Demo Review: Taylor 700 Series Koa Guitars

Discover the Taylor 700 Series Koa Acoustic-Electric Guitars, featuring select-grade Hawaiian koa, rich tonal qualities, and the unique craftsmanship of Taylor Guitars.

Time to read: 10 minutes

Meet the Taylor All-Koa 700 Series

Taylor Guitars is renowned for crafting stunning acoustic and acoustic-electric guitars with exceptional sound and design. The new 700 Series introduces an all-Hawaiian koa design to their lineup, showcasing the beauty and tonal richness of select-grade Hawaiian koa.

Watch: Taylor Guitars 700 Series All-Koa Demo Review (722ce & 724ce)

In this demo review, Ryan McMullen from Taylor Guitars showcases the stunning Taylor 700 Series, featuring all-Hawaiian koa construction. Watch as he highlights the key design changes, including the new open-pore satin finish, V-Class bracing, and tonal capabilities of the 722ce and 724ce models. Whether you’re a seasoned player or new to Taylor, this video dives into the craftsmanship and sonic qualities that make these guitars exceptional.

👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZPpscpEVok

Watch: Taylor’s 700 Series Demo

Taylor player Erick Walls demonstrates the full tonal potential of these magnificent instruments.

👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW8TYPCxoHo

Taylor’s New 700 Series: A Koa Masterpiece

At the heart of Taylor’s new 700 Series are two standout models: the Grand Auditorium 724ce and the Grand Concert 722ce. Both feature all-Hawaiian koa tops, backs, and sides, offering a vibrant, punchy voice with rich midrange tones, clear highs, and a warm low end that matures with time. The unique, super-thin matte finish enhances the natural resonance of the wood while preserving its raw beauty. With koa’s distinct grain and rich colour, these guitars are visually stunning and tonally superb.

Key Specs:

• Solid Hawaiian Koa Top: Experience the beauty of Hawaiian Koa, renowned for its stunning visual appeal and rich tonal qualities. The warm, balanced sound produced by Koa enhances the guitar’s resonance, providing clarity and depth in every note. As the wood ages, it develops a unique character that contributes to a richer tone over time, making it an excellent choice for both strumming and fingerpicking.
• Solid Hawaiian Koa Body: The entire body of this guitar is crafted from Hawaiian Koa, ensuring a consistent sonic profile. Koa’s natural properties produce a bright, clear sound with a hint of sweetness, perfect for a variety of playing styles. The striking grain patterns also make each instrument visually unique, elevating its aesthetic appeal while maintaining durability and comfort during play.
• V-Class Bracing: Taylor’s innovative design enhances the guitar’s volume, sustain, and overall tonal quality. V-Class bracing allows for more flexibility in the top while providing structural integrity, resulting in a responsive instrument that vibrates freely. This unique bracing pattern helps balance the tonal spectrum, ensuring that notes ring out with precision, clarity, and impressive projection.
• Expression System 2 (ES2) Electronics: Offers a natural, dynamic sound when amplified, capturing the true essence of your guitar’s acoustic voice. This onboard electronics system includes a patented behind-the-saddle pickup design and a preamp that provides a simple interface for adjusting tone and volume. Enjoy studio-quality sound in live performances, making it easy to plug in and play without compromising on tonal richness.
• West African Crelicam Ebony Fingerboard: Known for its smooth feel and durability. This dense, naturally oily wood provides an exceptional playing surface, enhancing your playing speed and comfort. Its dark hue and fine grain not only look stunning but also contribute to the guitar’s overall resonance, producing clear, articulate notes that are easy to play.
• Neo-Tropical Mahogany Neck: Designed for both strength and playability. This type of mahogany offers a warm, mellow tone that complements the brighter characteristics of Koa. The neck’s comfortable profile allows for easy navigation across the fingerboard, making it ideal for players of all levels. Plus, mahogany’s stability ensures that your guitar maintains its tuning and intonation even under varying environmental conditions.

Taylor 722ce – Grand Concert Model

The 722ce is the Grand Concert version, featuring Taylor’s smallest body shape. Its tapered waist and shorter scale make it the perfect fit for young players, those with smaller hands, or anyone seeking a guitar that stands out against more dominant instruments. The reduced string tension provides a slinky, comfortable feel, making this guitar easy to play.

With its efficient design and lighter bracing, the 722ce coaxes rich tones effortlessly. The craftsmanship ensures every component works harmoniously, letting the soundboard resonate beautifully.

Taylor 724ce – Grand Auditorium Model

The 724ce represents the Grand Auditorium version, Taylor’s signature body shape. This model offers an ideal balance of width, depth, and tonal clarity. Its sleeker lines and narrower waist provide excellent tonal separation, projection, and high-end sparkle. It’s a versatile instrument suitable for a wide range of musical styles.

Known as the Swiss Army knife of guitars, the Grand Auditorium shape delivers a balanced tone that makes it ideal for all abilities and genres. Its comfortable design ensures it shines whether on stage, in the studio, or during practice sessions.

Video Transcript

Taylor Guitars 700 Series All-Koa Demo Review (722ce & 724ce)

Hi everybody, I’m Ryan McMullen. I’m from Taylor Guitars. I’m very happy to be here with my friends at Cosmo Music in Richmond Hill, Ontario today. I’m very excited to be able to highlight our new koa 700 series guitars.

The 700 series is moving into an all koa design. This is the 724ce Grand Auditorium that I’m holding right now. There is a 722ce right next to me, that’s the grand concert body size. So we’ve moved away from a rosewood back and sides, spruce top option in the 700 series and now are looking at an all koa. Koa wood comes from Hawaii above the altitude of 5000 feet. Actually this is something that our brand has been really well known for, working with koa models in the past, we have our K series which started in the ’80s and has moved on since that time. But along with that, we also have our GS mini koas, we have our 200 series koa models, and now there’s something sitting right here in the 700 series.

This guitar is really unique in the fact that it’s actually a satin finish as an open pore satin finish. Andy Powers, our master luthier, designed this guitar to have a very rich, loud projection from the guitar. There’s a lot going on as far as really interesting notes. The open pores of this guitar really allow it to resonate and bring out really interesting tone and sound from the body of the guitar. There’s some other appointments inside the guitar. A little bit of an adjustment in the back braces, but again the satin feel of this really has just a wonderful touch. Our koa series is still available with a gloss finish. It’s a very refined, wonderfully smooth sounding guitar. This is going to bring something that’s a little bit more, I don’t know, working class if you will, to the koa design.

You look at the wood combinations on this top again, solid koa. This quarter sewn top here has really got wonderful colour to it. We’re really picking these guitars to have a lot of rich colour, there is no colouring done at the factory. Again, the finish is very thin and an open pore situation. We have rosewood binding on this instrument, it has a really nice appeal to it and also a rosewood pickguard that’s on there too. So we have some really nice touches, a CE model for Taylor always has a cutaway and electronics. This is a 724ce, our grand auditorium body shape. This series features one of our most popular body sizes, it’s really known as our swiss army knife of guitar playing body sizes because it does everything really nicely when you combine that with the compressed, more mid-range sound of koa, an all koa guitar, what you have is just a really great sonic spectrum here with variety. It’s a guitar that you can strum or you can play fingerstyle and you’re really going to enjoy.

The koa wood featured here is what we refer to as a select cut of koa. This is select koa as opposed to grading the koa that we’ve done in the past. Again, you’re going to get a very consistent linear pattern out of the top of this guitar. Out of the back and sides, you can see the beautiful back and sides in this instrument right here. Every one is going to be a little bit more neat, unique, but again that rich colour is coming out as we are just making sure that there isn’t any additional shading that you might find on a guitar like right behind me here, our K21 which is right behind me, where you have a shaded edge burst.

Taylor guitars now feature what we refer to as V-Class bracing. The bracing in this was designed by Andy Powers and is very unique in our models. This guitar carries that V-Class bracing forward, what you’re going to get is playability and consistent volume all the way up the fretboard, so when you hit your D chord here, you’re also going to get the same volume, but also the intonation here. And so V-Class bracing in the manner in which it projects and moves and translates string energy allows the whole fretboard to be accessible without any dips in volume or overtones that might sour the notes as you move up the fretboard. That is also featured in this guitar along with the guitars behind me on this wall.

Always a great idea to drop by Cosmo Music and check out their great selection. Again we have this new model coming to the stores, it’s here at Cosmo Music and I hope you come in and check it out.

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Cosmo Collection

The unique Cosmo Collection includes a distinctive selection of finely crafted Taylor Guitars, designed with bespoke aesthetics and soaring tones; including Taylor Custom Guitars, Limited Editions, Builder’s Editions, and Cosmo Music Exclusives. Explore the Cosmo Collection.

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