Grand Design

We get the inside perspective on the Grand Pacific from its designer, Taylor master builder Andy Powers

- Taylor Master

Can you explain the relationship between developing the Grand Pacific guitar design and the V-Class bracing system?

“The timing is interesting: right after we launched the [redesigned] 800 series in early 2014 I was thinking about what we do next. And we had just built the most Taylor of Taylor guitars; our iconic guitar. And so I had this idea about building instruments using this V-Class architecture, and this was actually the first guitar I had in mind with it.

“So I built one using a conventional dreadnought shape, and that really lit me up and got me thinking. I built another one and I thought, ‘Well obviously this isn’t a fluke: there’s something here. So let me make a shape that will do what I want this to do.’ What I was trying to get was a little more independent control of how the guitar would sound.

“Typically when we’re using an X-brace architecture in the guitar, you can make some changes and you can voice it the way you want, but it’s almost always a balancing act. If you add something in one place, you’re taking it away from something else; if you add a little more volume, you’re taking away a little sustain. It’s kind of this push and pulls.