Taylor 324CE Builder's Edition

In keeping with the Builder’s Edition philosophy, this 324ce features an array of enhancements designed to provide the ultimate playing experience, including chamfered body and fretboard edges, a beveled armrest and cutaway, and a Curve Wing bridge.

Urban Ash is shade tree ash, the kind planted along sidewalks and in parks, harvested when disease, storm damage, a root system that has started lifting pavement, or plain old age forces the removal. Wood like that has historically gone to mulch or a landfill. Taylor built an actual supply chain to route it into instruments instead, and the payoff is a tonewood that behaves an awful lot like high-grade mahogany. Dry and woody, strongly fundamental, notes that speak clearly instead of smearing into a wash of overtones.

Paired with a mahogany top, this Grand Auditorium lands where a lot of players actually live. Strong midrange, crisp highs, and enough low end underneath to hold up a hard strum without going muddy. Fingerstyle players get separation between notes. Strummers get body. V-Class bracing leans into that midrange and keeps the guitar noticeably more in tune with itself as you move up the neck, which is one of those things you stop noticing on this guitar and start missing on others.

Then there's the part that makes Builder's Edition worth the upcharge. Chamfered body and fretboard edges, a beveled armrest and cutaway, and Taylor's Curve Wing bridge. None of that reads as impressive on a spec sheet. All of it shows up twenty minutes into playing, when your forearm and fretting hand haven't started complaining yet. This is a guitar built for long sessions.

Rounding it out: Compass inlays in faux pearl and Italian acrylic, Gotoh 510 tuners with a 21:1 ratio that makes fine tuning almost too easy, a Silent Satin finish with a dark edgeburst, and ES2 electronics. Ships in the deluxe Taylor hardshell case.