Taylor Grand Pacific 517e Builder’s Edition Wild Honey Burst V-Class

The Taylor Grand Pacific

New Taylor Shape.

New Taylor Sound.

Introducing the Taylor Grand Pacific

Powered by Taylor’s award-winning V-Class^™ bracing, the Grand Pacific is a new round-shoulder dreadnought that introduces a whole new sonic personality to the dreadnought category and the Taylor line. It’s a Taylor like you’ve never heard before.

A Warm, Seasoned Sound

Compared to the “modern” acoustic sound Taylor has become known for—vibrant and articulate, with clearly defined notes—the Grand Pacific’s voice features broad, overlapping notes that blend smoothly together to create a warm, seasoned sound. If you’re already a fan of Taylor, the Grand Pacific reveals a uniquely inspiring flavor to explore. If the Taylor sound hasn’t been your jam in the past, the Grand Pacific might change your mind. It’s definitely a guitar worth a test-drive.

V-Class Bracing: A Tone-Shaping Platform

In 2018, Taylor introduced its patented V-Class bracing, a groundbreaking internal bracing system designed by master guitar designer Andy Powers. V-Class brought an evolution beyond X-bracing (which Powers felt had been pushed to its limits as a voicing framework), enabling Taylor to make fundamental improvements to the sound of an acoustic guitar—namely the ability to produce stronger projection, longer sustain, and more accurate intonation by putting the guitar top more in tune with the strings. More importantly, the flexible V-Class framework gave Taylor a powerful new platform for shaping an acoustic guitar’s tonal character in dramatic new ways. This fueled the creation of the Grand Pacific.

Evolving a Traditional Sound

Andy Powers was inspired to create the Grand Pacific by the bluegrass and other acoustic roots music records he grew up listening to with his dad. Though a lot of that music was created with dreadnought-style guitars, Andy wasn’t interested in simply building another version of an existing dreadnought. Between the subtly rounded contours of the Grand Pacific’s body and the V-Class bracing under the hood, he was able to craft an instrument that could make the kinds of acoustic sounds he heard on those records, while also taming some of the problematic attributes often associated with dreadnought-style guitars. (These sonic issues were typically fixed during the recording/mixing process.) Some of the notable sonic improvements you’ll hear in the Grand Pacific include:

Clear Low-end Power

Andy eliminated the low-end woofiness/muddiness often associated with dreadnought-style guitars. The Grand Pacific produces warm low-end power but with more clarity, which means the bass frequencies are more musical and less problematic for recording and other applications.

Tonal Consistency from Low to High

Some traditional X-braced dreadnoughts create their low-end power at the expense of other frequencies. With the Grand Pacific, you’ll hear smooth, warm, powerful notes consistently across the entire frequency spectrum.

Greater Versatility and All-Around Utility

The Grand Pacific also isn’t musically confined the way a dreadnought can be. It blends the power of a bluegrass guitar with the clarity and playing comfort that singer-songwriters and even fingerstyle players will enjoy. Its all-around utility makes it a fantastic workhorse guitar.