Taylor T5z Pro Hollowbody - Borrego Red Review

What a beautiful thing

Being cursed with small hands and arthritis I have always struggled playing acoustic guitars because of the thickness of the neck. I took the Keith Richards approach and used a capo but was never satisfied with that so I used my electric for everything. I heard Taylor was starting to dabble in creating acoustic guitars for electric players. Wow ! I said to myself that would be… read more great if they can really pull it off. I thought if anyone knew it would be my sales rep Randy Akins. I called Randy and he confirmed what I had heard and told me about the T5z. I did a lot of research , read countless articles and watched every you tube video out there and decided to pull the trigger and bought the T5z pro. When it arrived I immediately went to work unpacking , inspecting and marveling at this beautiful thing before my eyes. I started to play unplugged and the neck truly felt like an electric pretty close to a les Paul slim taper . The sound unplugged was not great but not bad and I expected that but when I plugged into my audio interface I was at awe. The sound was beautiful the tones I was hearing as I switched through the pickups were blowing me away. You know the feeling when the creative juices start flowing that"s what was going on. I then ran it through my helix and tested it on some of my high gain patches and with some minor tweaking the ax was screaming. I ran it through an eleven rack , a tc helicon voice live 2 and directly into a PA and the guitar and sound passed with flying colors. I played the guitar for 3 straight days no less than 6 hours per day it was very hard to put it down. On the 3 rd day I popped the high E string and without thinking I grabbed a set of Martin light acoustic strings and slapped them on. Un plugged the strings improved the tonal sound but it did not feel right in my hands then I realized the strings that are shipped with the guitar are electric strings ellixers medium lights I think. Anyway I had some electric Ernie ball super slinky light strings slapped them on and that was the ticket. I will be using the elixir medium lights as soon as they arrive as feel the light strings are too light for the guitar I wasn"t crazy about the tone or the feel. In closing some important things I should also mention about this guitar. Although it may sound great it will not replace the tones of a genuine acoustic guitar. This guitar is what is called a hybrid guitar made to do it all. I highly recommend this guitar to anyone that has shied away from playing and enjoying an acoustic guitar , is serious about tone experimenting and has short arthritic hands that cannot handle play a traditional acoustic hope this review was helpful

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Smooth as Butter!

Very nice and beautiful instrument. Plays very well and easy. Tones from the 5-Way switch really provide versatility to any style of music. Didn't realize how small it actually is until I saw it in person, but that adds to the sexiness of this guitar. Played it through one of my amps and just as a straight acoustic and it really sounds great.

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A dream come true!

This guitar is a dream come true! Great playability and a sound that is too good to be true. But I really want to sing Sweetwaters customer service praises. I can't say enough. Sweet water is the place to go for buying musical instruments and gear. I bought hi-end guitars previously from some of their competitors (I won't name names but they consider themselves the "center"… read more for guitars). What a night and day difference buying from Sweetwater was. My guitar arrived 3 days from purchase and it looked like I was the first person to ever touch this guitar. Compared to my last purchases where my instrument was literally covered in grimy/greasy handprints when I opened it and the guy in the shop didn't even offer to clean it up! (I had these last ones sent to the store directly) Plus this guitars set up was perfect. Intonation and action was perfect whereas my last guitars I had to take to a local luthier for proper set-up. If you buy from Sweetwater you CAN'T go wrong...they still understand what true customer service is and take it to heart whereas others just give customer service lip service. Thank you Sweetwater I will now be a lifetime customer with service such as this! (Did I mention this guitar screams too!)

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Love this Taylor

This may be the most beautiful guitar I've ever seen. The neck is like butter. The action is excellent. The guitar weighs less than or equal to most of your acoustics. I plug this into my Fishman SA220, Which is also a work of art. A special thanks to Adam for helping me with all my purchases. Sweetwater is the best. I especially like the way you can compare several of the same… read more item, so you can choose the one that looks best to you. Keep up the good work. I'm sure I'll be back.

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