The Taylor on the wall
The urge to upgrade has been deflected, and an old friend is back, and awesome.
Last July, I picked up my first modern Martin guitar, a 000jr cutaway. I wrote about it here:
When I wrote this I had about three months on the guitar, and had just changed the strings. My recollection at that point was that it was my go-to, the guitar I pull off the wall to strum whilst watching TV, and for a few minutes of noodling when I need a break from work (I work mostly from home).
It is the third acoustic I have in my collection, and the only one that was consistently getting used1.
Since I bought this lil’ Martin, upon registering it for the warranty, I got added to their mailing list. And their marketing is quite aggressive.
A prior recent post that was mostly tongue in cheek about the D-300 limited run guitars with an impressive sycamore top that is just gorgeous, but at a $300K price tag, it is for collectors.
But one of these marketing emails caught my eye. A near $4,700 Modern Deluxe in the 012-28 model, a modern recreation of a WWII era staple. And I have to admit that it is tempting. While I can afford it, it is more than a splurge.
This reminded me of the last time I was seriously in the market for a “good” steel string acoustic guitar. Time to go back to to the early 2000’s.
The Search
I was working and I had gotten a pretty decent bonus. I got permission from the boss (my wife) to spend about $2K on a guitar.
I went on a hunt. I wanted something of good quality, something limited production, and it needed to be easy to play.
At the time, my local shop was Guitar Showcase on Bascom Avenue in San Jose, and I quickly narrowed it down to two brands. C.F. Martin, the iconic Pennsylvania maker, with about 140 years of history, and a relative newcomer, a California maker, Taylor.
Fortunately, Guitar Showcase had both of them on the wall, and I was able to play plenty of different exemplars of both, but at the end of the day, they had different characteristics, and since I mostly played Electric at the time, I wanted something that felt familiar (neck profile, action, and its feel), and I gravitated to the Taylor.
The deciding factor was the consistency. Every Taylor I pulled off the wall felt the same. The same action, the same jangly sound (with different acoustics because of the shape of the body), and I fell in love with it.
The Martins that I pulled off the wall felt OK, but the setup was a bit off, the action was higher than I prefer2, and most critically, two different samples of the same model felt and sounded different. This lack of consistency was a major turnoff for me, and I ended up buying a 5 year old Taylor 814C, used from EBay, for ~ $1,9003.
I was extremely happy with that purchase!
Fast forward
As I was mentioning above, I had been tempted by the marketing emails about the 012-28 Modern Deluxe, and I began fantasizing about dropping over five grand on a new guitar.
It is a sickness.
Yeah, I can afford it. But it also made me pull the Taylor out of the closet. The strings were crusty (it had been in its case for a couple of years, unplayed), and I noticed that the frets were practically growing moss they were so oxidized.
I had a fresh set of strings on hand, Martin 80-20 bronze strings, so I taped up the fretboard, and polished the frets before restringing it. It also needed about a half turn on the truss rod to get a wee bit of relief, and then it was, in a word, perfect.
It is now one of my favorite guitars, one that I grab a couple of times a day. It is a joy to play, the action is spot on, about 1.5mm at the 12th fret, but there is no buzzing.
There is some wear on the 1st through 3rd frets on the high E, the B, and the G string (this is very common) and one day I will need to get the frets re-leveled with a new nut cut for it.
Yet for now, it is an absolute joy to play. And it sounds amazing. Still the same jangly liveliness that caught my ear all those years ago.
The danger of an impulse purchase of that $5K Martin has receded. An afternoon with the fret polishing and new strings have brought it to life, and now I grab it off the wall nearly every day.
My three guitars are this Martin, the 000jr, a Takamine student grade classical, and my 1996 vintage Taylor 814c.
This is not really a problem. A lot of Martin’s are sold to bluegrass musicians, and they like a slightly higher action, and heavier strings for their music style. A good tech can lower the action and adjust the truss rod to make the action the same as with a Taylor of that era.
Not going to lie, it was scary as fuck to spend nearly $2,000 on something from a seller on Ebay in 2002. I was living on the edge man.