Taylor Guitars: 50 Years of Innovation

The Company Expands

However, the purchase did not include the rights to the name American Dream, so the company was initially renamed Westland Music Company. Because of the size of the logo needed for the instruments' headstocks, a shorter name was required. They therefore decided to call the company Taylor, since Bob Taylor was the actual guitar maker. Kurt Listug took over the financial and business matters while Bob Taylor was responsible for design and production.

In 1976 the company decided to expand and made its guitars available to other retailers. Kurt then began regularly travelling to sell directly to other dealers. Taylor’s proximity to Los Angeles, combined with the influential dealers there, put Taylor guitars into the hands of several notable artists. Fred Walecki, owner of Westwood Music, sold Taylors to David Crosby, J.D. Souther and many other artists, among others.

Against Changing Musical Trends

Taylor's early efforts to make instrument making a successful business were further challenged by the shifting music trends of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Acoustic guitars lost some of their appeal as pop music moved from the singer-songwriter era to disco, punk and new wave, and synthesizers and electric guitars took on a major role in pop and rock music.
Larger acoustic-guitar manufacturers such as Martin, Gibson and Guild took the biggest hits, but smaller companies were not immune either. Fortunately, Bob's guitars and Kurt's connections with dealers helped the company gain a foothold, as Bob recalls. “Dealers are guitar lovers at heart, and they loved the shape and feel of our guitar necks, the brilliant and balanced tone and our craftsmanship. They bought guitars because they wanted them, and fortunately they kept acoustic guitar playing alive in those years, no matter how unfashionable it had become.”

Koa reforestation

Hawaiian koa has long been a revered natural resource in Hawaiian culture. Koa grows only on Hawaii and has been used for thousands of years for culturally significant items such as canoes and paddles and, more recently, for fine furniture, art and musical instruments. Koa holds a special place among lovers of ukuleles and guitars. The beauty of koa—with its rich colours, figured grain and, in some cases, a lustrous sheen—together with its distinctive tonal profile, has made it one of the most popular guitar tonewoods in Taylor's range for several decades.
Over the past two centuries Hawaii's original forests have gradually shrunk for a number of reasons—primarily the conversion of land to agriculture for large-scale sugar and pineapple production, pasture for cattle, and the introduction of non-native animals such as sheep, deer and goats. Without fencing, naturally regenerating young trees are often trampled or browsed by grazing animals.

The good news is that more and more measures—fencing, tree planting, weed control and firebreaks—are being taken to restore Hawaii's native forests. The desire to support these restoration efforts led Taylor and one of its wood suppliers, Pacific Rim Tonewoods, to form a joint venture called Siglo Tonewoods in 2015. Like Bob Taylor, PRT founder Steve McMinn is a visionary who recognises the value of responsible forest stewardship, and his team has been at the forefront of research projects aimed at better understanding the genetics and propagation of spruce and maple lines prized by luthiers. Siglo Tonewoods is committed to combining selective harvesting of koa with community reforestation projects, including planting koa trees, to ensure their long-term viability.

Urban Wood: Giving city trees a second life

Traditionally, guitar tonewoods have been sourced from natural forests around the world—for example, in North, Central and South America, West Africa, India, Europe and Australia. Taylor has also explored the possibility of sourcing wood from its own backyard in Southern California and is pioneering the use of retired urban trees. Some species are already known to guitar builders, while others are being used for the first time in the music world. All are excellent tonewoods.

After careful consideration it turned out that a local arborist, West Coast Arborists, Inc., was the perfect partner. The company provides professional tree-care and management services for nearly 300 public agencies, including cities and counties across California and Arizona, and cares for over six million trees. The company had the right combination of tree volume and quality to provide the predictability Taylor needed for the project to work. WCA plants about 20,000 new trees each year. Until around 2000, most trees they removed at a city's request were sold for firewood or disposed of in landfill. To reduce disposal costs, WCA began sorting wood by species at its yard and sealing the ends of large logs to prevent checking. They also bought a portable Wood-Mizer sawmill and launched their own urban wood-recycling initiative called Street Tree Revival. As fate would have it, Taylor and WCA got talking around that time.

Bob Taylor and Andy Powers visited one of WCA's sorting yards in Ontario, California, where they assessed the tree inventory and found several promising species, including Shamel ash. After Andy cut and dried some of the wood and built prototypes with excellent results, Taylor decided to design a model and add it to the Taylor line.
In early 2020 Taylor introduced its first model made from urban wood—the Builder's Edition 324ce with back and sides of Shamel ash, renamed Urban Ash to highlight this new initiative. Since then other guitar models using Urban Ash have been produced and a dedicated range featuring another urban wood species, Red Ironbark Eucalyptus, has been introduced.