Taylor Offers First Nylon String Guitar

Taylor Guitars is introducing the first generation of its long-awaited nylon-string guitars at the Winter 2002 NAMM Show. The Nylon Series guitars represent a "hybrid", offering tone that will appeal to classical and world/jazz players, and a neck shape and body style that steel-string players will find comfortable. In the same way that the easily playable, slim-profile necks of the Taylors of the '70s made the acoustic guitar a viable option for electric-guitar players, the Nylon Series will provide steel-string players with a bridge to experimentation and an expansion of their repertoires and tonal palettes.

The neck width on Taylor Nylon Series guitars is 1-7/8 inches, same as on a Taylor 12-string. According to Bob Taylor, the New Technology neck design, introduced by Taylor in 1999, is perfect for this guitar. "We've been working on and off for five years to design a nylon-string guitar," he says. "The NT neck design affects and improves the tonal quality of a nylon-string at least as much as it does a steel-string guitar." The NT neck was awarded "2001 Product of The Year" by The Music Trades magazine.

The Nylon Series includes four models, featuring the following all-solid-wood combinations: the NS3 (sapele mahogany back and sides, Sitka spruce top with satin finish); the NS4 (Ovangkol back/sides, Sitka spruce top with satin finish); the NS6 (flamed maple back/sides, Engelmann spruce top with gloss finish), and NS7 (East Indian rosewood back/sides, Western red cedar top with gloss finish).