Taylor Guitars 312CE

Great sound for size of body.

Action is a dream, plays as easy as an electric.

I bought mine used and am still happy four years later.

Its not the best guitar, but for the price and comfortable small size, I love it.

312CE
concert style body, spruce top, nato sides and back, mahogany neck, expression system pickup.

Great sounding small acoustic. Balanced sound, not much bass because of body-type, can handle light strumming. A little bit too lightly built for my taste, the body seems to absorb a lot of the sound instead of project it back out. I play everything from jazz to rockclassics, acoustic pop, a lot of solo unplugged type of gigs. Taylor guitars are obviously well designed and well built. A lot of guitars are by the way these days I must say. The typical Taylor sound is what I would call middle of the road; a little bit bright or thin, but very usable in allmost every situation. A Martin, Gibson or Guild will often give you more character, but will also be less versatile.

Guitar was not set up perfect, pretty high and tough to play. Strangly enough the saddle was already almost flush with the bridge on the high E side, so lowering it was only marginally possible, I dont think this little string break angle helps to make a good sound, but the sound was OK. Pickup system malfunctioned almost right away, a loud resonating buzzing sound on certain notes. I took it back and they replaced the entire system, apparantly this happens quit regularly, which is not a comforting thought. But haven't had any more problems after that, so..

Beside initial problem with the expression system evrything seems very well built.

My problem got fixed straight away. Have not dealt with Taylor directly. I could not find anywhere what the expected battery life would be for the system. Dealer couldn't tell me either.

I am a professional singer/guitarist. I play mainly (electro)acoustic (strumming cords) and do about 200 gigs a year playing all types of music. I basically play acoustic-electric for a living and have been searching to improve my tone for a long time now. I have tried and owned a lot of different guitars and have tried almost every pickup system available; piezo, contactpickups, mics, soundhole pickups, amulet system, etc etc. Here's the thing: The expression system simply is a magnetic soundhole pickup, with added contact pickups. The soundhole pickup provides the basic tone, the contact pickups add some top end sparkle. I more or less had the same sound using a sunrise magnetic pickup in conjunction with the amulet system. It is in itself a well designed and manufactured system, but it doesn't work!! The tone is electric-sounding, the notes die too quickly, the velocity respons is not accurate and the unwound strings are too loud and unnatural sounding, just like with any other magnetic pickup. I am not fond of any of the undersaddle pickups that I have used and still use, but at least they give me a sound that I can work with. My advice; try this guitar out thoroughly and compare with other electro-acoustics in various situations, and make up your own mind. I got this guitar believing my acoustic-electric suffering was over, but this solution is worse sounding than the cheapest piezo I have owned. I guess the search is still on..