Taylor Guitars 310CE-L10 Koa

A beautiful Taylor Dreadnought made with solid Koa back and sides, and a solid Sitka spruce top. The guitar is all gloss lacquer, which has already stood up to a couple of years of abuse (2005 build).

The neck is pretty fat and round, and at times can cramp my hand a bit. It's strange, it's inbetween the size differance of a Gibson electric 50's neck and their '59 neck shape...both of which are usually really comfortable for my hands, yet this guitar gives me some cramps after playing for extended periods.

The guitar is outfitted with Taylors Expression system and the built in Neve preamp. Arguably the most responsive acoustic electronic system out there, and definatly the one that provides the most honest recreation of the guitar.

This one is used when I got it, so I only got the case, no included TRS->XLR cable, or DVD.

I give it an 9 for the lack of onboard tuner...which I would never use anyways.

This guitar has a very strong midrange punch, with nice rounded highs, and a tight bottom. However, the lows on this guitar are not as deep I would like. It's not a balanced gutiar tonally at all, but Taylors seem to be made to punch through the mix, and are definatley more suited for more modern players.

It records incredibly well because of it's focused midrange tone, and definatly performs well on stage for the same reason. Unfortunatly like all acoustics it feeds back a lot, and with a Taylor I find that placing a feedback buster into the soundhole can really take a lot out of the guitars tone.

Seeing as how the expression system senses the movement of the guitars top, and not the strings like on most other electric acoustics, I find that using a feedback buster takes so much from the sound. It makes it sound muted and dead, which really dosn't help things out so much when your trying to get a lot of gain before feedback.

Once you can learn how to control the feedback (not hard if you've played an acoustic on stage before) then you'll soon realize how rich the onboard electronics sound! The pickup system is just simply amazing! It sounds so close to what the guitar sounds like mic'd up that many will find that it's easier to just plug in to record than it would be to set-up mics.

I've been using this guitar a lot for rock, blues, and folky styles of playing and find it works really really well for me. It's my songwriting and inspiration guitar, I can almost always find a new song within her if I sit down with it for a while.

She's got a few cracks from lack of humidity up here in Canada, but she still sounds great, if not better than it did when I first took it home!

The previous owner was using 11 gauge custom light Martin strings on this thing... which came off almost right away! I then threw on some Elixer Medium 13 gauge strings and re-set the guitar for me. It plays flawless, and the ebony fingerboard is really slick and smooth helping me get the most out of it's playability.

The top and backs are beautiful, and everything is mounted where it should. You can tell that even in the 'entry level' Taylors they have taken a lot of time to make sure their guitars are perfect!

Did I mention the Koa on this guitar is incredibly stunning??????

Taylor's seem to be a very fragile instrument in Canadian weather...especially Alberta weather where we have changes from 20-60% humidity on an almost week to week basis. Hell yesterday read 35%, today is reading 23%. This makes the thin tops on these guitars flex a lot, and they just can't take it.

My friends taylor cracked, and mine has twice, so at this point I just deal with it. A crack can really help bring out some smoother tones out of the guitar, I don't know the exact reason why...but for some reason it just sounds better!

I can totally depend on this guitar night after night...especially if I change the batteries which have a reported life time of 5 hours...

Taylor's customer support has always been pretty good. While they won't help with humidty damage (no company I know of will), I was able to get them to send me a new TRS-XLR cable, as well as the info DVD missing when I bought the guitar... it's amazing what please and thank-you can do for you these days!

Very nice people, and a pleasure to deal with

I love Taylors. While this guitar gives me a cramp during longer sessions, it is still my #1 guitar, and probably my most loved of all my equipment! I"ll definatly be buying a Taylor GS next time I got the $2600CAD kicking around, but for now, me and my 310 are gonna get back to buisness.

I have compared this to many other acoustics, and have made my search over 3 years for THE guitar for me for $1200 or less. I'm lucky I found this one... otherwise I would have ended up with a Norman (not a bad guitar...but it's not Taylor!)