Guitar: Taylor T5, just arrived. The maple sunburst one.
Amp: Fishman loudbox I guess is the amp fishman makes, it was the 50 or 100 w.
Look:It looks cool, Ill give it that. The flamed models have a cool thing about them, and I like the F-holes. Also the single coil looks nice, kinda in the middle of nowhere, but its different. I like the cutaway fretboard, a chet rippoff, but the godins are the only semi hollow without it. The knobs on the front I liked more, but the were placed odd. Like on a fender, or gibson the tone controll would be down belowe the strings. Above you had to stop playing to adjust sound, on other guitars with tone control you dont need to. Also the pickup switch is located where the tone knobs are on a chet, hard to get to mid song. Now none of that matters if you have a straight acoustic song, then a bluesy, then an acoustic, then a jazz. but when you have an acoustic song with a solo or whatever and you gotta switch pickups it doesnt work well. also you need to adjust tone when you do this to get the desired sound, you cant go from good acoustic to good blues, or vice versa.
Feel: It doesnt weigh much. Hollow, I was expecting it to be heavier. It does play like an electric, not like a les paul or setup electric, but definatly not like an acoustuic, good playability. The scale is slightly different than a normal guitar. Martin will use 25.4 mostly, gibson 24.75. the T5 uses 24.87. not a huge deal but it took a sec to get used to. the neck has a good radius to it, nice feel, not a fat neck like some taylors.
Tone:Now we are where I begin to hate it. The guitar doesnt sound great. Acoustic it doesnt have a good tone. The controls dont allow to tweak the tone a great deal on the settings. When I start on position 1, the neck and body setting I get a decent tone, not worth the cash though, seems flat, not note wise but tone wise. then i switch to posion 2, the neck pickup only. It doesnt sound as good, I guess on a solo it might work, but for the song trying to do the rythm on it would be tough. Position 3 is the bridge pickup, the electric pickup. It has an OK blues and jazz sound. But it wont give you true blues, or jazz, just a mix of the two, to where you can play a blues song, sound ok, then do a jazz, soung ok, its not a "full-tilt electric" sound at all. Position 4 is the neck and bridge in parallel, it has a similar sound to 3, more of a jazzy sound, I was somewhat happy with this setting, had some acoustic tones and electric as well, sortof what jazz should have, but its not worth it for this one setting. Position 5, just forget it, i spent a minute on this one, sounded terrible couldnt get anythign good, 5 is neck and bridge working in series, dont know what it means exactly but I can say it doesnt turn out well, see above where I dont get the "full-tilt electric" I was promised.
The ES inspired acoustic pickups dont get a great tone because there isnt a good depth to the guitar, about the thickness of a chet if that. and im sure the electronics take up a good deal of that space, just look at the back cover and you'll see what i mean. the eclectric couldnt be controlled well, it was just stuck in this sortoff nuance of blues or jazz i couldnt figure out.
In short, the T5 didnt impress me, whose to say in a year or so the bugs might be worked out and I love it, but now it just doesnt live up to the hype.
I know some of you will hate this, and scream blasphemy, but go try one yourself and tell me its worth it. I think it'd be well worth my cash to get a les paul and a chet for a little more.
just my $.02
