Taylor 816CE

For more information regarding common troubleshooting issues, check out: Taylor 816CE Troubleshooting

The 816CE is a high-end acoustic guitar made by Taylor Guitars. In a Grand Symphony body style made with Indian Rosewood back and sides and a Sitka Spruce top, it features refined construction and design elements such as mother of pearl inlays and bridge pins, maple binding, ebony fretboard, and a rosewood headstock plate. Its sound can been described as projecting, clear, rich, and articulate, all characteristics of an excellent top-tier flagship acoustic guitar. Thanks to Taylor's Expression System pickup configuration, the instrument's sound is replicated with high accuracy when plugged in.

Bob Taylor has this to say about the instrument: "Slightly bigger than Taylor’s Grand Auditorium body style, the Grand Symphony 816CE yields a powerful and rich sound without sacrificing bell-like articulation. It makes a potent strummer, and dynamic fingerstylists will enjoy the thick, full-bodied character of the notes."

The 816CE's Grand Symphony body style and Venetian cutaway have not been altered since the instrument was first released 2006, but a few incremental changes have been made under the hood. When the guitar was released it featured Taylor's Forward Shifted bracing and original Expression System pickup.

In 2007 Taylor revamped the Expression System to run on 9V batteries instead of AA's, and the 2007 816CE got the upgrade. This happened again in 2010 for the third iteration of the Expression System, and again in 2014 for the current iteration, dubbed the Expression System 2 as it was completely revoiced where the previous iterations were mostly battery and placement improvements.

In 2009, Taylor introduced its new CV bracing style, which enhanced the resonation of the top of the guitar, resulting in slightly clearer, louder output. Taylor changed the bracing of the 816CE again in 2014 to its Advanced Performance bracing style designed specifically to accentuate the size and shape of the 816, where previous iterations took a one-size-fits-all approach for the whole lineup in the 800 and 900 series.

Taylor's model naming system has three parts: the series number, the body style number, and letters to represent any other crucial details.

The series number ranges from 100 to 900 from most basic to most elaborate, with the 900 series being highly decorated with inlays and detailed wood work. The 800 series is considered by many to be Taylor's true "playable" flagship because, while it has all the same top-end performance upgrades as the 900 series and many of the same design appointments, it is not quite as intricate - or expensive - as the 900 series.

Taylor has five main body types for each series represented by even numbers 10 through 18, proportional to size: Dreadnought (10), Grand Concert (12), Grand Auditorium (14), Grand Symphony (16), and Grand Orchestra (18).

Finally, Taylor appends letters to the three numbers to signify whether the instrument has a cutout ('C'), electronics ('E'), and if it is part of a Limited Edition series ('LTD'). Recently Taylor has begun releasing two Limited series a year, so they have added 'F' and 'S' to the 'LTD' nomenclature to refer to Fall and Spring respectively, resulting in 'FLTD' and 'SLTD'. For example, a Fall Limited Grand Auditorium in the 400 series without a cutaway or electronics would be labeled "414-FLTD."

Thus, "816CE" shows that it is from the 800 series, it has a Grand Symphony body style, and it has a cutaway and electronics.

While the 816CE hasn't changed drastically since its inception - the improvements made to it have been consistently incremental year to year - the exact specifications of the latest model can be found at http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/aco....

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