Tone Matched my Taylor 914ce

Gentlemen, that is a preset designed to run your acoustic electric through, i.e. piezo equipped acoustic guitar. I recorded my Taylor 914 into Pro Tools using the aforementioned mic and preamps. I tweaked it in Pro Tools to get that "sheen" as if it were being mixed into a song. I then Tone Matched that back out of Pro Tools into the Axe Fx II as the reference. I then matched it with my Taylor 914 1/4" output (built in pickup system). That's my new on stage preset when I use the Taylor. It works well with any acoustic that has a piezo.

Working on some other non-traditional presets for Dobro, Violin, Lap Steel, Nylon, Mandolin, and also a Martin HD 28. The Axe Fx has become my hub to plug all my stringed toys in.
 
Thanks for the reply. Tomorrow I will check it out with my acoustic electric Guitars (Taylor, Takamine and Martin). Thanks again
 
Thanks for sharing this. I'm looking forward to trying it out with my Taylor 816ce! Does your Taylor 914 have the Expression 2 system? If so it might work well for my guitar since that is what I have in mine.

Any chance you would like to share the original recording of your guitar that you used for the tone matches? That would allow us to tone match our own instruments even if they sound a bit different with their different electronics systems.
 


Taylor 914ce Acoustic Guitar. I put up two variations on the AxeChange using the following Microphones : DPA 4011 (Left & Right), DPA 4006 (Center) Preamps : MP1 & MP2

Taylor 914ce Nashville
Taylor 914ce Studio


Tone Match Blocks attached



Maybe it's my imagination, but I swear I hear the magnetic sound of a Taylor Expression System in that recording. Is it part of the recorded mix?

Can you save the tonematch blocks with mics only as IRs and share them? That way we could try them in the AX8. Thank you!
 
OK, I spent some time with these today. I loaded up both presets onto my Axe-FX and played direct with my Taylor 816ce using an Atomic CLR.

I thought it sounded excellent!

Side note... My 816ce has the Expression 2 system in it and I have personally found it to be a much more usable tone than any other piezo guitar that I have played. This guitar has a piezo element that sits behind the saddle rather than under it. There are tiny screws that can be adjusted to press the element into the saddle with just enough pressure. Taylor claims this new system makes a big difference in tone. I can't say for sure except that the guitar does sound quite good plugged in even just direct into the CLR.

Anyway, these tone matches sounded really good through this system. I dialed the compression back a bit (dropped the ration to 3.0 and the threshold to -30dB). I also dialed the reverb back around 20% mix, raised the high pass filter around 300hZ and shortened the decay time to around 1.4 seconds. This gave me a little more clarity and dryness without removing the overall smoothness and vibe. I also adjusted the graphic eq block to be more conservative as I felt it was adding a bit of "phasy" or "filtery" sound that was unesesary for my guitar.

I experimented with the smoothing on the tone match block. It is at 100% in the presets and I found that sounded really good to me too so I left it that way.

Anyway, long story short I came out with a tone that I would go gig with today (if only I had an acoustic gig)! Thanks so much for sharing these killer tone matches and presets.
 
Last edited:
Wow, these sound excellent with my J-45 with built-in underbridge system (no piezo).
 
Side note... My 816ce has the Expression 2 system in it and I have personally found it to be a much more usable tone than any other piezo guitar that I have played. This guitar has a piezo element that sits behind the saddle rather than under it. There are tiny screws that can be adjusted to press the element into the saddle with just enough pressure. Taylor claims this new system makes a big difference in tone. I can't say for sure except that the guitar does sound quite good plugged in even just direct into the CLR.

I had several guitars with the first few iterations of the Taylor Expression system and I hated them. LOATHED them. I thought they sounded awful, unnatural and completely magnetic. T5s too. I even bought the K4 preamp to make them work, but no luck. Sold each of them.

I tried one of the redesigned 614ce models with the ES2 into the small HK sub/satellite system about 6 months ago and I was blown away by the difference in the ES2. Sounded fantastic. They finally came up with something I like better than the Fishman systems in my older Taylors (one was updated to an Aura system and sounds pretty good). I almost bought the 614ce, but held off. I generally buy my guitars used so I'll wait for the right ES2 model to come along. Might be a 614ce or an 814ce. I have more than enough nice acoustics to go around
 
  • Like
Reactions: sam
Back
Top Bottom