Awards

TEC Award from the MIX Foundation
Taylor Guitars was recognized with the highest honor in the pro audio industry: the Technical Excellence & Creativity (TEC) Award, in the category of musical instrument technology, for the Expression System pickup/preamp. The prestigious award was presented by the MIX Foundation for Excellence in Audio. The audio industry's equivalent of the Grammy Awards, the TEC Awards honor the individuals, companies and technical innovations used to provide sound for music recordings, films, TV, and live performance.

Reviews

George Petersen, Mix magazine
"For the first time from a pickup, I heard a natural, uncolored sound that required little tonal tweaking. This is miles removed from the surgical, radical EQ needed on a standard pickup to make it sound even vaguely natural."

Petersen tested the guitar in both coffeehouse and festival performance environments and loved the resistance of the ES to feedback. "Another point worth noting is the amazing amount of headroom…offering clean reproduction at any playing level from subtle harmonics to heavy slammed chording. Yeah!"

Eric Kirkland, Guitar World, reviewing an ES-equipped 512ce and 610ce
"Honestly, I felt like I was hearing the acoustic guitar amplified for the first time. The Expression System captures the very essence of the instrument. It reveals the guitar's full range and is sure to change the face of amplified acoustic performance. More than a vastly improved pickup system, this innovative advancement represents a new approach to amplifying all instruments."

Emile Menasché, Guitar World
"[The Expression System's] ability to handle variations in dynamics and attack was especially noticeable with high-impact playing. It also captured the depth and nuance of the guitar's tone without the noise, phase, feedback and coloration issues introduced by onboard – or external – microphones. The variations in technique you would use in a purely acoustic setting came through the pickups in all their glory. Taylor has definitely raised the standard in electro-acoustic tone."

Art Thompson, Guitar Player (August 2003)
As much as Thompson liked the 514ce's natural tone, he seemed equally fond of the Expression System's ability to capture its sonic identity, noting its "astonishingly accurate representation" of its tone. He even recorded with the ES – to ADAT and to hard disk – and found the recorded sound "rich and detailed, with a mic-like sense of warmth, clarity, and dimension."

"The future is here for acoustic guitarists who simply crave the same plug-in-and-play satisfaction that solidbody players have always enjoyed. Getting great amplified acoustic tone shouldn't be any more complicated than plugging a Les Paul into a Marshall, and Taylor's Expression System is definitely a great leap forward in the realization of that dream."

Art Thompson, Guitar Player (Feb 2004)
"I noticed no harsh tonal artifacts, even when pounding the snot out of the strings, and by keeping the EQ flat on both the amp and the guitar, the tones sounded rich and well-represented." As for tone-shaping, the soft-touch ES knobs gave him all the control he needed ("I found it unnecessary to use any midrange cut or bass boost on the amplifiers, which is pretty unusual"). Thompson also noted the "organic textures" that distinguish the tone of the ES from that of a piezo pickup.

Russ Long, Pro Audio Review
Long recorded a cedar-top 514ce first with a microphone (an AKG C28) and then using the output signal from the ES. Long found the tone captured by each pickup source to be of comparably high quality, and instead of recording with two mics, opted to use one mic and the ES direct.

"When sitting in front of the monitors with the signals panned to 9 and 3, the artist, the producer, and myself found it extremely difficult to tell which was the direct and which was the mic. The ES system faithfully reproduced every nuance of a performance, including subtle picking, hand dynamics and stylistic performance techniques…The Taylor Expression System is downright amazing in its natural warm sound and its ability to reduce feedback."

Johnny Rzeznik, singer/guitarist, Goo Goo Dolls:
On recording with it: "The thing that amazed me was the Expression System. It's the only direct signal out of a guitar I've ever tried that is actually usable on a recording. You put a microphone in front of the guitar, obviously, in front of the soundhole, but we mixed it, a lot of times, with the direct signal, because it was a beautiful sound. It still actually sounds like a guitar!"

On using it for live performance,
from Guitar World Acoustic:
"Live, it sounds like a guitar – not someone shooting a pie pan with a BB gun. It amazes me how tinny and thin so many acoustic guitars sound when they're plugged in. You get this percussive part of the instrument, but that's it – you may as well be playing a shaker. The Taylor doesn't do that. It's got clarity. You can hear the wood."