Amazing Taylor "small" guitars

[Rolow]

Taylor makes two 3/4 size guitars and they are both excellent.  First, who might want a 3/4?  A young person or anyone with small and/or weak hands.  Because the scale is shorter, scale being the length from nut to saddle, it takes less tension to produce the same notes as a full size.  Also, the nut is narrower making it easier to wrap the hand around the neck.  For me, a significant blood flow issue has made my left hand comparatively weak and spindley. 

I own both the "Baby" or B1, and the much finer GS mini.    The Baby came first and still has an amazingly loud and full sound.  This is an excellent starter for a child or any adult, especially one with smaller hands.  The $300 price tag puts this Taylor within reach of most buyers.  It also makes a good travel guitar for the more advanced player.

Since '09 Taylor has made the GS mini, a 3/4 size version of the award winning Grand Symphony shape, and it uses more high end wood laminates.  Some might ask "why is rosewood better if its a laminate?".  The reason has to do with the sandwich construction of Taylor laminates for back and sides.  The inside and outside layers are, for instance Rosewood, with poplar in between.  Other prime woods used have been Koa, Maple, Curley Sepele, and Mahogany.

The GS mini has an amazingly loud and well balanced sound.  At $500 ($600 with on board Tayloe electronics) it is again within reach of many players who could not afford even a 100's full size.  I would even challenge an experienced player to identify the mini from the full in the blind.

I am not experienced with electronics enough to talk about guitar pre amps and mixer pre amps, but while the Taylor electronics sound poor when plugged straight into my BR600, they sound great when plugged into an amp.

Ron

[Blooby]

Yet another item I have lusted after.  

I bought a $90 Luna for kayak camping and love it dearly. Well, I love the size dearly although it actually sounds pretty good as well. I can assure that the tuning is better with the Taylors (not to mention the sound, etc.).

A friend had pretty good luck while recording a GS mini into a Boss 1600CD. I know he recorded without printing the effects and fiddled after the fact.

Cheers.

Blooby

[Farrell Jackson]

I purchased a Taylor GS Mini with the Taylor pickup set up a couple of years ago. As mentioned it feels and sounds like a much larger guitar. I got it mainly because I wanted the sound  of an acoustic with a magnetic sound hole pickup versus the piezo or onboard preamped under the bridge pups. It sounds good and loud unplugged or plugged to an amp but does lack a little when going straight to a recording desk without preamping it. I use a T.C. Electronics preamp between the Mini and recorder due to it's ability to get higher gains without a lot of noise injected. I usually mic it also for a stereo effect. I used the GS Mini (pickup and Rode 1A combination) on my cover of Led Zep's Your Time Is Gonna Come if you want to check out the Mini's sound. If your in the market for a small A/E guitar that has quality play and sound, I highly recommend this guitar. As Rolow mentioned, mine cost the same at $500 for the guitar and an extra $100 for the pickup. The pickup kit installation is a snap.....really it just snaps into the already installed bracket in the sound hole and then you replace the strap end pin with a supplied plug pin. It took me about 15 minutes by just loosening the strings and snapping pup into place, undo the 3 screws holding the end pin and re-attach the new plug pin with the same screws, plug the pickup cable mini jack inside to the end pin, and then secure the cable to the upper inside hook to hide it out of the way.

Farrell

[danieldesete]

There is a baby Taylor to grab and play in a local pub here, but I had in mind so many good reviews of that little guitar that I must admit I was pretty disappointed. I expected more depth and personality.  The string were in a desperate state though.
Daniel

[bruno]

People do leave they strings on way too long. I think I left the one's on the Brook for 6 months (coated strings) - but the difference it makes it worth while. We all suffer from laziness I guess. Oh, for a guitar tech :-)

Played the Baby Taylor a while back, I must say I though it sounded great, and was easy to play with my small sausage like fingers.

:-)
B

[BAG]

We've played the baby Taylor's and the GS Minis but for us the Mini Maton is the go-to guitar for live acoustic work although being Aussies with good friends who are Maton endorsees made us a little biased.

Maddie recently bought one for herself and went high-end with the mahogany version with AP5-Pro pickup and for live work I don't think I've heard a better small guitar and you can get REALLY LOUD without feedback dramas. Costs a bit more than the baby Taylors though. Kayla went a little bigger with an SRS808 with AP5-Pro pickup which is a bit bigger than those 3/4 sized guitars while being smaller than a Grand Concert or Dreadnaught.

[bruno]

Adrian Legg Plays a Brook small bodied parlour guitar (Creedy) on this


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptvS9kzhr6Y

Article here

http://guitar.com/articles/adrian-legg-no-bones-about-it

Brook Guitars

http://www.brookguitars.com/guitars/guitars.html

I must admit to having a little GAS on having a Parlour guitar, to go with the Taw and Tavy :-)

[Groundy]

I must stop reading these posts , I cant afford to........

Alex

[Farrell Jackson]

I must say that I absolutely love my Taylor GS Mini. I've used it exclusively on the last three songs I've recorded. I just tune it down to a D standard tuning. This gives it a real nice deeper tone plus it allows me to sing an easier melody without staining my aging vocal chords too much.

Farrell

[Kostiainen]

I've been using Babytaylor now almost 6 years. Absolytely good guitar. Well made, looks good and sounds good. I like that neck joint and little bit rounded back.

I bought it because I got small fingers and short hands. Barre chords are no very easy to play.