{"id":75,"date":"2012-01-25T22:37:41","date_gmt":"2012-01-25T22:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bunnyears.net\/guitar\/?page_id=75"},"modified":"2012-02-20T09:22:04","modified_gmt":"2012-02-20T09:22:04","slug":"200x-baby-taylor","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bunnyears.net\/guitar\/acoustic-guitars\/200x-baby-taylor\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Baby Taylor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Year:<\/strong> 2007
\nFinish:<\/strong> Natural
\nOrigin:<\/strong> USA
\nAcquired:<\/strong> 2007
\nMods:<\/strong> None
\nStill owned:<\/strong>\u00a0No<\/p>\n

The Story:
\n<\/strong>When Kat asked me what I wanted for Christmas in 2007, I said \u201cIt seems silly, but I\u2019d like a\u00a0Baby Taylor.\u201d It’s a half-scale travel guitar which is also popular as a first instrument for kids. Asking for a Baby Taylor didn\u2019t surprise her; she knows how I am about the\u00a0T5<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0410<\/a>. But her mom just had a guitar custom-built by\u00a0Bernie Lehmann<\/a>, a luthier in upstate New York, and the two of us have been nerding out about rare woods and inlays and other cool things you get to play with when you have an acoustic custom-built. So when Kat \u2014 who usually dozes off when I start talking about Engelmann spruce vs. Sitka spruce with her mom \u2014 suddenly says, in the middle of a game of WoW, \u201cWhat\u2019s your favorite tone wood?\u201d I got more than a little suspicious.<\/p>\n

Oh no, I thought. The Baby Taylor is pretty simple and straightforward; it\u2019s fairly affordable, and I\u2019d played one at\u00a0Gryphon<\/a>\u00a0and loved the sound. They only make it in two flavors, spruce and mahogany. She\u2019s not going to do something crazy, is she? Maybe her mom got her all excited about that luthier and they hatched a plan. It doesn\u2019t help that she just visited\u2026<\/p>\n

So over dinner about three weeks before Christmas, I said, \u201cI think I know what you\u2019re up to.\u201d The conversation turned into a \u201cyes\/no\/no comment\u201d interrogation, but when I suggested that she had two accomplices, she said \u201cyes.\u201d That would be her mom and the luthier, right? So we made a deal: I would write down what I thought she\u2019d gotten me and seal it in an envelope, to be opened Christmas day. She, in turn, didn\u2019t want to guess what I\u2019d given her (because I thought she figured it out from my awkward questions) but she wrote down\u00a0her guesses about my guesses<\/em>\u00a0and put those in a different envelope.<\/p>\n

This morning, the last gift was opened and it was a piece of paper which read:<\/p>\n

Dear Dan \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n

Left your gift hanging around. You\u2019ll find it well hidden \u2014 don\u2019t get sucked in.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2013 Santa<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I just laughed my ass off. Kat found a way to sneak an Easter egg hunt into Christmas morning. Sure enough, in the closet with the vacuum cleaner, was a lovely spruce Baby Taylor, complete with gig bag \u2014 just what I wanted!<\/p>\n

Now it was time for the letters. Kat opened my letter. It read:<\/p>\n

I have reason to believe that you are planning some sort of custom-made travel guitar with your mother and Bernie Lehmann. If not an actual guitar, then certainly a guitar accessory or perhaps another stringed instrument.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019m crazy?\u00a0You\u2019re\u00a0crazy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Merry Christmas,<\/em>
\nYour Loving Husband<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kat\u2019s sealed reply:<\/p>\n

You now know you got a Baby Taylor. I believe you thought that I got a custom guitar made for you by Bernie Lehmann \u2014 mom\u2019s guitar tech.<\/em><\/p>\n

Funnily enough, I had two accomplices to try to figure out what flavor of Baby Taylor you wanted, after I called Gryphon and they told me there were three options \u2014 all mahogany, spruce top over mahogany, and spruce over maple. After freaking out about what to get, a trip to Taylor\u2019s website told me that they were wrong.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clearly, they weren\u2019t the only ones. She later admitted that her clairvoyance was due to her accomplices, one of whom was Kimzey, who I\u2019d babbled to about my fears that Kat was going overboard en route to rehearsal. She set me up so Kat could spike.<\/p>\n

In my defense, I had the spruce model of Baby Taylor specified on\u00a0my Musician\u2019s Friend wishlist, but Kat hadn\u2019t thought to check there. If she had I never would have suspected anything and my imagaination wouldn\u2019t have run away with me. But other than that \u2014 as usual \u2014 Kat thought of everything and was always at least one step ahead.<\/p>\n

The Baby Taylor has a pronounced V-shape to the neck, and while it was plenty loud, had a great tone, and impressed the hell out of people during the singalong on a company retreat, the ergonomics ultimately made me feel it was time to part. I sold it through the legendary Westwood Music<\/a> in LA in 2011 and while I have been tempted by the more comfortable Mini GS, I haven’t made the jump yet.<\/p>\n