Taylor 614ce Builder's Edition - Natural

Taylor's Builder's Edition 614ce with V-Class Bracing

Combining premium aesthetics and ergonomics with tone-enhancing details, Builder’s Edition instruments represent the pinnacle of Taylor craftsmanship. The Builder's Edition 614ce Grand Auditorium acoustic-electric guitar features revolutionary V-Class bracing, which boosts volume evenly across the tonal spectrum, increases sustain, and improves the natural intonation of the instrument by creating a more synergistic response from the soundboard. This fosters a more harmonious relationship between the notes you play, helping chords to ring out in cohesive splendor.

This guitar boasts spectacular tonewoods: figured Big Leaf maple for sides and gorgeously bookmatched back, torrefied Sitka spruce for the top, West African ebony for the fingerboard. This combination results in a sound that's ultra-responsive to your touch, enhancing maple’s natural transparent brightness with warmth, richness, and dimension. Premium Builder’s Edition features include a beveled ebony armrest for enhanced picking and strumming comfort, along with 21:1 Gotoh 510 tuners for precise tuning. While you delight in its beautiful tone, your eyes will savor the Builder's Edition 614ce's tasteful appointments, which include ebony binding and elegant mother-of-pearl Scepter fingerboard/headstock inlays.

Taylor design guru Andy Powers conceived our Builder’s Edition collection to deliver a next-level, player-centric experience in both feel and sound. Each model in this family is the equivalent of his director’s cut version of its standard model counterpart, boasting premium woodworking details that refine the playing comfort on both the body and neck. The Builder’s Edition 614ce features our popular Grand Auditorium body, a torrefied Sitka spruce top, back and sides of figured Big Leaf maple, and our patented V-Class bracing. That combination yields an ultra-responsive, player-reflective sound, elevating maple’s natural transparency in a way that can sound warm, bright or whatever a player’s hands decide. The V-Class architecture improves the volume, sustain and projection, and creates more harmonic agreement between notes by putting the top more in tune with the strings. Our proprietary roasting process for the Sitka spruce top lowers the damping effect and helps deliver a more played-in tone. Ergonomic body details (exclusive to Builder’s Edition) include a beveled armrest with beveled body edge treatment; a double-carved cutaway that allows fluid access to the higher frets without the need to change one’s hand position; and our new Silent Satin finish, which reduces contact noise for a cleaner overall sound. Gold Gotoh 510 tuners (featuring a 21:1 gear ratio) complete the suite of tactile delights. Striking aesthetic details include a new Wild Honey Burst on the back, sides and neck (an optional burst-top version is also available), our mother-of-pearl Sceptor fretboard/peghead inlay, and inset maple/black body purfling with matching rosette. The guitar comes equipped with our ES2 electronics and ships in a deluxe hardshell case.

V-Class Bracing: a sonic revelation

Bracing is the internal framework of an acoustic guitar that helps shape its sound. Although X-bracing has been standard in acoustic guitars for over a century, it creates an innate conflict between two key elements of a guitar’s sound: volume and sustain. The guitar's top (its soundboard) contributes to both. The flexibility of the top generates volume (projection), while its stiffness generates sustain. And with X-braced guitar tops, here's where the trade-off comes in: when something is made stiffer, its flexibility is reduced (and vice versa).

V-Class bracing changes all that. With Taylor's V-Class bracing, an acoustic guitar top can be both stiff and flexible — for more volume and sustain. V-Class bracing provides stiffness parallel to the strings for more rigidity and hence sustain. Flexibility on either side generates the air movement necessary for robust projection. It's the best of both worlds. This groundbreaking innovation also improves intonation; not only producing notes that are louder and with longer sustain — but more in tune with each other. Guitarists at Guitar World are gobsmacked. But don't take our word for it — pick up the superb Taylor K14ce Builder's Edition and experience it for yourself!

Grand Auditorium body style delivers exceptional presence

Taylor's beloved Grand Auditorium body style, featured on the 614ce, employs the width and depth of the Dreadnought. But, its waist is narrower, which gives Grand Auditorium bodied acoustic guitars a sleeker look, with more treble zing. The 614ce's Grand Auditorium body style also helps to sharpen the definition of each note, balancing out nicely with the excellent projection of its Sitka spruce top. Taylor uses their Silent Satin finish on the top, back, and sides to reduce contact noise for a cleaner overall sound.