Taylor Guitars expand their maple 600 Series with the new 612ce 12-Fret acoustic guitar, featuring traditional neck and slotted headstock design.
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This new instrument is one of the two new Grand Concert guitars to join their 600 series, featuring the same building techniques and modern aging process as seen on the other guitars in this line.
The Grand Concert body style is a bit smaller when compared to dreadnought and other regular sized guitars. This smaller size makes the 612ce 12-fret easier to handle and more comfortable to play, and at the same time it alters the voicing of the instrument.
Taylor Master Builder Andy Powers said, “It has a delicate, articulate voice, but it’s not a quiet or weak-sounding guitar. It’s actually really loud and powerful. But because the shape is a smaller outline, it will emphasize a certain clarity in its articulation and a certain high-end chime that a larger guitar won’t.”
Pairing it with a traditional 12 fret design alters the overall tone of the instrument even more significantly, plus it gives the guitar a vintage style appearance which blends well with the parlor style slotted headstock. Because the neck meets the guitar at the 12th fret, the bridge is forced to be put in a different position on the top. This results in a unique top movement that results in what the company describes as an extra robust punch in the midrange.
The 612ce 12-Fret guitar has a “Torrefied” Sitka spruce top supported by maple back and sides. The term torrefied refers to a high-temperature roasting process that quickly ages the top wood to give it the same response as that of old and well played instruments. Powers explains “There’s less resistance in the wood. As a result, it allows a more efficient energy transfer from the strings. A new piece of wood has quite a bit of resistance to moving. It’s not used to vibrating at a high frequency like that. An aged or played-in top is just waiting to be set in motion. For a player, it feels like the notes are just falling out of the guitar. As soon as you touch the strings, it takes hardly any effort; it doesn’t feel like you have to pry the sound out.“
The guitar’s 24 7/8″ scale length 12-fret neck is crafted from hard rock maple, complementing the guitar’s maple back and sides. It is topped by a an ebony fretboard with a 1.75″ nutwidth. Other notable features include the hand-rubbed “brown sugar” stain finish on the back and sides, new fretboard inlay with inlaid ebony backstrap, ebony and grained ivoroid trim and a striped ebony pickguard.
The guitar’s venetian cutaway and slotted headstock design complete its elegant appearance. For plugging in, the company equipped the 612ce 12-Fret with the Taylor Expression System 2 pickup and preamp system, which features three uniquely positioned and individually calibrated pickup sensors installed behind the saddle through the bridge.
If you’re curious why the Taylor 600 series is now using Maple, company founder Bob Taylor says, “Now and in the future, maple forests will be among the healthiest and most sustainable sources of instrument wood. This is a species from our own backyard that can be formed into world-class instruments for generations to come. So, it is an important wood for us as a forward-thinking instrument manufacturer. This redesign is our way of showing players how great a maple and spruce instrument can look and sound.”
The MSRP for the new Taylor 612ce 12-Fret is $4,198. You can head over to Taylor Guitars for further details and for the complete specifications.
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