Taylor Guitars Are Over Rated (imo)

[sunvalleylaw]

I guess for me, I like the solo style artist type guitars in acoustics, and I like a particular sound. A Martin D-18 is supposed to work in a mix better according to many. Still not my thing. So for my taste, Taylors are not my thing. Does that make them overrated? Not so sure about that, if folks know what they are getting.

[GuitarRaven]

Taylor guitars are overrated. Oh yes!!!! Finally someone speaks the truth. I am so sick of "Taylor this" and "Taylor that". Taylor guitars are simply this: ungodly overpriced and overrated. People say, "Well, they are so popular they must be doing something right." The fact is, Taylor has spent more money on advertising than any other guitar company I have seen. They put them in the hands of stars and pay them to play their guitars. I hear this all the time: "Taylor is doing things with guitars that no one else is doing." Really, can a person who knows anything about the High end guitar industry honestly believe this statement. One thing I have to say, I congradulate Bob Taylor for making a CNC guitar and actually getting a custom price for it. It's the advertising. I have been in the guitar business for over a decade. I have sold retail everything from Lakewood to Larrivee to Taylor to Lowden.....I just couldn't sell the Taylors because I had other guitars in there that were better than taylors and were only a fraction of the price. I have also built guitars handmade. So when people say "Taylor is doing things with guitars that no one else is doing" I laugh, because there are thousands of high end guitars out there, and a lot of them are doing things way more innovative than Taylor.
Check this out: When Breedlove introduced their Crafter-made Atlas series, I sold them. The Breedlove Atlas Solid Spruce concert cutaway with solid rosewood back, retailed then for around a $1000 (they've gone up since then, just like everything else.) street price was around $800. I had these on the wall right next to $3500 Taylors, and my Taylor sales started to go way down. The Breedlove Atlas was just as good (In my opinion better) as the Taylors, and were $2500 less. Niether guitars were handmade, although crafter uses more handmade elements than Taylor does.
And this phrase makes me laugh too: "With Taylors new neck design, they are the only guitar with a perfectly straight neck." Are you serious. Yes, they are the only ones with a straight neck in their class, compared to Takamine (Japanese Takamines are better than taylors) Ibanez, Gibson and some of the other household mass produced lines. They bag on the Dovetail neck joint and say that their neck design is better. Sure it's better than some of the dovetails that have been CNC'd. But a real master of the Dovetail can make a perfectly straight neck. (Check out Yairi's, the new Simon and patrick, although the S&P arent't really a dovetail.) I'm not saying that Dovetail is always the best way to go. I have seen dozens of different bolt on neck designs that are fantastic, and even a few "set neck" designs that have proven to be just fine.
I was pretty sad when Larrivee opened a factory in california, and left only their 03 series to be made in Canada, because I knew their prices would skyrocket. And they did. Look, I'm as patriotic as the next guy, and I like to support US businesses, but the canadian made larrivee's, I'm sorry, they were just better than the US made Larrivee's. Of course, labor is a little less expensive in canada, but the people who worked in thier canadian factory just seemed to make better guitars, and at much better prices. If you can stamp Made in USA on your guitar, you can sometimes get four times the money for them. But think about this: (and I am NOT nessesarily talking about taylor) The next time you say "I bought a Taylor, Martin, Gibson, whatever, I am supporting the US economy, so I don't mind spending a bit extra. But think about this. By law, you can legally put Made in USA on any product as long as the finishing stages of production are done in the US. That is US law!! (This next example is purely hypothetical, and does not nessesarily apply to the guitar named): If you walked into a guitar store and saw a Gibson on the wall, and on the back of the neck it said "Woods cut and shaped in Korea, pickups wound in china, hardware made in china, neck to body construction and finish in USA. Would you pay $3500 for it. Probably not. Now, does this deminish the quality of the guitar, well usually not. But the loose law does allow for a higher price tag. So just how much of the money you spent on a High dollar US Guitar actually stayed in the US, and how much went elsewhere. Now like I said before, I'm not necessarily implicating taylor or gibson in this scenario, but I do know for a fact that a lot of US made guitars actually have some, and in some cases most, of the work done elswhere. They are sent to the US for final stages of production and BOOM. You pay thousands MORE. You think you are supporting the US economy, and you are, but not even close to what you would think.