Taylor Builder's Edition 914ce

That shared tonewood pairing is worth dwelling on. Sinker redwood is reclaimed old-growth lumber, logs that sank during historic river log drives and spent a century or more recovered from cold, oxygen-poor riverbeds — a submersion process that leaves the wood tonally mature before it ever reaches a workbench, with more headroom and harmonic complexity than a green-cut top typically shows without years of play behind it. Honduran rosewood, denser and more harmonically complex than the Indian rosewood used across most of Taylor's catalog, completes the pairing. On the 914ce, that same tonewood combination gets built into Taylor's most elaborately appointed standard tier, on top of the Action Control neck joint and Scalloped V-Class Bracing with Relief Rout shared by every Builder's Edition guitar.

The direct comparison inside the line is the 814ce Sinker Redwood, which uses the identical top and back-and-sides pairing at $5,499 — $1,500 less than the 914ce. Choosing between them isn't a tonewood decision at all, since the wood is the same; it comes down to how much appointment detail and finish-level polish a player wants layered on top of an otherwise identical tonal foundation.

The Action Control neck joint and Relief Rout do the same job here as everywhere else in the line — moving more of the string's vibration into a top that, on this tonewood pairing, is already primed by reclaimed sinker redwood's tonal maturity to make the most of it. For a player who has already spent time with a standard-tier Taylor and knows they want the full sinker redwood-and-Honduran-rosewood voice with nothing held back on appointments, the 914ce is the version of this tonewood pairing built without compromise.

At $6,999, the 914ce is currently the highest price point in the Builder's Edition line, ahead of even the all-koa K24ce at $6,499. That's a reflection of how Taylor prices reclaimed sinker redwood and Honduran rosewood relative to koa, combined with the added cost of the 900-tier appointments — two premium decisions stacked on top of each other rather than one. For a buyer comparing across the whole line, that makes the 914ce and the K24ce the two guitars to weigh against each other at the top of the price range, even though they start from completely different tonewoods.

Buying at the 900 tier is as much a statement about long-term ownership as it is about tone. A guitar built around reclaimed, no-longer-renewable sinker redwood already carries a scarcity premium; pairing that top with Taylor's most detailed standard appointment work is Taylor's way of matching the rarity of the wood with the rarity of the build around it.

Every Builder's Edition guitar we sell ships under the Dread-Not Guarantee — a 30-day in-home trial to test the instrument in your own space, a full year to trade it in toward anything else in the store at 90% of your purchase price (on this $6,999 instrument, that's $6,299 in trade credit, real downside exposure of just $700 over a full year), a professional setup and inspection by a certified in-house tech before it ships, and a free Bluetooth humidity monitoring kit to help protect the instrument through Missouri's humidity swings. It's backed by our 23-Point Professional Inspection, and as a Taylor Premier Dealer, this model also qualifies for Taylor's 48-month equal-payment Synchrony financing plan (SYF_648) — a term length reserved for Builder's Edition and Custom-tier instruments only, not available on Gold Label or standard numbered-series Taylors.

Browse the rest of the line in our Taylor Builder's Edition collection, or the full Taylor lineup in our Taylor Guitars collection.

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.