'pallet grade guitar'

[teh]

Roman:

Don't let anyone kid you, that's an impressive stable of Taylor Guitars and an even more diverse collection listed on your post.

Re the Pallet Guitar: I just watched my copy of Leo Kottke's Home and Away DVD and there's a clip with him discussing and holding his Bob Benedetto Archtop. According to Leo and I read this somewhere else too, that Bob B. built his first guitar out of his kitchen table and it sounds incredible. While I don't own a Taylor, my son does and it sounds and plays great. I would go on record as saying that builders like Bob Taylor and Jean Larrivee have brought a new standard to guitar building today. You will hear that echoed by the likes of Chris Martin and Linda Manzer (former Larrivee employee). I also find offerings like the new Baden guitars (former Taylor Emplioyee) intriging. The point is, there are lots of choices out there. Someday I will own a Leo Kottke Signature 12 string too.

[flatlander]

Taylor makes great 12 strings.
I've owned about 9 of their 6 strings
over 3k each and I don't care for their neck or tone.
I love my 12 string though...

Sorry but I just have to ask. How does someone go thru 9 3k+ guitars that they don't like? Hopefully you made money? I bought 1 Taylor and quickly traded for recording equipment. I will say I played a couple special ones long ago.

[Danny]

Tonight is our Guitar & Pizza time and about 5 or 6 players and a harmonica player get together at my place. Two of the guys own Taylors. Now this is "just the facts". One of the guys brings his high end Taylor every week, but he ends up playing my guitars every time. My Larris, Gibson or Harmonies. Now I do have a new guitar or two every week lately. (picked up 2 more today) But still the Taylor just stays in its case. Just the fact. Tonite he didn't bother bringing it for the 1st time. Anyway maybe that means nothing.
                    So I asked the other friend who has a lot of very nice guitars to bring his Taylor next week. Its really a pretty maple jumbo with a cedar top. He ordered it that way to tone down the brightness of the maple a little. So next Thursday I get to play a very nice Taylor for a few hours and check out first hand how they sound and feel. Since its a jumbo I may not play it all that time because of my shoulder but others will and I can hear it close up next to all the others and do some empirical studies of the "bland Taylor" question.

                    I already know that, I have not played a 214,314,G series and some other higher numbers in the Taylor line that have "grabbed me" like a Larri, Gibson or Martin.   
                             Then again Ive never played a "pallet guitar", Danny

[Johnny B. Good]

.

Sorry but I just have to ask. How does someone go thru 9 3k+ guitars that they don't like? Hopefully you made money? I bought 1 Taylor and quickly traded for recording equipment. I will say I played a couple special ones long ago.

EASY. Buy, try, sell, trade, give away, etc...
Here's a few memorable ones: THIS Very NAMM NS-72 braz http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/models/limiteds/2003/ns72ltd.html {and I do mean this one}

This 12 string I gave away recently: http://www.johnnybrooks.com/guitar-photos/Sams-Guitars.html
a k-22, a JDCM, a custom 814 ltd, 910, etc..

yeah it's easy to move on, I even sold this Goodall on ebay to a california superior court judge, boo hoo
http://www.johnnybrooks.com/guitar-photos/goody/  http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=go_go_go_johnny_go_go_go



Lawd knows I've given taylor a fair chance and like I said,
their 12ers are great but I don't like their 6 string neck profile.
I've also had alot of problems with the old {pre-2007 es}

This 12er is very nice though and its a keeper.
Playability, tone, and electronics are excellent.


           

[flatlander]

Cool if you can afford it. I have to go the try, buy route not buy,try. But I do understand it can take a little time to really know. I tryed the taylor I bought first but didn't hesitate to trade it back to store for equipment  when my 8 track went south a month or two later. It didn't have the staying power. It was pretty though, Koa.

[GA-ME]

To be fair to Taylor guitars, while I usually am not that impressed, I have played several of their little and relatively inexpensive GCS guitars that compared quite favorably with any other box under a grand. I thought they played well and had really great bass response. I thought a switch to bone nut and saddle would make them real nice guitars for around $950 including modifications.

[Johnny B. Good]

This 12er is very nice though and its a keeper.
Playability, tone, and electronics are excellent.

And now for a little sample: http://www.johnnybrooks.com/Docs/sing-and-or-play/2nd.MP3 {2.7M}

[Mr_LV19E]

Another great performance.    Care to share your recording methods?

   

[Johnny B. Good]

Another great performance. 

Thanks! It's all just recorded on the fly. No big productions here. 

Care to share your recording methods?     

Shure SM58 vocal mic and Taylor's ES
both into an AER Alpha acoustic amp for mixing.
Headphone output to LS-10 line in.
Recorded on an Olympus LS-10 @ 128 kbps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwsYumXuCkQ

The guitars signal is all electronic.
Soon I hope to have a Neumann condenser mic or 2.

[Mr_LV19E]

Thanks Johnny, I've tried a few different methods the best seems to be the SM58 and the guitar direct plug into the Zoom H4. Using the Zoom Mic's I get to much outside noise and some boominess even with the Zoom sitting on the table 4' away and pointing sideways (I did this to pick up my wife singing).
Still experimenting.

[Tony Burns]

Yes the Craftsmanship as well as the wood makes a great guitar - just nice wood doesnt (duh ) I get a kick out of folks who brag about this Brazilian rosewood guitar etc - it mostly depends to me who made the guitar, more than what its made out of - But when a Master uses the best woods - thats even better. Benedetto also made a guitar from lumberyard wood -knots and all -- Ive never played it -but have heard it is a remarkable instrument -

Honestly --Taylor guitars are OK but their not my cup of tea !

[Novalis]

Honestly --Taylor guitars are OK but their not my cup of tea !

I played a Taylor GC8 (24 7/8 scale) tonight for about 1/2 an hour. You know, I've always commended Taylor guitars for their consistent high quality and always thought they sounded pretty good, just not exactly the sound I want for my playing style. Well, this GC8 I played this evening was an amazing sounding guitar, a lot "woodier" than other Taylors I've played in the past, definately different than any other Taylor I've ever played.

[Tony Burns]

Im sure it's a nice guitar ( for the mot part ) and having a first class craftsman build it makes it good , but if you put the finest materials in the hands of that same craftsman you will get a guitar 100 times better , possibly even stellar . When you use the best materials your guitar gets better with age ( like me ) Ive seen great looking wood on pallets , sometimes its just straight run and they get some good stuff like Cherry , Maple ( seen flame once) etc.  so this argument on a great guitar made of pallet wood is understandable - how many of you guys would order one ?

[Danny]

Ive seen great looking wood on pallets , sometimes its just straight run and they get some good stuff like Cherry , Maple ( seen flame once) etc.  so this argument on a great guitar made of pallet wood is understandable - how many of you guys would order one ?

I don't remember what wood it was but a few weeks ago a friend who works with wood found some rare dark tone wood on a pallet in a dumpster behind a "Woodcraft" store. If the price was right I would buy one. Danny

[lw216316]

The wood in the picture looks like spruce. The grain pattern looks wide and it is discolored and not very attractive. Your girlfriend may not be pretty but that don't mean she can't kiss good !

You could put some sunburst makeup on Miss Pattie Pallet and she would be quite a looker ! (and sing good too).

I have a friend who is a luthier. One day he showed me some 'reject' tops he had acquired from a famous guitar brand. Some were blimished in appearence, some had wide grain patterns, some had other 'problems' that prevented them from being 'premium' grade.

He is expert at 'tapping' the wood and evaluating the tone. He showed me how these 'rejects' sounded just as good as some of his 'premium' stuff. That does not mean that ALL rejects will sound good.
And it certainly is not true that NO rejects will sound good.

I'll bet you Mr. Taylor or whoever the luthier was that built this pallet guitar did a tone tap first and KNEW ahead of time they had a winner before they ever started to build it.

So this pallet example does NOT prove you can take any old junk wood and make a good sounding guitar out of it. It does prove that wood that is rejected as premium or whatever MAY still be able to produce an excellent tone.

One of the famous classical guitar builders in South America (I forget which one) once built a guitar that had sides and back make of paper machee (spelling?). Anyway, his point was to prove that MOST of the sound of a guitar comes from the topwood and not the back or sides.

In my opinion, Mr. Taylor's pallet guitar failed to prove his point - that craftsmanship can build a better guitar.

To prove his point, give similar quality components to two different builders - one average and one
a superior craftsman.
It the guitar built by the superior craftsmans (using better / more intelligent bracing patterns etc)
sounds BETTER than the one built by and average craftsman THEN you have proved your point about
craftsmanship.


- Larry

[jeremy3220]

good post Larry

[Danny]

I'll recheck later but I'm almost certain it was Oak, on the first one he made and it was just a used pallet. There is another luthier that did a similar guitar out of normal wood. I'll find that info and post it too. I'm just interested in the craftsmanship side. I like working with my hands. I just did some delicate silver soldering before I came in to work at my desk.... (got a little sidetracked) but I know so little about working with wood, it intrigues me. Danny

[lw216316]

OAK is a tonewood. It is not used much for acoustic guitar but it COULD be.
OAK is so HARD it is difficult to work with and it is HEAVY. 
It might not be considered as 'pretty' as some other tonewoods.

So back to my suggestion, give one average craftsman some oak to work with and another superior craftsman some similar oak to work with and see if there is a difference in the sound of the two guitars that get built.

A superior craftsman will tap the wood and listen to tone and decide where and how to brace to get the best sound out of the wood.

That is why a hand crafted guitar by an individual luthier MAY sound better than a ' FACTORY ' guitar - where no individual ' adjustment ' of  bracing is made for each individual guitar. It also explains why a guitar custom made for you by an idividual luthier may cost more than a ' factory ' guitar.

This does not guarantee the custom made will sound better than the factory model. If the one made at the factory happened to have a perfect matchup between wood and bracing with no adjustment needed then it might sound just as good (possibly even better ) than the custom guitar.

When guitar 'factories' are making a run on a particular model, they use the same bracing pattern on each guitar 'coming down the production line.'  They do not make adjustments for each individual guitar. This also explains one of the reasons a factory model you play at one store may not sound the same as the same model played at another store.

- Larry

[gary0319]

Actually Mr Taylor's point wasn't to prove that "craftsmaship can build a BETTER guitar" when he undertook to build the Pallet Guitar.

To quote Bob Taylor from the Taylor website "The original Pallet Guitar was made for fun and to prove a point. The point was proven: we can work with non-traditional wood and still make a great guitar. Oh yeah, and we had fun. Now you can too."  I don't think this implies any competition between levels of craftsmanship.

Just my 2 cents

Here's the link   http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/archive/older/pallet.html

Gary

[lw216316]

Gary, thanks for the original quote...was not aware of it.

so the point I was proving was a different point 
You know that old saying, two points are better than none !   

Maybe his point that 'non-tradtional' woods can still make a good sounding guitar -
was to show that by making one of oak and pine he could do the same with the use of sapele and ovangkul.

I've played some low-end models with sapele and didn't care for them.

- Larry