Taylor Guitars Road Show 2010
Event Review

Taylor Road Show is all about guitars. For the last four years, Taylor has been bringing the Road Show to more than 146 locations throughout USA. On the 20th Oct 2010, for the first time, Taylor brought this lively event to Hong Kong, which gave a chance for more than a hundred guitar enthusiasts to talk shop with Taylor specialist Andy Lund at the Tom Lee Academy Hall.

In many ways, Taylor’s Road Show differs from clinics and workshops. Instead of focusing on playing techniques, the event aims at giving the audience the latest behind-the-scene insights of Taylor guitars, the mechanics of hardware and have their questions answered.

Both acoustic and electronic guitarists have always been searching for that tone, a perfect tone that best represents their musical identity and style. However, it has never been an easy task to describe your ideals to the sales person. Without guidance, you can easily get lost in the Amazon of acoustic guitars. There are guitars that appeal to virtually all tastes, but there are also models that are built to cater the needs of a specific group of players, such as those who pick and strum more aggressively. Thus, to assist our audience in narrowing down their search scope, Andy introduced the tone characteristics of the numerous body shapes, and demonstrated how wood affects tone. Once our audience had mastered the fundamentals of the architecture of guitar, he moved on to played snippets of music, comparing sonic characteristics of various models, in a fashion similar to a scientist who conducts a series of control experiments in the laboratory. 

Here, our audience did not only crack the secret code behind the naming methodologies of Taylor guitars, Andy also helped them eliminate some of the mysteries about buying guitars and be better prepared to make their own choice.

At the 30-minute ‘petting zoo’ section, our participants sampled an impressive variety of Taylor guitars and feel each guitar’s potential in their hands. This section is designed to let guitarists feel and evaluate the nuances of a guitar, such as tone, touch, feel and projection. Yet, these subtle differences are sometimes hard to tell. So it is an advantage to learn how to measure and judge a guitar’s sonic quality before beginning the extensive search. For beginners, Andy suggested that they could try paying attention to the attack of the first chord you play on the instrument, and closely examine how notes resonate with the body and sustain.

Moving on, Andy introduced some exciting additions to Taylor’s family of guitars, including Baby Taylor’s younger brother GS-mini, the Baritone 8-string, a new invention that gives players a rich musical palette that promises to uncork new inspiration of musical harmony, and last, but not least, T3, the award-winning member of the company’s latest electric line of instruments. To wrap up this fun-filled and informative gathering, Taylor souvenirs including picks and T-shirts were given away to lucky draw winners and Andy offered further personal advice to our attendees to find their ultimate match. 
 

- Francis Fu