Taylor® Guitars, a leading global builder of premium acoustic guitars, is excited to introduce the AD27e Flametop, an all-maple edition of their award-winning American Dream Series. Featuring Taylor’s Grand Pacific body shape and revolutionary V-Class® bracing system, the Flametop offers a warmer, woodier sound profile for players to explore, delivering another compelling alternative to the modern, high-fidelity sound long associated with Taylor. The innovative guitar brand also adds an AD22e (a new American Dream Grand Concert shape) and two new Grand Theater models — the GTe Mahogany and walnut GTe Blacktop — to its 2022 lineup.
Inspired by connections to musicians in Nashville, Los Angeles and elsewhere who’ve been gravitating toward acoustic guitar sounds that aren’t so crystalline, Taylor Master Designer Andy Powers chose to design the Flametop using Taylor’s Grand Pacific body style, a round-shoulder dreadnought that introduced a warm and seasoned flavor of Taylor tone with its initial release in 2019. In this case, Andy chose solid Big Leaf maple for the top, back and sides, and uncoated nickel bronze strings to temper the top-end frequencies and deliver a punchy low end.
“It’s a drier, chunkier, more broken-in sound,” Powers says. “More lungs, less vocal cords, or, to put it another way, you’ll hear a little more wood and a little less of the steel strings. There are times when you want that vibrant, clear, high-definition detail, and other times when a different acoustic sound will do a better job of evoking a mood or feeling.”
The maple body on the Flametop channels the weathered character of a worn-in pair of boots or jeans, just the right fit for certain musicians and genres. While maple normally wouldn’t be used for an acoustic guitar top, Powers was able to adapt Taylor’s V-Class bracing architecture to control the response and achieve the earthy sound profile he wanted.
The AD27e Flametop also features a Hard Rock maple neck, a Eucalyptus fretboard with 4mm dot inlays in Italian acrylic, and a new Woodsmoke finish and shaded edgeburst around the entire body and neck. Together with the tastefully muted sheen, the dusky aesthetic matches the guitar’s sonic personality. Like other American Dream models, the Flametop features chamfered body edges and onboard ES2 electronics (also available without electronics). The guitar ships in a Taylor AeroCase™ will be available at Taylor dealers worldwide starting at a street price of $2,199.
