A Premium Taylor with an Imaginative Design

The Taylor 816ce Builder’s Edition acoustic guitar pairs a distinctive body design with an immaculate sound for the ultimate playing experience. Built around Taylor’s innovative V-Class bracing, this Grand Symphony-sized guitar produces a rich and airy orchestral tone with incredible detail, resonance, and projection, supported by an Indian Rosewood back and sides and a crisp Lutz spruce top. The 816ce Builder’s Edition’s eye-catching look derives from its chamfered body and fretboard edges, satin finish, and scooped, treble-side soundport cutaway, which gives access to the upper frets without diminishing tone. Cutting-edge Taylor Expression System 2 electronics provide a clear and accurate amplified sound along with feedback control for an ideal gigging instrument.

V-class bracing: a sonic revelation

Bracing is the internal framework of an acoustic guitar that helps shape its sound. Although X-bracing has been standard in acoustic guitars for over a century, it creates an innate conflict between two key elements of a guitar’s sound: volume and sustain. The guitar's top (its soundboard) contributes to both. The flexibility of the top generates volume (projection), while its stiffness generates sustain. And with X-braced guitar tops, here's where the tradeoff comes in: when something is made stiffer, its flexibility is reduced (and vice versa).

V-class bracing changes all that. With Taylor's V-class bracing, an acoustic guitar top can be both stiff and flexible — for more volume and sustain. V-class bracing provides stiffness parallel to the strings for more rigidity and, hence, sustain. Flexibility on either side generates the air movement necessary for robust projection. It's the best of both worlds. This groundbreaking innovation also improves intonation, not only producing notes that are louder and with longer sustain — but also more in tune with each other.