Following the successful launch of its Gold Label Collection in January 2025, Taylor Guitars, a leading global builder of premium acoustic guitars, today announces the expansion of the collection with a suite of new Gold Label Grand Pacific models. The new models mark the second wave of guitar models in Taylor’s exploration of warm, heritage-inspired acoustic flavors, featuring Taylor master builder Andy Powers’ reimagined Grand Pacific body shape, a round-shoulder dreadnought, now with a deeper body design that delivers enhanced sonic fullness and low-end expansiveness.
Gold Label Grand Pacific: Deeper Body, Deeper Sound
The new Gold Label models feature a Grand Pacific body that’s 3/8-inch deeper than Taylor’s standard Grand Pacific design, giving these guitars extra “lung capacity” and a deeper resonant frequency. This translates into more low-end power and projection — providing greater sonic push toward an audience or microphone while maintaining pleasing musical clarity. Even the treble notes have enhanced warmth and depth.
The Grand Pacific bodies are voiced with Taylor’s proprietary Fanned V-ClassTM bracing architecture — exclusive to the Gold Label Collection — a new variant of its award-winning V-Class bracing platform that here adds midrange richness, enhances the sonic depth, and creates the pitch accuracy that V-Class is known for. While Fanned V-Class is also used to voice the Super Auditorium body style that made its debut as part of the original Gold Label launch in January, the Gold Label Grand Pacific leans even more toward a warm, powerful sound.
“Compared to the Super Auditorium body, the curves and depth of the Grand Pacific produce even more volume and tonal dimension,” says Andy Powers, Taylor’s Chief Guitar Designer, President and CEO. “Its voice is earthy, honest and uncomplicated. It’s a reliable acoustic workhorse — both seasoned and soulful.”
The Grand Pacific model offerings build around two classic tonewood pairings, Indian rosewood or mahogany coupled with a torrefied Sitka spruce top. Each wood pairing features three top finish/model options: natural, sunburst and blacktop. Mahogany 500 Series models include the Gold Label 517e (Natural), Gold Label 517e SB Cream, Gold Label 517e SB Firestripe and Gold Label 517e Blacktop; rosewood 700 Series models include the Gold Label 717e (Natural), Gold Label 717e SB Cream, Gold Label 717e SB Firestripe and Gold Label 717e Blacktop. Additionally, each of the two sunburst-top models is offered with a choice of either a firestripe or cream pickguard, bringing the count to eight Grand Pacific model variants.
Gold Label 717e SB
The mahogany/torrefied spruce pairing produces a woody, warm voice with focused midrange character. The Indian rosewood/torrefied spruce combination delivers lush rosewood depth and complexity with enhanced warmth from the torrefied top. All models feature gloss-finish bodies.
Distinctive Gold Label Aesthetic
Fitting into the distinctive design aesthetic of the Gold Label Collection, all Grand Pacific models feature Andy Powers’ modified headstock shape with an angled back cut and script-style Taylor logo inlay, a different pickguard shape, and a Honduran rosewood Curve Wing bridge. Clean, understated appointments reflect a down-to-earth, workhorse spirit, including:
-
“Crest” inlay motif in cream featuring simple dot/diamond position markers in the fretboard crowned with a new headstock inlay
-
Cream binding with simple black/white top purfling and a single-ring rosette in cream and black with black/white purfling
-
West African ebony fretboard
-
Taylor Nickel tuning machines
-
1-3/4″ nut width and 25-1/2″ scale length
-
Fanned V-Class bracing
-
LR Baggs Element VTC electronics
-
D’Addario XS Coated Phosphor Bronze Light strings
-
Taylor Deluxe Hardshell Case with “British Cocoa” vinyl exterior
Revolutionary Action Control Neck™ Technology
All Gold Label Grand Pacific models feature Taylor’s patented Action Control Neck™, which combines the tonal benefits of a long-tenon neck joint with unprecedented ease of instant string height adjustment. The long tenon extends deeper into the guitar body and, together with the heel structure, enhances the wood coupling to produce greater low-end resonance and a sound comparable to traditional neck designs.
Unlike Taylor’s existing neck design that incorporates tapered shims to calibrate the neck angle, the Action Control Neck™ is shimless. The string height can be adjusted in seconds by using a quarter-inch nut driver (or standard truss rod wrench) on a bolt in the neck block, accessible inside the soundhole. Neither the neck nor the strings need to be removed to make adjustments.
“The design serves players by allowing them to adjust their string height for different playing styles, applications or climate conditions as often as they like,” added Powers.
