Scalloped V-Class Bracing with Relief Rout is what defines the 800 Series against everything below it in Taylor's catalog. Standard V-Class, found on Taylor's 200 through 700 Series guitars, already trades a traditional X-brace's overtone complexity for longer sustain, a tighter low end, and noticeably truer intonation up the neck. The 800 Series takes that same V-Class geometry and scallops the braces more aggressively while adding a deeper relief rout beneath the soundhole, freeing the top to move with more sensitivity at a soft playing volume without giving back the sustain and intonation gains V-Class already provides. Every 800 Series guitar pairs that bracing with a solid Sitka spruce top over Indian rosewood back and sides — rosewood's harmonic complexity and wide overtone spread stacked on top of spruce's dynamic range and headroom, a combination that reads as more complex and more articulate than the mahogany and sapele pairings found lower in Taylor's line.
The two body shapes in the line split that voice in opposite directions. The 814ce runs a Grand Auditorium body, Taylor's most all-purpose shape and the one most players land on first — a body deep enough to fill out a strummed chord with real low-end weight, but not so large that fingerstyle articulation gets buried under it. It's a guitar built to do everything reasonably well rather than specialize in one style. The 812ce runs a Grand Concert body instead, the smallest standard shape in Taylor's steel-string line, with a shallower waist and a tighter lower bout that trades some of the Grand Auditorium's low-end mass for a faster, more immediate note response. That smaller air chamber decays a note quicker instead of letting it bloom outward, which is exactly what a fingerstyle player working close to a microphone or a vocalist accompanying themselves actually wants — separation between notes instead of a wash of sustain fighting with the next phrase. Both shapes share the same 25-1/2-inch scale length and 1-11/16-inch nut width, a Venetian cutaway for upper-fret access, and Taylor's Expression System 2 pickup system, so the choice between them comes down to voice and playing style, not neck feel or stage-readiness.
Every 800 Series guitar that leaves The Acoustic Shoppe ships under the Dread-Not Guarantee — a 30-day in-home trial to test the instrument in your own space, and a full year to trade it toward anything else in the store at 90% of the purchase price, the headline benefit of the guarantee and the real number that matters: on a $3,999 814ce or 812ce, that's $3,599 in trade credit, leaving $400 of real downside exposure over a full year to decide if the guitar is right. Every unit also completes a full 23-Point Professional Inspection by our in-house certified tech before it ships, and includes a free Bluetooth humidity monitoring kit to help the rosewood back and sides stay stable through Missouri's seasonal humidity swings.
See the full Taylor lineup in our Taylor Guitars collection, or go straight to a specific 800 Series model: the Grand Auditorium 814ce or the Grand Concert 812ce.
The Acoustic Shoppe is an Authorized Taylor Premier Dealer and Gold Label Advantage Dealer. Every instrument ships after a full 23-point professional inspection by our in-house repair tech. As a nine-time consecutive NAMM Top 100 Dealer, we handle warranty concerns directly on your behalf.
