Taylor 517e Grand Pacific Acoustic-Electric Guitar, Sitka Spruce/Urban Ironbark, Shaded Edgeburst

The 517e from Taylor Guitars is one of three Grand Pacific offerings in the company's 500 series of acoustic guitars. This non-cutaway design has a full, muscular sound with a slightly thinner body than most traditional slope-shoulder dreadnoughts, easing the playability for some while retaining the tonal characteristics of the body shape.

Perhaps the most notable feature of the 517e is in the body. Its torrefied Sitka Spruce top is paired to a Taylor Guitars original back and side tonewood - Urban Ironbark. Ironbark or Ironwood is a California native. In Taylor Guitars' ever-continuing mission of wood sustainability, Taylor studied these trees abundant to their home state and found them to share physical properties of Ebony and tonal characteristics of Indian rosewood. City planners had these trees chipper bound, and Taylor Guitars saved them from an ill fate, instead making beautiful guitars from them.

Outside of the body, the 517 features exceptional tonewoods throughout, those being a Tropical Mahogany neck and West African Crelicam Ebony fingerboard and bridge. Other key features include a Tusq nut, Micarta saddle, and Taylor's flagship ES2 Expression System pickup with controls for volume, treble, and bass placed on the top bout of the guitar.

Under the hood, the 517e features V-class bracing, a pattern developed by Taylor Guitars to evenly balance and increase volume and sustain. The tradeoff was always thicken the top and bracing for more sustain but suffer a volume loss, or shave off the top and bracing for more volume and suffer a loss of sustain. With this signature bracing pattern, harmonics are balanced at every register of the guitar, and neither volume nor sustain is lost or compromised.

The Taylor 517e is a fantastic guitar and a true West Coast native, ready for the stage or studio, or perhaps the songwriting session or family circle.