Acoustic Guitar Instructor in Miami | Taylor K26ce Review
Acoustic guitar instructor in Miami Dyce Kimura here. I am a Skype guitar instructor and I’m doing a review today on this beautiful Taylor. It’s called the K26CE and it’s all made out of Hawaiian koa body. So the back and the sides and the top are all koa and I’ll get into the woods in a second. Let’s just give this a listen. Absolutely gorgeous – check it out. So I’m doing a review on this – I’m a full-time professional guitar player. I teach full-time and I perform full-time. I’ve been playing this guitar all day long for the last couple of days so I could get ready to do this review and I’m really impressed as an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami. A friend of mine lent me the guitar for the sake of doing this review and it’s my first time – I’ve played koa guitars before but it’s my first time sitting with a koa guitar for days and days and days and I’m really studying the way it plays and I’ve got to tell you it’s a very sweet tone. The bottoms and the highs are what you would expect from a high-end Taylor. I have an 814 back there; I don’t know if you could see it. There’s an 814which is just like this sound I would say, but that characteristic mid-range isn’t there; this has a very sweat fuzzy, warm mid-range that’s unique to this guitar. I want you to hear it acoustically. So this is going to be just using the mic on the camera; not using the 2.0 expression system where I’ve hooked it into an amplifier. So this is with the amp off – very nice sound which I often play as an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami.
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So let’s get into some of the details of this guitar. So this is a two-piece koa body and it’s so seamless that I actually thought it was a one-piece, but it’s in fact two. This is really masterfully done – the craftsmanship. The bridge and the saddle are bone. Then we’ve got this beautiful maple trimming on the outside for all the bonding that matches here – really nice craftsmanship. This is totally seamless. I can run my fingers against it and you don’t feel any bumps; this is just totally smooth. As an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami, this is like what you would expect from a Taylor; this is a very nice exquisite inlay which is also wood – maple with an ebony neck. The feel of it is a Taylor. I play Taylors. I’ve got a Martin HD35; that’s my house guitar, but the Taylor is my main stage guitar. I am a professional performer and an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami. I like it because of the action and also the acoustics of the way it sounds plugged in. The 2.0 expression system I’m a huge fan of.
So if you’re wondering about this particular guitar and how it compares to all other Taylors, I would say it’s pretty much just like an 814 which I have except you’re getting a sweeter mid-range which I appreciate as an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami. And then of course there is the cosmetic of it, so it’s the rare wood and the master craftsmanship; you’re getting the inlay and stuff. But let’s listen to this sound through this expression system. I want to let you hear this with some fingers style. If I can locate my cable I’m just going to do some fingers style for you. So we’ve got… A very warm mid-range. I’m sure you can hear it out there. By the way, I’m not eq’ing; I’m just straight dead at 12 noon and also on the amp straight 12 noon. When I’m live I tend to pull the Taylor down; I will pull the highs down to right about there. It’s helped me a sound less clackity, but for the sake of this video I’ve got it dimed out. Very cool.
So feels wise I put 13s is on here. The guitar came with 12, but I felt like it was more responsive to a little bit of a thicker gauge and I feel like the reason why – the mid-lows and the mids are just very, very warm and inviting on this guitar as an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami. I keep stressing that; I think in my professional opinion this is the one selling point of this guitar tonally and because I’m a player not a collector I look at a guitar like what it can do for me tonally. Operationally? Listen, folks, this is a Taylor; it’s a high-end Taylor but even the low-end Taylors they’re pretty much all the same in terms of the feel of the neck which is very nice. It’s a very nice c neck. I have the specks here; it’s 1 3/4 inch neck head and it looks like a maple neck ebony fret board and then it’s got this cool inlay which is also maple. These are pretty much a standard Taylor feel in terms of the body shape [inaudible]. So hopefully you’re familiar with this stuff if you’re interested in this guitar, but the real main selling point tonally is the mid-range as an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami. From what I understand, the mids on a koa continue to get sweeter and sweeter as time develops, okay, but they are already pretty spectacular. Play some finger style for you – very cool.
So I notice in the upper register when I was playing it’s a totally consistent feel. To give you some vigorous strumming also – this is with the amp off. It’s really nice as an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami, I mean, to compare it to my Taylor I think, like I said, it has a little bit more of that sweeter mid sound. I don’t think you can go wrong with Taylor; Taylors are just awesome. Now, this is my personal opinion – I use a Taylor on stage and then I play a Martin in my room. I’m in my studio right now in my house, but when I’m home as an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami I play a Martin when I’m unplugged. When I’m plugged in I play a Taylor and you just cannot a Taylor plugged in in my opinion; maybe you can, but you got to spend like 10 grand and make that happen. But they’ve just got it dialled in; they’ve got it figured out. If you’re planning to buy a guitar that you know you’re going to have to plug in, you should definitely get Taylor.
The only disadvantage of the Taylor is it’s a smaller body and it doesn’t have as much volume, which is what I noticed on this guitar. And I put 13s just so that it can hand a little more spank and give me just a little more resonance, but when I dial in the expression system that’s when the Taylors really shine – is when you plug them in. You hear that tone now. There can be a little too much summary high and that’s why live I back it down. So even as an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami when I pound the strings I roll those highs all the way down to about 9 o’clock or 9:30 and I roll my volume down a little bit. But look at how the guitar handles this level of attack. I’m using a .73 mm Dunlop pick and I’m giving it some pretty nice heavy strumming and you can hear like the percussiveness coming through the expression system. Bring it back to finger style. I am noticing on this guitar either fingers style or playing with a pick, both of them the guitar handles great and the reason I bring that up is this does not have a pick guard that’s to showcase the beautiful top but also kind of implying more sensitive way that it wants to be treated. So basically, if you use this on the road or on tour something with like serious strumming you could scratch up the top so… It depends on the way you play, I mean, I tend to keep my picking just right over the sound hole but if you’re like one of those people that really digs you might end up scratching it up. So it kind of leads me to think that maybe the designer was thinking more of a finger style. Here is a blog I did about fingerstyle guitar.
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I’ll play a little Hendrix as an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami for you too just to balance this out. Notice how huge and deep that base is. I really love it. And I’m digging with the pick and I’m noticing I’ve got no break up the bottom and holds totally solid. If I try something more on the 5th fret… Hopefully you can hear how much those mids really come out and shine. The lows are there but it’s not booming; they’re bold like iron. I feel like it’s almost like a base, like, it sounds like a base, but it has all the spank of a high-end Taylor and it has the mids as something that’s really unique. Like I said, I just re-strum these with 13s. I had 12s on here in standard and there was just something lacking I felt. I felt like if I was going to let the wood really bloom then it needed a little more of gage in there as an acoustic guitar instructor in Miami So I re-strum it with 13s and I feel like that’s the right gage for this guitar, in my humble opinion.
I have another video on YouTube where I’m actually jamming in 12s at a half step down doing a lot of lead work on that. And I enjoyed playing it in 12s and half step d own, but I think that if you’re really going to make this guitar bloom in the way that the wood wants to bloom in terms of the full resonating, 13s is the way to go. I hope I don’t sound too pushy, but that’s my opinion, what can I say? So I hope you enjoyed that. You can get the link below to buy the guitar off Amazon. Make sure you comment and subscribe I’d love to hear from you. I’ll see you at the next video. Thanks.