary advancements that enhance playability and sound quality. Here’s a closer look at what makes each model special:

1. Legacy 800 Series:
   • The Dreadnought 810e, Jumbo 815e, and 12-string Jumbo 855e feature Indian rosewood backs and sides paired with Sitka spruce tops. This classic wood combination ensures a rich tonal palette, characterized by warmth and clarity.
   • Updated X-bracing patterns maintain the authenticity of the original designs while enhancing resonance and sustain.
   • Bob Taylor has personally curated these models, integrating aesthetic refinements that respect tradition while offering modern appeal.
2. Legacy 514ce and 714ce:
   • Celebrating the iconic Grand Auditorium body style, these models are designed for players seeking versatility. The mahogany/cedar 514ce and rosewood/cedar 714ce deliver a warm, responsive tone, perfect for fingerstyle players and strummers alike.
   • Both models feature X-bracing, ensuring a dynamic range that suits recording and live performance.
   • Aesthetic touches like faux tortoiseshell binding and green abalone rosettes elevate their visual appeal, making them as stunning to look at as they are to play.

The Taylor Guitars 800 Series Legacy models: the Dreadnought 810e, the 6-string Jumbo 815e, and the 12-string Jumbo 855e.

The Taylor Guitars Grand Auditorium Legacy models feature two cedar-top options that have been popular standards for many years: the mahogany 514ce and the rosewood 714ce.

A Personal Touch

Each guitar in the Legacy Collection features a specially designed “Legacy” label inside, with the first 100 of each model hand-signed by co-founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug. This personal touch adds a layer of exclusivity and connection for players who appreciate the story behind their instrument.

Why Choose the Legacy Collection?

For guitarists, choosing an instrument is about more than just sound; it’s about connection and inspiration. The Legacy Collection stands as a testament to Taylor’s commitment to quality and innovation, ensuring that each guitar not only meets but exceeds the expectations of today’s players. Whether you’re performing on stage, recording in the studio, or simply enjoying a jam session at home, these guitars offer unparalleled playability and sound.

As Taylor Guitars commemorates its 50th anniversary, the Legacy Collection embodies the brand’s spirit of craftsmanship, innovation, and dedication to the music community. These guitars not only promise stunning aesthetics but also exceptional sound, making them a worthy addition to any musician’s collection.

Taylor Guitars 50th Anniversary Limited-Edition Collection

In addition to the newly announced Taylor Legacy Collection, the Taylor Guitars 50th Anniversary Limited-Edition Collection is being released throughout 2024 at Cosmo Music. This series features guitars that are each limited to 1,974 pieces worldwide, commemorating Taylor’s founding year of 1974. With exclusive updates like premium tonewoods and commemorative appointments, these models showcase exceptional craftsmanship and unique design. Experience the artistry of Taylor’s 50 years of innovation and discover your next standout instrument in this remarkable collection.

👉Shop the Taylor 50th Anniversary Collection

Bob Taylor Interview Transcript

Bob Taylor [0:00]: I often get answered, “So, what’s your favourite guitar [and what is] your most proud moment in guitars?” I go with the GS Mini. This is the GS Mini. If you’re an accomplished player, you still want one. And if you’re a beginner, it’s perfect. And if you’re an average player but you’re small, it’s wonderful. You know, it doesn’t cost too much money, you can travel with it, and you can buy it in the most simple version or all the way up to like a GS Mini Koa Plus. Which, when you see that case, that Arrow case, you open it up and look inside, and it’s like, “Wow, that’s a nice guitar.” It gets the job done, and it’s not so precious that you can’t own it and use it.

Bob Taylor [0:47]: Gentlemen

Neil Shukla: Hello, hello. How’s it going?

Mark Hebert: How are you?

Bob Taylor: It’s going good. Is this Mark?

Mark Hebert: That’s right.

Neil Shukla: My name is Neil, and yeah, this is Mark. We’re here in the Taylor Room here at Cosmo Music.

Bob Taylor: What an incredible store. Sorry I’m a minute late, you know the talent just needs to keep people waiting.

Neil Shukla: That’s all good.

Bob Taylor: I was out there, make ‘em wait.

Neil Shukla: Fashionably late right. You are definitely the talent of today. I was talking to Mark and he was telling me this story about when he was a little boy, and you know what, why don’t I just let you tell it.

Mark Hebert: Sure. Not to steal Bob’s thunder, we’ll start off with me, how about that.

Bob Taylor: Do it.

Mark Hebert [1:37]: I don’t know if you remember this or not, you might even recall the dates, the dates and times and the people involved, but I was recalling to Neil when you guys showed at your first Canadian trade show—it was MIAC [Music Industries Association of Canada]…

Bob Taylor: Yeah.

Mark Hebert: …and it was your first booth, and I forget who it was—you and, I don’t think Kurt was there, it was a couple other people, or maybe your first sales, international sales manager. And it would have been—we were trying to figure out the dates—it would have been 35 to 40 years ago when you first went into Canada, and I was there.

Bob Taylor: I remember these blocks of times, and I can’t remember the people or—I mean there’s some NAMM shows that I remember every minute of because they were brutal, brutal.

Mark Hebert: So, I remember my dad approached you guys, you and him talked for hours. You basically monopolized his entire MIAC show, and then he ended up buying your whole booth. And then I was—I think I was 12.

Bob Taylor: Wow.

Mark Hebert: Somewhere between 8 and 14, because I don’t remember the exact year. The two of us loaded the van with your booth’s worth of guitars, an old GMC Savannah or something back then, and trucked it to the store. That was the first foray of Taylor Guitars into the Canadian marketplace.

Bob Taylor [3:00]: It’s amazing, you know, and Canada was a hard—it was a hard threshold to cross, you know, to really get things going. In those days, Canada’s economy wasn’t that great, their dollar wasn’t that great—there’s just not a lot of people in Canada, which is kind of cool, I wish I could say that. Now Canada’s really a market, and you guys pioneered that, you know. I mean, you really got those guitars in. And I don’t know when it was—I think it was more than 10 years ago, no definitely more than 10 years ago, must have been 15 years ago—I came out and visited your store, and it kind of blew my mind.

Mark Hebert: That’s right. Was it for the launch of this room

Bob Taylor: Yes

Mark Hebert [3:55]: Yes. We actually have a memory sitting right beside us of that time spent with you. I don’t know if you remember the story behind this?

Bob Taylor: Tell me your story behind it, because we’ve definitely done some of those, and this is like the coolest thing for you guys to have for today’s discussion.

Mark Hebert: Yes, so it was super interesting. You arrived with this, and it almost seemed like a group of secret service agents with a metal silver case. It had this— it was a part in this case, and they hovered over this case like it was filled with a million dollars, and your entourage…

Bob Taylor: You should have seen us get through Canadian customs with that million dollars.

Mark Hebert: So in the end, you were leaving, and we were like, “Oh, this is incredible, I can’t believe you brought this.” We had a chance to see it. You told us a story that it was the only one in the world that was like this. And you said, “You know what, give this to them,” and your team looked at you like you were crazy.

Bob Taylor: ‘Cause I am.

Mark Hebert: “We were protecting this thing with our lives, and you just handed this to them”, and that’s how we ended up taking ownership of this.

Bob Taylor: That’s awesome.

Neil Shukla [5:12]: When I look at this it really shows a lot of Taylor’s innovations. We have so many of these Taylor Guitars here, and it’s just been so amazing to see how Taylor is constantly on the forefront of innovative ways [to] engineer guitars—not just sticking with the classics, but also sometimes bringing it back to the classics. And my, I guess, my question for you is: What does the next 50 years of Taylor look like? What is there to do, what’s left to innovate in terms of Taylor Guitars?

Bob Taylor [5:44]: Boy, Andy’s working on stuff, and you’re going to see some things next year. We are now doing tooling to do the next iteration of our neck joint that is really good, and we’ll be able to allow a neck adjustment that someone could walk in with the guitar, you could go turn, turn, hand it back to them, and they’re like, “Okay, we’re done.” You could do it at the front door—you don’t even need a bench. And any person that’s clever at home would be able to do it. They’ll be able to change their neck angle if they want low action for playing fingerstyle and high action for a bluegrass gig that weekend, you know? I mean, they’ll be able to do that kind of stuff.

Neil Shukla: That’s really, really neat. So many of these things that we, as guitar players, are like, “It’s going to be a whole thing if I have to do this, adjust action, blah blah blah,” and you can do it super quickly.

Bob Taylor [7:12]: So there’s that. Andy has designed another—he’s been working on another bracing pattern that’s really good, really good, really, really good. So we have things in store, and who knows what the next 50 years look like, but we kind of know what this year, next year, and the following year look like. We’re always trying to improve on our guitars, and at the same time give people— you know, we don’t want to make a guitar for one person; we want to make a guitar for—I’m going to say the masses—but within that, you need to make a guitar for one person.

Neil Shukla: Right.

Bob Taylor [8:00]: You need to find that guitar that—when a guitar walks out of your door—I had a salesman at a store once that always put it this way: “Bob, I just paired up another perfect person with the right guitar.” He never said, “Hey, I sold another one.” No, it was like, “I always got somebody paired up.” And good stores do that, like you guys, because if you didn’t, you’d have one model, and you’d sell guitars like it was a time share. Someone would come in, and you’d browbeat them until they leave just to get out of the store, you know? “I sold the guitar.” But instead, you listen to how they play, you see how accomplished they are, you see the glint in their eye when they look at koa, and you know you’re going there. You just know that’s where you’re going.

Neil Shukla: These koas and all these tonewoods are just amazing. I love the koa personally.

Mark Hebert: I’ve got one at home—GS Mini Koa, love it.

Bob Taylor [9:02]: By the way, you say GS Mini, I’m [going to] jump ahead for an FAQ. I often get answered, “So, what’s your favourite guitar [and what is] your most proud moment in guitars?” I go with the GS Mini. This is the GS Mini. It’s like, yeah we make better guitars than the GS Mini…

Neil Shukla: I think it’s like the go-to. It’s such a great go-to.

Bob Taylor [9:29]: If you’re an accomplished player, you still want one. And if you’re a beginner, it’s perfect. And if you’re an average player but you’re small, it’s wonderful. You know, it doesn’t cost too much money, you can travel with it, and you can buy it in the most simple version or all the way up to like a GS Mini Koa Plus. Which, when you see that case, that Arrow case, you open it up and look inside, and it’s like, “Wow, that’s a nice guitar.” It gets the job done, and it’s not so precious that you can’t own it and use it. And then of course the more scratches and the more country’s customs you went through, and the more airplanes you stuck it in an overhead, then that guitar does become precious. But it becomes precious in a sentimental way, like an old leather jacket—not like you can’t buy a new leather jacket if you lose that one, but that’s what I love about that guitar.

Neil Shukla [10:29]: Is Taylor’s philosophy [that] what you [and] what you guys want to focus on [is] serving a lot of these markets? We talk about how the GS Mini is this go-to thing that people are going to, even though there’s so many fantastic Taylor guitars out there. What is sort of like the direction of the business, would you say?

Bob Taylor [10:53]: Let’s talk about sound. I want to be in the ballpark of good sound. I don’t want to be on the outside looking in. We’ll never ever win the contest of sound because nobody can win the contest of sound. Let’s say you guys have two different [preferences]—I like this sound, I like that sound—well, if I make my guitar more like [your preference], you’d lift your hand, your hand might go down, right? And it’s like we have a lot of different sounds within the Taylor category. People talk about innovation, and we accidentally innovated two things when we first started. One was a new sound, which was clear, brighter, [and] cut through better; played better with piano, bass [and] drums, maybe not as good with bluegrass instruments, you know, that type of thing. And so we found our way into pop music, fingerstyle music, you know, radio, everyday AM/FM radio music, hit songs, that type of thing. So we innovated that by accident.

Neil Shukla [12:05]: That’s interesting to me. Some of these things, they just come by accident. Is there any sort of other accidental things that—or something that [almost] didn’t get made or you weren’t looking to make this kind of guitar, and then just a model was made sort of thing?

Bob Taylor [12:25]: I think, I’m going to say that the other thing we invented or innovated—maybe even invented—was slim necks that you could play easily, [with] good action. And then when it came to sound, I realized, well, a certain percentage of people love our sound; they prefer it. There are some people that don’t like it at all. I’m sorry, and the people that love it, I’m thankful. I just know that the sound is going to have its place in this person’s ear, this type of music, maybe that person’s ear. I even know a lot of—we know a lot of famous players that don’t play our guitars but borrow one to record and then say, “You can’t have a picture of this,” you know what I mean? You can’t say anything about it; you can’t get a picture. You know this never happened, and we have a lot of that. So our sound has a place. When I started building guitars and I found out that—I didn’t know anything about building guitars. I learned on the job. I didn’t know about other companies; I didn’t know what other models were. I didn’t really know any—I was 18 when I started, 16 when I made my first guitar, 19 when I started Taylor, and I didn’t know that that neck wasn’t supposed to be slim. I didn’t know that the strings weren’t supposed to be high, and so I decided that that’s an objective thing. A guitar that comes into your store in good condition, ready to sell, became another objective thing. And I thought I could win if I give myself a PhD on those two things. So those were super purposeful. And now with Andy, Andy is way better than me at being able to conceive a sound in his head and make that guitar, and it sounds that way. He doesn’t have to trial and error as much as I do. But my bracing pattern is—there wasn’t much study behind it. I saw some pictures of how a guitar is braced, and I figured out how I’m going to carve them and put them in there.

Neil Shukla: I guess it was like an intuition, [or] like a trial-and-error type of situation, would you say?

Bob Taylor [14:54]: Kind of a trial and error, and I’ll say, you know, in the US Army they have a saying: if you look good, you are good. And you better look good; you know they’re going to put you on a diet, they’re going to run you around a track, they’re going to make you lift weights, you’re getting a haircut, you’re going to learn how to stand straight up, you’re going to say “yes sir,” and you’re going to dress right they go because if you look good, you are good. When I started building guitars, I thought, well, if it looks good, it is good, you know? I’d [have] a bracing pattern, and I’d go, “Yeah, that looks good.” You know, I don’t have a whole lot of theories behind it, and I’ll admit I remember I was—I like to tell people my shortcomings because it’s just the truth, right? And I remember driving to a guitar maker’s—a luthier convention that was upstate New York, and I was with a good friend from another company. We’re coming along, and I said to him, “You know that I realize when I get there, most of these guys don’t think I’m a guitar maker; they think I’m like an industrialist who’s figured out how to manufacture guitars.” And what he said was, “I’m surprised you’d know that. Wow, I’m surprised you would know that.” I’m like, “I know that! I know that, but I’m a—I’m a good enough guitar maker, I think I am.”

Neil Shukla [16:31]: Something that really strikes me about Taylor is [that] innovation seems to be such a core part of the [overall] Taylor philosophy. When we talk about innovation, generally speaking, in our society nowadays, the term AI pops up. So I was wondering if there is any sort of way that something innovative like AI or something could be part of guitars, or are we saying, “No, that we’re not—we’re not going there?”

Bob Taylor [17:05]: I have no idea how to use AI to help design a guitar; I don’t know how. They say, “Don’t worry, AI is not going to take your job; the person who learns how to use AI is going to take your job.” ChatGPT is my best friend; I mean, I talk to it every day. I’m like, “Chat, I’m putting 24 gallons a minute from a well 1,200 ft underground; if I put it in a 2-inch pipe, how much water is going to come out the other end?” And it’s like, “Well, we’re going to use the formula.” I saw the formula, and then it goes, “You’re going to get 13 gallons a minute out of that.” And I go, “Okay, what about a 3-inch pipe?” “Okay, well, you’re going to get—you’re going to put in 24, and all the friction is going to give you 19.” “Okay, what about a 4-inch pipe?” “Well, you’re going to get 23 and a half gallons out of that 4-inch pipe.” “Okay,” then it just tells you the answer. And so I—you know, you can almost dial up Chat and go, “Chat, who was that actor that was in, you know, that movie?”

Neil Shukla [18:11]: Or maybe you could say it’s like, I wonder if people would be—you know, you could say, “Oh, what’s the ideal action on a guitar?” or what’s the—”I’m a country music artist; what topwood is going to be best suited?” How does that, going into the future—how’s that going to affect guitar manufacturing?

Bob Taylor [18:38]: Well, I don’t think [that technology] will affect the manufacturing, but it might help some buyers. So, for example, if [ChatGPT] gets to where it’s listening and not reading, then it could listen to our conversation. You might be able to listen to a thousand podcasts of people talking about guitars and come up with a conclusion that could be summarized quickly, right? And right now, I don’t know if [ChatGPT] is listening or if it’s just reading.

Neil Shukla: It’s listening to our conversation right now.

Bob Taylor [19:12]: Yeah, yeah. And so, once something’s posted to the web, it gathers up that information, so it was easy for it to tell me how much water is going to come out the other end of that pipe because all those formulas are printed—it’s all data that’s on the internet. To design a guitar, I don’t think that [ChatGPT] is going to be creative. In some time in the future, it might; [ChatGPT] may become one of the best luthiers around. But I will say that you only have two possibilities for a guitar to be good: the first is its design, and then the second is your ability to produce that design. So, let’s say you have a good design; you’re a hand builder, and you’re all thumbs. Well, the design is good, but the implementation sucked, right? Or let’s say that you have a really bad idea for a design, but you’re Mr. Craftsman, plus, plus, plus, and it’s really pretty; it’s beautiful inside and out, but the design was no good, and you’re like, “Whoops, missed on that.” But let’s say you have a good design, and you’re a factory, and you can actually produce that design because you built a factory for it—well, you have a good guitar. Or if you have a good design, and you’re really good with your hands, and you make a bench-made version of that good design, you’ve got a great guitar. You know, people asked me in Wood & Steel once, “Tell us the difference between you and Andy, your different styles when it comes to designing and building guitars.” And I said, “Okay, easy. I have to do trial and error to find out how a guitar is going to sound, and Andy can see it in his head. Okay, that’s the design.” And I said, “Building? Andy spent his proverbial 10,000 hours learning how to use a chisel, and I spent my 10,000 hours learning how to eliminate a chisel.”

Neil Shukla [21:14]: That’s an interesting anecdote. I actually like that. Yeah, it’s sort of like there’s a relationship between the hands-on builder and the sort of person—and the business element combined with actually creating an instrument that, as you said, people want to play.

Bob Taylor [21:38]: If everybody was making [only] 10 guitars a year, you guys wouldn’t have a store, and those people that want to buy a guitar wouldn’t know where to go. They really wouldn’t. But I see all those guitars in that lovely Taylor Room that you have in one of the most beautiful stores I’ve ever seen in my life, right? And I mean, it’s amazing—it should be a destination. People that are listening in the States that ever think that they want to go up to Toronto, you know, and see a guitar store like they’ve never seen. You know, I mean, goodness gracious. I was there when I was visiting, I sat down and had a cappuccino at your little coffee bar.

Neil Shukla: We have the coffee…

Bob Taylor [22:26]: And I was there, and there was a grandpa and another grandpa who were sitting there having a piece of cake and a cappuccino because they both brought their grandkids in for lessons. They became friends. I mean, well, if I talk about it, I’ll start to cry, so…

Mark Hebert: We’re okay with that.

Bob Taylor [22:47]: Yeah, no, it’s just amazing. It’s amazing, you guys. It’s the “Do you want to get in for more, or do you want to get out for less?” Everyone’s trying to get out for less. Let’s get in for more. You’ve done that, and that’s the question that we pose to ourselves every day: “Do you want to get in for more?”

Mark Hebert: Thanks for that Bob.

Neil Shukla [23:07]: Going to the Legacy guitars—so, this collection to me I was intrigued because it’s like, you know, you’ve innovated in terms of a lot of guitars, and the business has come so far. There are so many cutting-edge models, and it seems like you’re taking it back with this collection to sort of the original idea of the Taylor guitar, going back 50 years of a great legacy and [bringing] it back then. Would that be an accurate representation of the philosophy of it?

Bob Taylor [23:47]: Yeah, I’m going to take exactly what you said and not repeat it, and I’m going to add a little colour.

Neil Shukla: Okay.

Bob Taylor: Okay the colour is we turned 50. Is 18 years old a thing in Canada, like is that when you become an adult?

Mark Hebert: Yes.

Neil Shukla: Yeah.

Bob Taylor: So when you’re when you’re 17 and a half you’re not an adult yet.

Neil Shukla: No.

Bob Taylor [24:10]:

When you’re 17 and 10 months, you’re not an adult yet. When you’re 18, you officially—the clothes make the man, so to speak—you know, you put on a uniform, and you’re now a policeman. And so, when I was 49 and 11 months into business, I didn’t really think of myself as having a legacy. Martin had one, Gibson had one, Fender had one. You could point back to these guitars. No one’s asking about—I mean, people are asking for a ’59 this and a, you know, pre-war that, and that kind of thing. No one’s asking for anything. And then, when our company became 50 years old, I thought, “Well, wait just a darn minute, we’re 50 years old,” and it clicked on me. It was like turning 18. It’s like, you know, it’s like I was in The Wizard of Oz, and it’s like you just need a diploma, you know, kind of a thing. You don’t need a brain; you need a diploma. And you don’t need courage; you need a heart, right? And so, it just hit me that, well, maybe I can talk about the things that we’ve done because we’ve always sort of moved forward and we haven’t looked back. But those guitars were good, and we don’t make those same guitars anymore.

So, I brought up the topic—people liked the idea. We decided which five guitars to make. I wanted to make the 810, I mean because this guitar, right here, it’s the first Taylor Guitar model—real-life model—where we had model numbers, where we had a design. And it was based off a guitar that I made for myself. After the American Dream—after we bought the American Dream for $3,000 and moved into that little shop. I’m 19 years old, and we made a couple more guitars. We decided to call them Taylor. I saw one the other day that I made—a month, I finished a month after we bought the place—in November of 1974. There’s no name on it; it’s this peg head. The label inside, I had handwritten “Taylor Guitars” so I knew we were going to call it by then. I made that. I made this—Bob Taylor made this guitar—it’s all right there. It’ll be worth something. Someone’s got to die first—guitar values go up when we die. But, that guitar is just like this. I designed this guitar. The only difference between this one and that one is this bridge shape, instead of the sort of Martin kind of style dreadnought bridge that I made when I made my first guitars. That guitar had a bolted-on neck; this one has a bolted-on neck, but it’s the new version. Everything else is the same.

And the other guitar—the guitar that kept us in business—we masterminded this series. We only had the 800 series, but the 855, this guitar, 12-strings were popular. We made one that played like a Rickenbacker, although I didn’t know what a Rickenbacker was. I’d never heard of that, but this thing is as easy to play as an electric guitar. We drove to LA—the whole Los Angeles country rock scene: Eagles, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt—that was all happening right when we were there. And these guys would pick up that 810 and pick up this and go, “Oh yeah,” they’d see it in a store—McCabe’s Music and Fred Walecki’s Westwood Music right there, and he’d get these guitars to people—we only made a couple a week, but this guitar, we sold more than anything, this 12-string. Gordon Lightfoot was playing a 12-string, John Denver was playing it; you could hear 12-string on the radio every day. Neil Young, I’ve got a picture of him playing it, Rust Never Sleeps; he still has that 12-string today. And so that was the legacy guitar we wanted to make, and we basically made that same design, which I’m pointing at the screen right now, of the inside of that guitar that you have right there. That’s the bracing; it was very simple. We’re putting a Baggs Element in these guitars because they have— that’s because Baggs and Fishman was all that was available back then, and we switched back and forth because they were trying to figure out how to do it. There was trouble every day with trying to make pickups. There was a magazine early on that did an article on us, and they said—the article started out like this: “Taylor Guitars: a reluctant supplier to the acoustic electric guitar industry.” I’m like, yeah, we were reluctant, but it basically built our company.

And then if I’m going to go forward, at 20 years we designed the Grand Auditorium, and that was when we really felt like we had our own everything—our own shape, our own trade dress, our own tone, our own reputation for playing. When we did this, we still hadn’t invented the NT or the Taylor neck that we know now; that was bolted on, but it wasn’t so easily adjustable like they are now. This guitar built our company, it built the next 20 years, and made Taylor famous. So we thought we would do the 514 CE, the 714 CE. We haven’t had cedar in our line for a long, long time because cedar’s much harder to get. The cedar shake and cedar shingle business is not what it used to be because there’s a little problem with that stuff—it sort of catches on fire, and there’s more fireproof materials to build houses out of. Most building codes in the US, and probably parts of Canada—you know, Canada’s getting drier too; the fireproof forests are burning.

So anyways, that’s just sort of a brief overview of how we got there. And then this—the sound of that guitar, I’m going to say it’s like someone will play it, especially people that—well, we made this guitar all the way up to when Andy came, and then he did the performance bracing on our 800 series at our 40th anniversary. But it was still X-brace, so he made that guitar for a long time. That 810—now different versions of binding, different versions of inlay—but I love that white plastic, super clean. You know, army, “Yes, sir! You look good; you are good.” You know, diamond inlays—”Sir, yes, sir!” I got my white binding on, I got my diamond buttonholes, you know, all the way down. Any questions? I’m standing erect, I’m ready for duty, sir. People who have heard them before, they strum two chords and go, “Oh, that’s like mom’s spaghetti.”

Neil Shukla [31:37]: It’s interesting you talk about legacy, right? And turning 50 now, you can look back at, you know, kind of what your legacy is. I want to—and you framed that in terms of the company. I have a question for you: How do you feel about your own personal legacy, and how do you feel from a personal standpoint?

Bob Taylor [32:02]:

The first thing that I wanted to do when I started building guitars was to make a guitar in a factory setting and be able to sell it through dealers so that people could buy the guitar—that was pretty undefined. And then when I tried to do that, I was as poor as a church mouse as a result. So my next goal was to believe me, I didn’t know that guitar building was a thing. You’ve got to understand, I’m 19 in Southern California in San Diego. I didn’t know—I had no concept of a guitar factory or who has a—I didn’t know anything about that, and I thought I have to turn this into a career for me and a career for people who work for us. I want to be able to say, or anyone that works for me to say, “Well, what do you do?” “Well, I’m a guitar builder.” “Oh really?” And then be able to go, “Yeah, it’s what I do.” And then someone goes, “I never even heard of being that”, and they’re like, “No, it’s great, and I do fine.” “Did you buy this house because you were a guitar builder?” “Yeah, I did.” So that sort of thing I leave behind. And us being employee-owned now, I feel like I accomplished that. If our employees can have a career, and by the way, if you guys can have a career selling guitars, I feel the same way about that. There are more than one UPS driver whose career is moving a Taylor guitar, right? I mean, the trucks that go out of here every day are part of the economy, and so that to me is really good.

Then the other thing that I wanted to do was— I never—I turned 50, and I’m looking back, but I’m not looking back to try to be able to figure out how to make the guitars we used to make that we’ve dumbed ourselves down to where we can’t make them anymore, you know what I mean? We’re trying to discover our golden age and scratch our heads, like, “What’s about that?” So normally I’m like, “What’s the best guitar we make? We make the one we make tomorrow, the one we make today.” I’ve always been proud of that. What was great about this is, like, “Hey, let’s bring these models back; we know how to make them. It’s not a mystery. We don’t know; we haven’t forgotten what the magic is.” And so part of my plan was to be able to improve guitars—improve guitars with little tiny tweaks, little tiny innovations.

And then one more thing is to try and leave with the wood supply—the environmentalism, the planting of trees, the use of wood, the introductions of new woods that are more common and don’t leave as big a scar on the world. Thus, things like the urban guitars that we make—they’re not just like, “We found a tree; we made a guitar out of it.” It comes and goes. No, you can buy a Taylor guitar made out of a Los Angeles street tree any day in the world if you want to go buy one. It’s a real live consumer product. You don’t even have to know that it’s made that way; you don’t even have to be an environmentalist to buy that guitar. It’s just a good guitar, and we made that choice. I think we’re doing pretty good with that.

And that legacy includes the tree in the forest, but it also includes the people. So, how many people can we allow eagerly to participate in this thing that’s called Taylor Guitars? A lot of times, you think, “Well, I’m going to get what I need, and I’m going to give the consumer what they need, and everyone else is just something I use to get there.” But I don’t feel that way. I feel like you’re part of our legacy. I mean, if you look at what I’m looking at, you guys are telling our story and putting these guitars in the hands and laps of people, and you’re telling them about me, about us, and about the guitar. A guitar is a very personal thing, and someone tends to be more interested in, “What is this guitar? Who are these people? Who are you? I want to buy from you because you’re taking care of me. I want to buy this brand because I like them, and I like this guitar.” So all of that adds up.

Well, unfortunately, sad to say, that a lot of guitar woods come from places where the people that acquire the wood aren’t really part of the party. They’re living a really poverty-stricken life. We don’t know it because we don’t see it, but if you go out and look, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to figure out if I could do something about it.” Thus, our mill in Cameroon—taking care of the people better. We’ve started the ebony project through UCLA, where we’re learning the science and planting the trees. We’ve planted 45,000 ebony trees now in villages that those people own—those trees. I don’t own them. We’ve included fruit trees. We’ve taught them. If I showed you pictures of these villages, you’d be like, “I didn’t even know a village like that existed.” These are forest people, and they’re in T-shirts with a bunch of holes in them and their worn-out pants, their bare feet, and their family in rags and a grass hut. That’s what they own, you know? They don’t own anything. So if they get paid to put ebony into their place so that—there was one chief of a village who challenged, you know, the ebony project. You’re coming in here; you want to take our ebony; you want us to do a bunch of work, and what’s behind all this? So I got up, and I said, “The only thing I want—I don’t want to own these trees—the only thing I want is that maybe your grandson—maybe my grandson might have the opportunity to buy ebony from your grandson.” Interesting. And he’s like, “Oh, okay.” You know, they’re worried about their grandson, and I am about mine, and you find that common thread. And so I just want them to be able to participate. And thus, you’re like, “Okay, I hope you like brown streaks on your ebony because that’s what you’re getting. That’s what I’m putting on my guitars.”

Neil Shukla [39:14]: Actually, you know what? I have a comment about the streaks. I thought, I’ve heard you talk about the ebony and the sort of the sacrifice that you have to make in order to focus on and accomplish your sustainability goals. That this has to be streaked, and a lot of players, they like the flat black ebony look. But I thought to myself, “You know what? It’s kind of rock ‘n’ roll to have those streaks now because you’re actually saying, “Well, look, I’m conscious. I’m supporting that.”

 Bob Taylor [39:52]: Yeah, plus your guitar is unique. Like, that’s my 810, you know what I mean? When you go to the morgue to identify the body, you know, there has to be something recognizable in that body.

Neil Shukla: That’s an interesting analogy.

Bob Taylor [40:04]: I’m an analogy machine, but when your guitar’s stolen and you open it up, you’re like, that’s my guitar. How can you tell it’s his guitar? Well, that’s the fingerboard—it’s a fingerprint. Let me show you a picture of my guitar, and the police officer says, oh, that’s your guitar, you know what I mean? So, you can’t really tell the difference in the spruce or the black ebony or rosewood fingerboard, that kind of thing. Those are all just anecdotes, but people said to me, can’t you figure out how to just stain it? And I said, it’s going to be a lot easier to just teach people that this is beautiful.

Neil Shukla [40:41]: Yeah, it’s redefining the beauty with the story behind it. Well, I guess one last thing before we go, I have a question: So, what are you up to besides building guitars, besides running the business—what are you, Bob Taylor, up to nowadays, just on your own time?

Bob Taylor [41:01]:

Well, on my own time—I bought 250 acres in our local mountains. It’s all surrounded by forest, and our forest is different than yours. This is an area of San Diego County that’s 3,400-foot elevation, it’s grassland, it’s cattle land, it’s dry grassland. It’s grassland, it’s cattle land, it’s dry grassland. We don’t have such a thing as green grass in the southwest, you know. It’s green for a couple of months, but the grass grows tall, and then we have oak trees — live oak trees, not oak trees like you have, not like red or white oak that grow and are deciduous and lose their leaves. Ours are evergreen, although they do have acorns, and it’s absolutely beautiful. And I go up there — I was up there with my grandson last weekend camping. He’s almost seven years old, and we had a great time. And I’ve been working on that — drilling wells, reestablishing a pond that was built with a dam in 1958 but never held water. So I’ve made it hold water, I’ve drilled a well that can feed it, we go swimming in it and have fun in it, and so I do that.

I’m going to take another trip in my Land Cruiser to Baja California later in November, which I do. Baja California, Mexico, right below us, is like stepping back in time a hundred years, you know. And when we go, we’re allergic to pavement and people, you know. So we find, over the last 22 years, we’ve mapped that place in our mind, and we know how to get to wonderful, wonderful beaches that you don’t know — you can’t get there from here. And then we’re like, “We’re the only people on Earth here,” you know. And so I’ll do that.

And then I love traveling and working on the wood things that we do for the forestry things — going to Cameroon, the operation we have in Hawaii. We’ve planted so many koa trees, and we own some property there that we’re planting, and we harvest and plant on other owners’ property, so we’re really improving that. When I go there — gosh, I’m the closest to things I love. People go, “You’re going for work or pleasure?” I’m like, “What? What’s the difference?” I don’t know. I’m going there for my life, and I love my life. It’s the joy of my life.

And I’m going to go to Mannheim next week to go to that summit — 800 booths of guitar builders. I’m gonna be a total geek-out nerd. I’ve also been finding young builders and befriending them and trying to coach them along. You know, I know the way around the block, and so sometimes people are like, “Could I get some advice from you?” Absolutely! I get these phone calls, “Can I get a little advice? What do you think about this?” You know, it might be a business question, it might be a guitar building question, a machine question.

So that’s what I do. I do a little traveling — a lot of it comes back to guitars. I don’t have really much of a, When I leave Taylor Guitars, it’s not a guitar-building life, but when I leave San Diego, often, it’s a guitar-building life. You know, when I go home, I have regular friends that go to my church and in the neighborhood. We go camping, and we have a pool party…

Neil Shukla [45:43]: And you bring a GS Mini.

Bob Taylor: Yeah, I’ll tell you what — I’ll tell you another little — I’ll confess the other thing. When I go camping, I usually don’t bring a guitar because it’s sort of my time away from a guitar.

Neil Shukla: That is funny.

Bob Taylor [45:00]: When I go to—when I go to Baja, I’ll often bring a GS Mini, and along my travels, I’ll find some worthy Mexican recipient, and I’ll leave them the guitar, you know, and that’s kind of fun.

Neil Shukla: Very nice. Well, you know what, Bob, thanks so much for talking to us. You know, from two guitar enthusiasts here to another, we appreciate everything about you and Taylor Guitars, and we love just sitting in this room and geeking out.

Bob Taylor: You guys are more than enthusiast, you’re infectious carriers of the virus just like me, you’re total nerds and I know it.

Neil Shukla: we have that affliction, the guitar addiction.

Bob Taylor: Yeah, you do all right. Super pleasure. You guys are fantastic. This was a really enjoyable 30–40 minutes hanging with you guys and talking. Thanks so much for representing us.

Neil Shukla: Absolutely.

Mark Hebert: Thank you Bob.

Bob Taylor: You bet.

Why Buy Your Taylor Guitar at Cosmo Music

Cosmo Music has been a trusted partner of Taylor Guitars since they first arrived in Canada in the late 1970s. As Canada’s first Taylor Dealer and selected as the only Taylor Premier Online Dealer in Canada, Cosmo Music offers an unparalleled selection of Taylor guitars, from beginner models to premium, limited-edition masterpieces. Our Taylor Guitars Acoustic Room is the world’s first dedicated space of its kind, designed to give you a perfect environment to experience the tonal brilliance of these instruments. Whether you’re shopping in-store or online, you’ll benefit from Cosmo’s Taylor Premier Online Dealer designation, ensuring top-tier selection, expert guidance, and exceptional customer service. At Cosmo Music, we are committed to helping you find the perfect Taylor guitar with the same care and attention to detail that Taylor puts into crafting them.

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