Taylor CEO Andy Powers creates a perfectly proportioned future classic with his Powers Electric Type-A Trussed Hollowbody Guitar

I don’t post guitars to this blog very often - they need to be pretty special for me to sit up and take notice - and everything about this new guitar is fairly innovative and nigh perfect. The only oddity is that the brand and type of tuning pegs is not mentioned on any resource currently - while they look like fairly standard non-locking tuners - which on a high ticket price guitar like this is a little unusual - it’s the only thing I believe I would be looking to change - if and when I acquired one of these.

Andy talks of how he was inspired by Southern California’s Surfing and Skateboard scene and classic Americana automobile design and music culture. To my eyes he has hit the perfect shape here - which kind of looks already like a classic guitar - with a sort of MusicMan-alike headstock - which I really like. Readers will know that I’m fussy about headstock designs - and this one gets my total approval. The Surfing / Surfboard theme is carried through to the Knobs and Vibrato Bar and 3-way switch caps / tips - where those are made from resin-infused surfboard offcuts. I might have cried that them further and made the inlays from the same materials - while the inlays here are OK - just not particularly striking or memorable - but they don’t detract from the guitar either.

Everything about this guitar has been highly considered - down to the split / asymmetrical radius of the neck through to every material and fixture and nature of construction - so that this is a fully hollowbody guitar which kind of echoes Andy’s Taylor Acoustic Guitar experience - so you get a gorgeous ringing-out of notes.

Andy made two styles of pickups - FF42 and PF42 - both using neodymium magnets - where  the FF42’s are the warmer of the two pickups and use a ’Full Faraday’ cage made with 42-gauge wire. Visually, those are engine turned on top, reminiscent of hot rod dashboard detailing. The PF42 ’Partial Faraday’ pickup, creates a firmer, brighter sound and visually features matching pickguard material. These are essentially Single-Coil pickups, while Andy has designed the pickup surrounds to have some degree of hum-shielding - so these pickups have a really low noisefloor.

The Bridge and Vibrato system is totally custom-designed to keep the guitar in tune however you bend those strings. The ’CamTail’ Vibrato has a series of compensated Cam rollers of different sizes for each string - to ensure ultimate tuning fidelity.

The pickup selector is a 3-way, and you then have common Volume and Tone controls.

I can’t help but love the look of the guitar - where I might look to replace the tuning pegs once I find out what they are! My favourite variety released to-date is the ’Wild Honey Burst’ edition pictured - that’s just a perfect guitar every which way - and according to Andy - if you remove the lower strap button - the guitar perfectly balances on its haunches.

There’s been a lot of talk of these selling out instantly - but not many have been made to date - while the few that have been - roughly 3 per half of the listed dealers - seems like the other half have still to receive any. In any case the first batch is definitely sold out. The guitar comes in solid autobody colours, or with more figured tops like my Wild Honey Burst choice - there are also flame and quilted tops doing the rounds - but I felt the above pictured top just perfectly suits this guitar - and of course I love a Rosewood fretboard. This guitar pretty much has everything on it that I like - and is a fantastic achievement for a first attempt - it looks perfectly proportioned really in every aspect - and everything sits just right here - including that style of pickguard.