Back to navigation


Taylor's 517 Grand Pacific Builder's Edition





This article was


Written By





Our Product Research Team





Get to know them!





With its unique round-shoulder dreadnought silhouette, revolutionary V-Class Bracing, and dramatically different tonal personality, Taylor's 517 Grand Pacific Builder's Edition blazes new ground for Taylor. Featuring premium all-solid tonewoods ? neo-tropical mahogany for the back and sides and a torrefied Sitka spruce top ? this alluring acoustic guitar delivers a seductively bold and versatile tonal profile. As your eyes drink in this instrument's understated elegance, your hands savor its flawless playability while your ears revel in its warm, rich, organic tone. The 517 Grand Pacific Builder's Edition is a feast for the senses.





Related Videos: 517 Grand Pacific Builder's Edition V-Class - Natural





NOW PLAYING:


Taylor Builder's Edition Guitars Overview





The Grand Pacific Dreadnought | Builder's Edition 517





Builder's Edition Collection | Overview





Taylor Grand Pacific Release Party





Introducing The Grand Pacific Dreadnought | Taylor Guitars





Joseph Soloman - No Fool | Taylor Guitars Acoustic Session





The Grand Pacific | Fixing the "Puff of Air" problem





The Grand Pacific | Shaping a New Taylor Sound





Beyond the Gear: Taylor Guitars & Sweetwater


Grand Pacific: innovation and evolution





With the Grand Pacific, Taylor master luthier Andy Powers has fulfilled the potential of V-Class bracing as a robust tone-shaping platform. The Grand Pacific demonstrates proof-of-concept that V-Class architecture is an ideal cornerstone for guitars with a versatile range of musical personalities that will appeal to a broad swath of players cross-genre. Inspired by the diverse acoustic guitar sounds on the records he heard while growing up in Southern California, Andy set out to diversify Taylor’s tonal palette by designing a guitar with a different sound profile.





Serial 1207292021


Serial 1207292021


A bold new round-shoulder guitar from Taylor





Although V-Class bracing gave Andy more ways to control a guitar's tonal character, Andy also knew a new body shape would be required, something with roughly the dimensions of a dreadnought. With V-Class, he could eliminate the undesirable sonic characteristics generally ascribed to dreadnoughts. All this led to the round-shoulder dreadnought design Taylor calls the Grand Pacific. The Grand Pacific’s overall sound is warm and seasoned, producing notes that overlap more to create a smooth, blended sound. Its wider waist delivers more low-frequency power; the problematic low-end woodiness often associated with dreadnoughts being eliminated by the V-Class bracing.





V-Class Bracing: a sonic revelation





Bracing is the internal framework of an acoustic guitar that helps shape its sound. Although X-bracing has been standard in acoustic guitars for over a century, it creates an innate conflict between two key elements of a guitar’s sound: volume and sustain. The guitar's top (its soundboard) contributes to both. The flexibility of the top generates volume (projection), while its stiffness generates sustain. And with X-braced guitar tops, here's where the trade-off comes in: when something is made stiffer, its flexibility is reduced (and vice versa).





V-Class bracing changes all that. With Taylor's V-Class bracing, an acoustic guitar top can be both stiff and flexible ? for more volume and sustain. V-Class bracing provides stiffness parallel to the strings for more rigidity and hence sustain. Flexibility on either side generates the air movement necessary for robust projection. It's the best of both worlds. This groundbreaking innovation also improves intonation; not only producing notes that are louder and with longer sustain ? but more in tune with each other. Guitarists at Sweetwater are gobsmacked. But don't take our word for it ? pick up the superb Taylor 517 Grand Pacific Builder's Edition and experience it for yourself!





Taylor master luthier Andy Powers


Serial 1207292021


Serial 1207292021


Exceptional tonewoods





Mahogany is treasured for its punchy midrange bloom and strongly focused, earthy, and somewhat dry fundamental without a preponderance of ringing overtones. An acoustic guitar with mahogany back and sides easily in a track, which is why engineers and studio guitarists tend to prefer "hogs" for tracking. The 517 Grand Pacific features back and sides of solid, responsibly sourced Neo-Tropical mahogany and a top of torrefied solid Sitka spruce with Taylor's tone-enhancing V-Class bracing, which takes the guitar's native versatility to an entirely new level. The torrefication process thermally cures the wood to deliver a more played-in tone, and together with the V-Class bracing, gives you a highly responsive and expressive instrument with increased dynamic range, robust projection and sustain, and harmonic synergy when chording up the entire fingerboard.





Taylor 517 Grand Pacific Builder's Edition Acoustic Guitar Features:


Neo-Tropical mahogany body with Silent Satin finish


Torrefied Sitka spruce top with V-Class Bracing


Compound Carve tropical mahogany neck with satin finish


15"-radius West African ebony fingerboard with 20 frets, Grained Ivoroid Arrowhead inlays, and wood binding


25.5" scale length


Wood binding; black sapele/maple single-ring rosette


West African ebony bridge, pins; Micarta saddle


1.75" black graphite nut


Taylor Nickel tuners


Dual-action truss rod, headstock access


Serial 1207292021