Taylor Guitars

Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug started Taylor Guitars in 1974, and in fifty years the El Cajon, California company has become one of the largest acoustic makers in the world — known as much for its manufacturing precision as for innovations like Andy Powers' V-Class bracing. Most of what it builds is standard production, and most of that sits outside the Atlas's scope. The Atlas indexes only the top and most limited end of the Taylor line. That means four things: the Presentation Series, Builder's Reserve, Custom Catch, and genuine one-off Custom builds. It does not mean the number-series guitars (300 through 900), the standard Koa and other ranges, or — importantly — the Builder's Edition models, which are a comfort-and-appointments package layered onto standard guitars, not a custom-shop tier. The Presentation Series is the pinnacle of Taylor's standard catalog — its rarest woods and most elaborate appointments. A current PS14ce, for instance, pairs Honduran rosewood with a sinker redwood top and carries Taylor's finest detailing: paua and mother-of-pearl inlay, an ebony armrest, and the California Vine inlay across peghead, fretboard, bridge, and pickguard. Builder's Reserve and Custom Catch are Taylor's limited-run programs. For Builder's Reserve, Bob Taylor draws on wood set aside from the company's private reserves over decades to design extra-special, ultra-limited guitars — each collection unique in model, quantity, appointments, and price. Custom Catch began in 2015 as a pre-NAMM dealer showcase at The Catch restaurant in Anaheim — it has since outgrown that venue and now runs as its own event during NAMM, with the original name kept. Each year Taylor reveals a set of highly appointed one-offs, then builds numbered, strictly limited runs of the ones dealers claim, often with specs found nowhere else in the line. Taylor's Custom program rounds it out: a buyer specifies body shape, tonewoods, and appointments to build a one-of-a-kind instrument. Across all four, what reaches the Atlas from Taylor is a small, rotating selection — the limited and bespoke work, not the production line.