A stunning Bastogne walnut tree Is reborn as an ultra-limited solidbody.
Taylor introduces its Builder's Reserve guitar program, in which Bob Taylor taps into the company's private wood reserves to design a series of extra-special, ultra-limited guitars using wood that he has been accumulating over the course of 30-plus years.
The solid body of Taylor Builder's Reserve SB-BR1 electric guitar is made of a single piece of beautiful Bastogne walnut. The top of the guitar is made using Taylor's nicest walnut burl with an inlaid mother-of-pearl pickguard. The pickguard, made entirely of solid, genuine pearl, was hand-inlaid into the top by guitar designer Larry Breedlove, and the fretboard inlay is a mother-of-pearl gothic vine motif.
Each SolidBody guitar features a customized chrome back panel that is laser-engraved with Taylor's Builder's Reserve logo and its individual number in the series. The guitars come with a deluxe guitar case of walnut-colored suede with black, crushed velour interior.
Like Taylor's other solidbodies, the SB-BR1 guitar features original pickups, a sleek all-aluminum bridge, fresh body design, proprietary neck-to-body construction, and unique switching capabilities, Taylor's innovative imprints are all over the Custom guitar.
The unique Taylor-designed guitar pickups are the foundation on which the Taylor solidbodies are built on. The SB-BR1 is loaded with full size open-coil humbuckers featuring a new type of magnet and special winding process. The combination creates vintage humbucker sound with the power and dynamic range of modern pickups.
Five pickup settings with carefully chosen voicings give you a great range of tones:
1) Neck pickup
2) "Skinny neck tone"-two inside coils from both pickups wired in parallel
3) "In-between rock tone"-both coils of neck pickup combined with the inside coil of bridge pickup for classic bright single-coil tone with the added fullness of neck tone. Great for semi-distorted amp setting.
4) Fat single-coil-two inside coils from both pickups in series (north from neck and south from bridge) creating, in effect, a 4" humbucker.
5) Bridge pickup
The walnut wood guitar body is beveled on the back, sides and in the cutaway so you're always playing in comfort and able to easily reach the upper frets. The mahogany neck features the single bolt T-Lock™ neck joint that pulls the neck into the guitar body. The simple yet ingenious jigsaw joint shape provides a set neck feel and accurate intonation.
The bridge, also Taylor-designed, is amazingly smooth across the top. It looks and feels clean and classy. There are no exposed adjustment screws to clutter the looks or get caught on.
Even the knobs are a departure from standard fare: elegant looks with a lipped edge that allows great one-finger control. Sweaty hands? Taylor includes rubber O-ring grips that will slip over the knobs.
For years, Bob Taylor was asked if they were going to build solidbody electric guitars, and for years, the answer was no. Bob's thinking was simple: he wasn't going to build a solid body electric unless he felt there was a real reason to. In other words, he wouldn't put the Taylor name on a guitar that was just another version of what already existed.
For this electric guitar to happen, it had to be innovative, unique and worthy of a place alongside the guitars that electric players have loved for generations. When the design group at Taylor invented new pickups and Bob heard them, he knew the time had come. Starting with those pickups, each element of this new solid body was designed from the ground up. The ingenuity that Bob Taylor insisted on resulted in the creation of an electric guitar that's sure to inspire and is well-equipped to impress.
