Glen Wolff & Terry Myers of Taylor Guitars
In this episode we sat down with MI Industry vets and good friends Glen Wolff and Terry Myers of Taylor. We talk about what's new with Taylor and chat about the industry as a whole. We also touch on Glen's involvement in a new product call the Acousti-Lok from Music Nomad. Any chance we have to sit down and talk with these guys is always welcomed and a great time.
Find out more about Music Nomad here: https://www.musicnomadcare.com/
Taylor's website: https://www.taylorguitars.com/
This podcast was produced by MIRC, the nation's largest wholesaler of used guitars. If you need inventory for your music store or online music store check out www.mircweb.com to learn how you can become a dealer today!
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N: Alright, hey. We got a great episode today. Richard, I’m kind of actually excited about this one. We’ve got a smokin’ guest in the house today, so, um… you want to say his name?
R: Yeah! We got Glen Wolff in from Taylor. We just got back from the NAMM show.
N: Glen, welcome.
R: Yeah, welcome Glen.
G: Thanks, glad to be here.
R: So, we’re going to release this in a couple weeks, probably 2, 3, 4 weeks. We just finished up the NAMM show. Glen is still in town, so the timing is absolutely great.
N: Perfect.
R: We’re going to talk on a unique topic that is easy to overlook. We’re going to talk about hydration and hydrating guitars. I know that probably a lot of guests are saying, “Wait a minute, you’ve got Taylor in here and you’re going to talk about hydration. Why not talk about Taylor guitars?”. So, we probably will touch on a little bit on different models and different things. Maybe Glen can share some things that they have going on over at Taylor, but right now, we’re going to talk about hydration. So, Glen, I know this is a topic you probably talk about all the time, but we have a whole bunch of stuff that we want to get into. We have a lot of dealers that are concerned with hydration and I know for myself, up until you guys came along, I didn’t have the knowledge or I didn’t have the background of it. So, I do want to jump in and talk about it. I’m going to let you kick if off a little bit and then we’re going to start in on some questions.
G: Sounds great.
R: Yeah.
G: Yeah, I talk about this all the time. I mean, I often say if hydration or humidity wasn’t an issue, I could have half the people that I have in service.
R: Yeah.
G: I spend a lot of time not only talking to end users and consumers and our dealers but even our distributors all over the world that have really a vast array of different problems.
N: Sure.
R: And what are some of the problems that you guys get with hydration? I know we deal with it a lot here and on climate whether it’s dry or it’s moist. I mean, we see the guitars move a lot, but I’m sure it is nothing to the level that you guys experience because you’re dealing with guitars all across the world. So, what are some of the things that you guys look for or what are some of the things that you guys see a lot of?
G: Yeah, well, everything we see in the world, we almost see it all in some version in the U.S. because the U.S. is so big and so different. We have desert regions. We have Hawaii and Florida which are really tropical and humid all the time. We have areas that are really dry in the wintertime and really wet in the summertime, like Nashville.
R: Let’s talk about that. I’m from Arizona. Now, when I was in Arizona working retail, we never ever ever dealt with hydration and looking back on it, oh my goodness. What a mistake that is because it was super super dry. We’d turn on the air conditioning and any moisture that we had, it would suck it out. We’d turn on the heat and then, you know… we’re always dealing with the different elements that were going on but we thought, “Oh, the guitars are perfectly fine” but looking back again like I was saying, we’re always adjusting them, always compensating for the way they played, so with that, you know you’re talking about regions. We lived in Arizona but obviously you and we deal with customers all over the United States. So, what about that customer in Florida? What about that customer is Michigan in the summer and the winter? What are some of the things that we should look for with that?
G: Well, you can boil it down to something really easy. You know, it is really simple and I always want to throw in that the things that I’m saying here go for any acoustic guitar.
R: Any brand, yeah.
G: Really any instrument. It goes for anything made of wood, really.
R: Gotcha. Gotcha.
G: The thing that you want to do to make it easy on yourself is just buy a little digital hygrometer. You can get them for ten bucks on Amazon. A lot of music stores carry them. A lot of different brands out there. An inexpensive digital hygrometer is going to give you a reading within 5% and that is plenty accurate enough to maintain a healthy guitar.
R: What level should we… what should we try to achieve when we get that?
G: Shoot for 50%.
R: 50%, okay.
G: A good range is 45 to 55.
R: Okay. Can you over hydrate a guitar?
G: Oh yeah.
R: And what happens then?
G: Well, you know, when the guitar gets dry, it basically shrinks. The wood shrinks. The top sinks down.
R: So that is why we get fret end issues.
G: Fret ends poke out. The guitar starts to buzz, especially on some upper frets, first thing you’ll notice. When it gets really dry, the wood will eventually crack. Nobody wants that to happen.
R: Gotcha. Gotcha. No, no, no.
G: The exact opposite happens when it gets wet. The wood starts to swell up. Your action gets high. Their frets can actually look short on the fingerboard when it’s swollen.
R: Okay.
N: Because it is pushing to top up? Is that kind of what is happening?
G: Well, it’s swelling, yeah. It’s swelling up so it’s like putting a big balloon inside the body and just blowing it up. The whole thing catches up and the guitar is now holding all this excess water weight. Your tone changes. It gets dull and funny sounding because the wood can’t resonate the way that it would if it were closer to 50%.
R: Gotcha.
G: So the thing about humidity, it is like, “Why should I care about humidity?”. Well, do you want your guitar to always sound and play the same as the day you bought it? It’s like, I’m thinking it sounded and played pretty good the day you bought it, that’s why you bought it.
R: That’s why you bought it! Yeah, absolutely.
G: So that is what is in it for the player. They can relate to that right off the bat.
R: Okay, so in a store, you got a great… you guys have a lot of great stores with your products in, so what is the environment in that store that is optimal for you guys? I mean, I know at another retailer we had what we called a “Taylor room” and in there we had a couple different hydration machines that we were pumping moisture into the air, but that was just us and I’m sure there is a lot of other people that do the same thing. So, ideally, what should a music store do?
G: That same range, 45 to 55. Some different things to be aware of for a music store verses just maintaining your guitar inside your case. In a music store, you’re going to have different zones. So, you want several hygrometers in your room. A lot of stores like to put their best guitars high up on the wall with little spotlights on them.
R: Interesting. Ooooh, the heat.
N: So no one can touch them?
(Nate laughs)
G: Yes! So, they look really great, but there with the lights on them, it’s hotter up high, so it is drier up high.
R: Yeah, but the heat. That’s true. I’ve never even thought about putting a hydrometer up there. That’s a good idea.
G: Yeah, you got to. I mean, from one row to the next, it could be 10% drier up on the ceiling.
R: Well, yeah. Absolutely. Wow, I never even thought about that.
G: So, if you’re just barely keeping the range, you’re almost at 45 down at eye level.
R: Yeah, most of them are low to the ground or chest high.
G: Yeah, up there, you could be drying your guitars out. I’ve seen it all the time.
R: Wow, I’ve never even thought about that.
N: It’s true, and those lights are them. Absolutely.
R: And now, you brought up cases. I mean, I know a lot of music stores and we would do the same thing, is take guitars and if you have excess or there is certain guitars, you’d put them in a case. So, how does that affect guitars?
G: What a music store wants to be careful of is having some cases that are also properly maintained...
R: Okay.
G: ...humidity wise. So, this is something that a lot of guys never even think about, but let’s say you have the most perfect guitar room in the world. All the guitars are at 50% everywhere in the room. It is maintained perfect. It is a nice room. There is no room for a big pile of cases in that room, so you stick them out in the warehouse. Everybody does it. If the warehouse is 10% humidity because you’re in a dry climate, now all your wooden cases are drying out. So, what you’re going to do, not thinking about it, is sell a customer a perfect guitar out of your room. “Hey, let me go get you the case” and you grab that case that is all dried out and you’re telling the customer, “Now, the safest place to keep your guitar is in the case” and he’s going to put his guitar in the case, and that case, since it’s at 10%, it wants to be at 50%, too, so it…
R: It sucks all that moisture out.
G: It sucks right out of the guitar, and you could end up having your customer ruin their brand new guitar without thinking about it.
R: Thankfully, I’m not going to Hell for that because I’ve done that for years, but anyways…
(Nate laughs)
G: It’s just being aware, and you know… you don’t have to maintain all your cases, but have a couple of each size ready to go. Either throw a humidifier in the case out in the warehouse of just bring a few cases in your acoustic room. Have them prepped and ready.
R: Gotcha.
N: I’m interested only for the fact of the people that you talk to. I mean, percentage wise, how much education like this are you constantly having to work with with your dealers? You guys have done a great job over the years, and so, you know, a lot of your guitars are in a great environment, or is this a constant thing where you’re like, “Man, we have to constantly put this message out because people are just doing whatever they want”?
G: That is a great question, and it never ends.
N: It never ends.
G: I came to terms with that a long time ago.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: I’ve been a dealer for 20 years, and you can never let up because think about how many new stores are coming along all the time. How many new store employees? How many veterans that don’t…
R: Don’t care, yeah.
G: Well, they never had to learn. Maybe they’re in Southern California, very close to us, where you really don’t have to do much because it is naturally right in that 50% range all the time. They never had to address it, or somehow they got by.
R: Wow. You guys suck. I want 50% all the time in our climate
G: That reminds me. What a lot of people are experiencing…
(Nate laughs)
R: It’s like 100% out there right now, but anyways, go ahead. I’ll quit cutting you off.
N: Yeah, it’s raining in the warehouse right now.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: It is warm out. A lot of people experience this and don’t even realize that they are. So, one of the funny things that we hear is the guy will come in with his guitar and will go, “Hey, my actions a little low. Can you make me a winter saddle?”.
R: Yes, okay.
G: “Just a taller saddle because I’ve had that for my other guitar” and I’m like, “A winter saddle? What are you doing?”. “Well, in the winter, my guitar starts to buzz. So, I take out the saddle that is in there and I put in my winter saddle that is a little taller”.
N: Seriously? I’ve never heard of that.
R: Yeah, I have. I have.
G: What is really happening is their top is shrinking because their guitar is drying out and in their mind, they’re fixing it by putting a taller saddle in, but they’re ignoring the humidity issue.
N: They can’t… well, I don’t know. Sometimes, I feel like it’s moving ever so slightly that if you put the guitar up, you can’t see it or could you see it? I’m assuming you’d be able to see the guitar moving that much.
G: It is a subtle thing, and it is a hard thing to see if you’re not working at a guitar factory or a music store and you’re not used to looking at it. You’re really not going to be able to see it. It is a slight enough… now, in extremes, yeah, you’re going to see it. The whole top can look something like a bowl, you know?
N: Yeah, sure.
R: So, music stores, about 50%. That is what we want. Now, is that for the acoustic room or the whole store or a combination?
G: It’s the acoustic room. You know, if some stores are too small or they’re laid out in a way where they can’t have an acoustic room and then it’s kind of a struggle to maintain a whole store, but some people try to do that just because of the size of the store.
R: Now, you brought up hard showcases and you gave us some great, great information there as far as cases being dried out, but what about gig bags? That is another thing that a lot of people want gig bags. They have cases, but they also have gigs back if they’re going back and forth, or just to store in there so it doesn’t get dinged or knocked over, but what about gig bags?
G: Yeah, that’s a great question and at Taylor, we sell a lot of models that come standard with a gig bag and not a hard case, but the same rules apply. You can maintain the humidity inside a gig bag pretty much just as easy as you can inside a case. A lot of people think you have to have a case, but a case isn’t vapor proof, you know?
R: True, true.
G: It doesn’t block it off. What a case does is it gives you a little bit of a barrier because all that wood is already holding 50% moisture and if your guitar is in it and you forget to check the humidifier, the guitar can get a little moisture from that case instead of just kind of drying out into the air, but the main thing to think about is you’re stopping that flow of air over the guitar which is going to make it change the fastest. So, in a bag, air is not blowing right over it and even with a humidifier in the bag, you know, you’re creating some extra moisture for the guitar to draw from, so yeah. You’re not off the hook with a gig bag. You can do the same thing.
R: Okay, now, so, you guys are manufacturer. You guys do all the wood. You guys deal with all this stuff. So, if hydration is an issue, why don’t you just make tops of guitars and backs and sides that are dried out? Why not use dry wood? Completely dry wood.
G: Well, the range that we choose gives the guitars it’s best chance of living anywhere in the world. We’re shooting for that 45 to 55% humidity range. That is kind of right down the middle worldwide. So, a guitar that gets a little over humidified right now would really be swollen if we used wood that was, say, dried down to 10%. Yeah, it wouldn’t dry out and crack, but if you had just a little bit of moisture in the air, now it is going to swell up. So, you still have a problem.
R: Yeah, I gotcha.
G: So, at that range where we’re building them and this is where all the manufacturers are building their guitars.
R: It’s the sweet spot.
G: Yeah, it really is the best spot and you got to know that as a manufacturer, the last thing we want is for a guitar to crack. We do everything we can possibly think of. I mean, the steps we go through to treat the wood and kind of preshrink the wood, if you think of it that way. You know how when you buy a t-shirt, if it’s not preshrunk hot and you wash it once and it shrinks down 2 sizes. You can’t even wear it.
R: Yeah, that’s horrible. I hate shirts that a preshrink, or they shrink. They need to be preshrunk.
(Nate laughs)
N: They’re not preshrunk.
G: They’re not preshrunk, yeah. So, we kind of do that with the tops. What we do is we dry them out, rehumidify them. Dry them out again, rehumidify them so that when they do dry, most of that movement is done with. It is going to move a minimal amount, but it is wood, it can still move more.
R: Okay, so say a guitar is at 50%. How much movement can we expect?
G: When it’s…
R: If it’s at 50%, is it pretty well stable at that point? Does it move much, maybe a little bit, or is it pretty consistent?
G: Well, the environment dictates that. The guitars at 50% if it’s an environment around 50%. It is not moving at all. That’s why you want to maintain it with the humidifiers, and that is where your digital hygrometer is your friend. You don’t have to guess. You don’t have to cite the top. You don’t have to be an expert. All you got to do is look at it once in a while and say, “Hey, my hygrometer is reading 35%. That is a little too dry. I better get a guitar humidifier in there”.
R: Now, is that month sensitive? I mean, is there certain months that we need to really, really pay attention or is that months and your demographic? Like, if you’re in Florida, you get a lot of moisture. You got a lot of humidity and you talked briefly about having too much and what it can do, but is there certain times of the year that you should pay more attention to it?
G: Yeah, well, most people in the U.S. have a problem with the guitars getting too dry, and as a rule of thumb, once you turn the heat on in your house, that is when you really need to think about your guitars.
R: Gotcha, and I learned that when I’m putting a lot of lotion on my hands, your guitars are dry as well.
G: That’s a good way to think of it, yeah.
R: Is that an accurate way?
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: Well, you’re drying out.
R: Oh, I’m drying out, so I’m thinking, “Oh man, the guitars are drying out as well”.
N: I’ve got naturally dry skin.
R: Yeah.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: Think about the doors and windows in your house a lot of times. In the summertime, it is like, “Man, I can’t even open this window”. Why is that? The wood swelled up. In the wintertime, the wood shrunk and now it flies right up.
R: Okay. Well, I built a house last year that had crown molding and I looked up above my stove and seen a little bit of a gap on the seam of the crown molding. Well, I looked up the other day and it’s gone because it shrunk.
G: You haven’t been burning anything in the stove, hopefully, at this time of year.
(Nate and Glen laugh)
R: Well, no, no, no, no, no. There is more moisture in the air.
G: Yeah, it’s swelling back up. It’ll probably open back up.
R: In the winter, yeah, it will, and I do have a humidifier. I’m hydrating my house. I run it and put moisture in the air because it does, it dries out even in my house. Like I said, I’ve just paid attention to this. I know it’s a crazy topic and a lot of times, people go, “Why are we talking about hydration? It’s not that big of a deal!” but over the last several years, I have found out it is a big, big, big deal. Another way I want to bring this up, and of course, we have used guitars so I don’t want to minimize it and say it’s less of a big deal, but with new manufacturers, that’s got to affect a warranty, would it?
G: Well, you know, damage from humidity issues…
R: It’s not your fault.
G: ...it’s never covered. It is never covered by warranty. If you dry your guitar out, it is kind of like dropping your guitar. Warranty isn’t insurance.
R: It’s neglect.
G: It is. It really is.
N: How much on the owner, when you guys ship guitars, are you guys getting a lot of people that are very… that are attentive to this. I mean, are they like, “Oh, yeah. We got to make sure we take care of these” or just something that you have to really… again, I’m coming back to the dealers. I’m wondering to how much do dealers really need to pay attention to this and how much are they willing to?
R: So you’re educating the dealers to educate the consumers, is that correct?
G: Absolutely, yeah, because we want Taylor owners to be happy. We want them to love their Taylor guitars. We want them to love their Taylor dealer.
R: And buy another one.
G: Or 7.
(Glen laughs)
R: Absolutely.
G: It’s all about being happy with your purchase and that gets back to we're doing everything we can to educate our customers because we want them to avoid any issues that they can run into. So, that is why we put so much emphasis on training the dealers and training consumers directly. We have lots of info on our website, lots of YouTube videos with Bob Taylor himself showing how to use guitar humidifiers and bring one back to life after it’s dried out. There is a lot of great stuff out there, and it’s not that the guitars are extra sensitive. We just know how they can react, you know, in spite of everything we do to make it as stable as possible, they’re still wood and if we’re going to keep using wood, wood makes the best sounding guitars, we’re not going to switch to something else, and it’s all about maintaining it. It’s easy to maintain. You just have to know a little bit. We want the dealers to know enough to have this talk with their customer as they’re buying the guitar and not wait until they have the problem. So for us, it’s huge. We have a thing called “Taylor University” where we do sales training. There is a lot of online stuff we do with our dealers. We’ve also done tons of in person training. We’ll fly 20 or 30 dealers out to the factory at once for training, and that is not just sales stuff. I’ll go in and have a big humidity talk with these guys at the same time and man, you just see their eyes light up when you say something they never thought about.
N: I can imagine.
G: Like, I had one dealer. He was talking about remodeling his acoustic room and after I was talking about how all the wood in your acoustic room is also going to be absorbing moisture. A lot of people do the…
R: I was getting ready to, yeah… I’m glad you’re bringing that up.
G: Yeah, they do wood walls, which look great. Rough cut lumber with guitars hanging, it looks beautiful.
R: But it’s sucking moisture as well.
G: It’s sucking moisture and that’s not a problem if you maintain it. You just have to realize that that’s another factor in your room, so you’re going to need a stronger humidifier.
R: I never thought about that, yeah.
N: I haven’t either.
G: And this particular dealer, we get done and he goes, “You just saved me a ton of money” and I go, “Well, how did I do that?” and he goes, “I was trying to decide to go with natural wood floors in my acoustic room or laminate and I’m going laminate”.
(Richard and Nate laugh)
R: Well, I don’t blame him there. Yeah, that’s good information. Now, so when are some of the, we’ll come back to this topic, but what is some of the cool stuff that you guys are doing right now? Whether it be bracing or models. I was looking, at the show, I was looking at, I can’t remember the model if it was like a 614 or something like that, but seeing the flame maple on the back and sides and I was just like, “Man, this thing looks beautiful”, but outside of woods, what else are you guys doing? I know, and I’m jumping ahead, maybe it was at the winter show, you guys released some different bracing. You can correct me if I’m wrong.
G: That’s the big story right now.
R: Okay, well, let’s talk about that.
G: No, that’s the big Taylor story right now, v-class bracing. So, Andy Powers has departed from traditional x-bracing. Right now, it’s available on all of our all solid wood grand auditorium models.
R: Okay, and why are you guys doing that? What are the advantages to that?
G: The advantage is… we call it a new sonic engine. So, with the v-bracing, it increases the stability of the guitar from headstock to the tail end. So it is more of one solid structure from end to end. So, we get increased sustain. We get projected volume. It’s kind of like a line array speaker now or 20 feet away it is just as loud as it is right in front of the guitar. The craziest thing that happens is the intonation is off the charts accurate.
R: Interesting.
N: This is new this year?
G: Yup, just came out this year. We had a lot of models at the summer show that are being built now with this v-class bracing.
R: Okay, and what models is that? Is that…
G: It’s all of our grand auditoriums right now.
R: So, it doesn’t matter the, the series…
G: Yes, the 300 series and higher.
N: That’s the 14 series?
G: Yeah.
R: Well, it’s interesting you brought that up because I’ve never done backflips over maple. It’s not my favorite wood type when it comes to a guitar, but like on the 600 series, for some reason, after you guys did that, I was like, “Man, I think this bracing is affecting the way this maple sounds because it sounds like a million bucks”. Am I crazy?
G: You’re not crazy, you know...
R: Okay.
(Nate laughs)
R: Not relating to guitars.
N: At least about that. At least about that.
(Glen laughs)
R: Yeah, okay.
G: Is this thing on?
(Nate and Richard laugh)
R: Yes.
G: No, well, Andy did everything he could to our x-brace design guitars over the past several years. I mean, every little minor tweak you could think of. So, the 600s are the maple series. They were sounding killer even before the v-class came along. What a lot of people do designing a guitar, they’ll take a rosewood guitar and say, “Hey, we want to make a maple guitar” and just swap out the rosewood for maple and not redesign the guitar for that tone wood. That is why it doesn’t sound good because it is two different woods.
R: So maybe that’s what I’ve been hearing in the past were the various manufacturers.
G: Yeah, but you know, Andy approached it more from his knowledge of classical instruments. There is a lot of great sounding arch tops, violins, cellos, and they’re made from maple. So they were already doing really well and then with the v-class bracing, they’re just up to a whole nother level. I want to go back on the intonation point because it is kind of confusing if you just think about, well, how can bracing on a guitar change the intonation at all?
R: That’s a good question, yeah.
G: Intonation, most people think of it just as the scale length. Where is your nut? Where is your saddle? Where are your frets placed? That is a big part of it, but beyond that, it is what are the notes or the sounds this instrument is creating and with the v-class bracing, the top is moving side to side instead of like a four-way motion and we’re getting less disharmonic overtones coming off the top to begin with, so it is moving more musical. The notes and their overtones are much cleaner and purer. So, every time you play a chord or a note on a guitar, you have the fundamental and the overtones and there is a mix of overtones a lot of times especially in chords and complex chords that sound a little off. The guys in the studio, for years, they’ll retune their guitar for different parts of the song. A lot of people don’t realize that. They’ll play part of a song and go, “Well, now I’m moving up the neck. It’s not quite in tune. Let’s cut there. I need to retune. Let’s do this part and then we’ll go back to this other part” just to get it perfect because they hear that well. So, with this guitar what we’re finding, the guys playing it and playing things they would normally avoid on an acoustic guitar, just go, “Man, this is amazing”.
R: Man, all because of the bracing?
G: Yeah. Yeah.
R: Wow.
N: Now, as far as your education with hydration, does that play into this as well?
G: It does.
N: I mean, it just kind of brings it all back together.
G: Yeah, it still applies. Same rules apply. You still want to maintain that guitar at 45 to 55%. The guitars, from what we’ve seen, are more stable than an x-brace guitar. They’re still going to move because they’re wood, but they move differently as the wood starts to dry and they don’t move as much, but they would still eventually dry out and have some action issues. They could still crack. It’s still the same materials, but they’re stronger and more stable.
N: You know what, I would I assume that as high quality as your instruments are, there is probably still an optimal level that the instrument performs at. It obviously has to be within that hydration percentage, I would assume.
G: Yeah, that’s where it’s going to be playing its best.
R: Now, what about finish because we have some guitars that are satin, some that are gloss. How does that affect the humidity and all that? I mean, does a gloss guitar help hold it in? Does a satin breathe it out? Tell me what your thoughts are there.
G: Yeah, well, you know, Bob has answered this question a lot of times, so I’ll get the answer right from him because…
R: Oh, good.
G: And people ask us all the time, “Why don’t you just finish the inside of the guitar and you won’t have to worry about humidity?” but it’s not true. The finish doesn’t stop water vapor from passing through into the wood. That’s what we’re dealing with. It’ll stop water. You can pour water on the finished guitar and it’ll run off, but we’re talking about water vapor, you know? That’s like at a molecular level, it’s small enough to pass through that finish. So, even if you had finish inside of the guitar, it’s not going to stop that from happening. Plus, it’ll look really messy.
N: Has anybody tried that? I’m sitting here picturing somebody finishing the inside of a guitar.
R: It has got to affect the sound, too.
G: It would, yeah. It’s adding weight.
R: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
G: It’s not a good thing. I’ve seen some, not that Taylor has done, but I’ve seen some customers send their guitars on for repair that have dumped a quart of lacquer in it and swished it around or something. I’ve seen some wacky stuff.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: But that’s not going to help. Satin finish protects the wood just as well as glossy finish, you know. It’s just getting the coating over the wood.
N: That Taylor satin is some of the best looking satin I’ve ever seen.
R: Yeah, it really is.
G: Oh, and we’ve got a brand new silent satin finish. I don’t know if you guys noticed the builder’s reserve guitars inside the room.
R: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s beautiful.
G: All satin finish. We call it silent satin finish. It’s a new process that is really quiet. A lot of satin guitars, you know, there is a slight roughness to them and it rubs up against your shirt in the studio and stuff. You can hear the swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. The silent satin is pretty much silent.
N: Slick. Is it that K14 we had? Was that it? We had those K14s.
R: I’ve seen it on something. It is. It’s really, really nice. Now, on that topic and maybe you know maybe you don’t, sometimes satin, if it’s rubbed a lot, it will turn gloss. Does this help with it not glossing, or do we know yet?
G: I don’t know yet. It’s such a new finish for us. We just started using it in January, so I would expect it to gloss up a little bit. That’s just what happens.
R: Those are beautiful finishes. You’ve said a lot of smart things and I should’ve started this by asking, give us your job description there. You have a wealth of knowledge, so let me cut in and you tell us what your job description in some of that is, and then we’ll continue.
G: Yeah, sure. So, I’m the customer service manager at Taylor, and what that means is customer service… we have all interactions with consumers. We’re the go-to group. I’ve got 5 people in my group and whether it's a phone call, email, web chat we do these days, lots of ways to reach out to us. It’s anything you want to ask Taylor guitars. The cool thing about our group is everyone is really educated in guitar repair. I have… some of my guys have decades of experience in production and repair, so they’re really knowledgeable. When you call Taylor with any question, we’ve going to do our best to help you. If it’s repair related, we’re going to try to troubleshoot it over the phone with you. We don’t just have a room of people saying, “Well, just ship it here and we’ll fix it”. We’re going to say, “Did you check the battery? Try replacing the string. Maybe adjust the truss rod. We have a video on our website that shows you how to do it”. We’re going to try to walk you through and get that thing fixed as quick and easy as possible.
R: Now, on that topic, what is your background because you have guitar repair experience and all that as well, so…
G: I do. Well, I’ve been at Taylor for 20 years. When I started there, I was in the repair shop. It was just me and 2 other guys doing all the repairs that came back to the factory. I’d say within a couple years of doing repairs, I started helping the customer service guy. It was just one guy doing that job and that became my job half the day, then three quarters of the day, then they were like, “Glen, do you want to be a repair guy or service?”. So, I made the move to service. I worked with him for a while, then he moved on to sales and I became the service manager. I’ve seen a lot of growth in the company. A lot of different tasks have been divvied up to other people, but that’s really our focus now.
R: Okay, well, I want to take a brief departure. I’ve got tons of questions popping in my head and I don’t want to get too side-tracked with them, but one thing I appreciate about you guys’ company, and we try to do that MIRC, is talk about the company culture. Everybody I’ve met at Taylor, no exclusions, everybody I’ve met, and you guys probably keep some employees from people, but all of them are good people and that is something that I can’t say, unfortunately, about every manufacturer, although most of them have great employees, but you guys have great employees. What are you guys doing different at Taylor that maybe we can share with some of the people that are listening?
G: Man, I wish I knew. It just feels natural, you know?
R: Okay.
G: The same approach I have to service. You just want to do what’s right, and I think that’s something that comes down from the top. So, it starts with your leaders. It is the trickle down effect. It is amazing how many great people are at Taylor, and if you walk into our HR area, we have a ten year wall, where once you’ve been there ten years, you get your picture taken and put on the wall…
R: Interesting. Oh, that’s cool.
N: Oh, really?
G: ...and that wall is huge and it’s full.
R: Okay. People come there and don’t want to leave, right?
G: Yeah.
N: Yeah, lifelong employees.
G: It’s amazing. There is a ridiculous number of twenty year veterans.
R: Wow, that’s you!
G: That’s me now!
R: Yeah!
N: How many were there when you started?
G: Oh, let’s see. That was ‘98. There was probably about… I think back then we had maybe three or four hundred employees total. Now, worldwide, it’s 1,000.
R: Oh my goodness, so you guys have gotten more.
N: Oh my goodness, that’s...
R: Because you were at 750, give or take, and so you guys are over… you guys are about 1,000.
G: Yeah.
R: Wow.
G: We build a lot of guitars.
R: Now, in Mexico, you guys have ping pong tables. Tell us about that.
G: Well, we do in El Cajon, too.
R: Do you?
G: Yeah.
R: And why haven’t I been invited? I want to come out! I can play some mean ping pong!
G: Well…
N: It’s the Taylor Guitars Ping Pong tournament.
R: Yeah!
G: You’re going to challenge some pretty good players from what I hear.
R: Alright, alright. I better brush some of the rust off.
(Nate laughs)
N: We’ve always talked about getting one here, but we just never have.
R: Yeah, we need to.
G: There is great benefits at Taylor, you know. It’s a great company to work for. It keeps the people happy. Break times are for taking breaks, you know? We’re not trying to force you to work through break time and not tell anybody, so...
(Nate laughs)
G: The ping pong tables are just in the areas we have some space, and yeah. Every break time, there is guys playing. Just try to walk by there.
R: Yeah, no. One of these days I am going to get out there and take a look at it because it sounds like fun. It’s the kind of vibe that I think more companies need to have part of their business because I think it does, it gives employees escape, even if it’s for 10, 15 minutes to take a break from the day so they come back fresh.
G: Yeah, yeah. It’s fun.
R: Yeah. The ping pong table will probably be some… we need something different. We’re in the south. We eat.
G: I’ve noticed that.
N: We eat a lot.
R: Yes, and I was actually… we’re going to be… fourth of July is coming up in a couple of days, so when people hear this, it will be a few weeks, but fourth of July will be here in a couple days and I think we’re going to barbeque. Probably tomorrow, so… we should’ve done it today!
N: We had a bunch of barbeque last week, too.
R: Yeah, so, we like eating.
G: Back to the Mexico thing, I just wanted to mention something because this is a common question. People wonder where we make our guitars. We have two factories, one in El Cajon, California in the San Diego area, and one is in Tecate, Mexico, right across the border. It is less than an hour drive between the two factories, and it’s kind of a state of the art facility that we have in Tecate.
R: Yeah, I’ve heard great things about it.
G: It’s a brand new building. It was maybe done… less than two years since it’s been completed, but it’s really amazing. Everything was laid out under one roof from the clean end to the dirty end. It’s just mind blowing, and the cool thing about having those two factories so close is we have department managers that manage both factories. So, the finish guy will go to Mexico a few times a week and check on things.
R: And the product coming out of there, people say, “Oh, that was made in Mexico”. You hear all these different people say different things. The product is great. I mean, it is great. It’s Taylor. It’s Taylor product.
G: That’s the thing, it’s our factory. We didn’t hire a factory to build guitars and put Taylor on the thing. It’s our factory.
R: Exactly, it’s your factory, and it’s a great way for people to get introduced to Taylor. It’s at a price point that most everybody who wants a guitar can get. So, if you’re looking for a great quality guitar, but you don’t have the budget that you will in five or ten years, that’s a great guitar. I mean, we’ve gotten them in and man, some of them sound amazing or all of them sound amazing. So, no concerns there. We love it.
G: And they have the same lifetime warranty that our U.S. based guitars have.
R: Interesting. So, you guys… okay, because a lot of manufacturers, depending on where they are and what is going on, they’ll change the warranty. So, you guys are doing lifetime just like you do in America.
G: Buy a brand new Taylor from an authorized dealer and you’re set.
R: So, there is no reason why someone shouldn’t have a Taylor guitar.
G: Yeah, you’ve got nothing to risk.
R: Gotcha, man, that is amazing.
N: That is the one and two hundred series?
G: Well, it starts with the babies.
N: Okay.
G: So, Babies, GS minis, Big Babies, Academy series, 100 series, and 200 series. Anything with a layered back wood and sides is made in Tecate. The solid wood guitars, which is 300 series and up, are made in the U.S.
R: Now, tell us the difference of those because a lot of times, people… sometimes, I can hear it and sometimes I can’t in a solid wood guitar, but a lot of those, man, they sound amazing, so having a laminated back and sides is of no concern, but tell us what the difference is.
G: Well, yeah. They still sound great. Most of your tone is coming from the top of the guitar and we use a solid top on everything. It’s so, so many times, you know, it’s not just the materials, but the design of the guitar that’s really critical also. So, a lot of our laminate models, like a 110 for example, I’ve played them against some other brands that are made of all solid wood, but they really don’t sound very good. So, even though it looks good on the tag, you still want to play and listen to a guitar. What you gain by going with all solid wood is just a sweeter resonance to the guitar because you don’t have the layers of wood and glue that are trying to vibrate musically.
R: Structurally just as good?
G: Yeah.
N: Yeah, I’ll tell you what, you pick up like a 614 and then you play a 214, it still has that same Taylor feel on the guitar. It really does. It plays absolutely great. I’m also assuming that by hydration, whether it’s a baby Taylor or a 914, you guys would always think the same exact thing across the board.
G: We do. Now, layered wood guitars are… the back and sides that aren’t layered wood, aren’t going to move as much as solid wood guitar, but you still have a solid wood top. You’ve got a solid wood neck and fretboard, you know. It’s still very important, but they are a little tougher humidity wise, but same rules apply.
N: A little bit more resistance.
G: Yeah.
R: Which is good, because a lot of times you’re getting newer players or maybe people that haven’t been playing as much so they’re not paying attention with hydration as someone who has been playing for ten or fifteen years, so that’s probably kind of a blessing to them.
G: Yeah, it just makes it a little bit easier.
R: What do you got for us, Nate?
N: Man, I don’t know. This has been a great conversation. What are some of the things that… what I’ve, we’ve stumbled across with our dealers is, a lot of times, what are some misconceptions that maybe people are doing when they think they’re hydrating their guitars correctly, but maybe they necessarily aren’t because I think I’ve stumbled across a lot of people, like you said, “Oh, we’re down in Florida. It’s humid everywhere”. That might be somebody just sloughing it off. Well, somebody might be going, “I’m trying to hydrate my guitars” but what are some things that they really need to be thinking about, but they’re actually not doing it correctly?
G: That kind of comes back to the digital hygrometer. It’s going to tell you what to do.
N: So, you just got jump right in. That is what everybody needs to get.
G: Quit guessing. People hear, “Hey, I’m supposed to humidify my guitar”. They live in Florida. They wet their humidifier everyday and put it in there. Then, they’ll blow their guitar up just not fully understand what they’re supposed to do. What you’re supposed to do is keep it in that 45 to 55% range, no matter what that means. If it’s down to 30, you’re adding humidifiers to bring the level up. If you’re over 55, 60%, you’re using dehumidifier to bring that level back.
R: Okay, talk about dehumidifiers. That is… this is a great thing. Let’s talk about that. So, how should we use those?
G: There is some really great products on the market. One of the easiest products out there is that D’Addario two-way humidification system. It’s three little pouches that… it’s the only product that works in both directions.
R: Interesting.
N: Oh, okay.
G: It’s going to maintain this 48% humidity level in your case automatically.
R: Really? Okay.
G: So, you just throw those in the case, store your guitar your case and it’s going to do the work for you. You just have to check the packets once in a while. When they’re dried out, they feel like jelly inside, when they’re dried out, they’re done. If the humidity creeps up a little bit, they’ll absorb some of that excess humidity. So, that is a great choice for anybody with a brand-new guitar. It’s a great way to maintain a good humidity level.
R: Do most stores stock those?
G: Yeah, most stores carry D’Addario and Planet Wave stuff. If not…
R: Is that who you guys recommend? Is there a brand or style that you guys recommend?
G: They’re the only ones making that product right now.
R: Okay. What about other products to hydrate?
G: If you’re in more of an extreme environment, let’s say you’re in a desert area, those packets from D’Addario, they might dry out pretty quick. You might have to buy a new set every three or four weeks.
R: Geez. Yeah, okay.
N: Wow.
G: If you’re in that kind of environment, you want to use a water based humidifier that you can refill. A couple great ones are from Music Nomad and also from Oasis. Those are two brands that are refillable.
R: I’ve seen the Oasis one. That’s cool, okay.
G: The Music Nomad one looks like some you may have seen. It’s just the plastic container with a sponge inside and there is holes in the container...
R: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
G: ...but the sponge material they use holds ten times the amount of water of a normal sponge. So, it holds a lot.
R: So, it could be… demographics could dictate which kind you get, one that absorbs and one that gives. Okay.
G: Yeah, and for absorbing, everyone has seen little silica gel packets that you get in your shoes or electronic gear…
R: Yeah, absolutely.
G: …but for a guitar, think big. Think, like, a large amount of silica gel.
R: Twenty times that size.
G: Yeah. So, you can get that. There is bamboo charcoal products which absorb moisture. It’s an all natural product.
R: Really? I’ve never heard of that.
N: Yeah, I’ve never heard of that either.
G: Yeah, we sell those off our website. I work with a company that was already making these and I said, “Hey, just repackage some and call it a guitar dehumidifier. You’ve already got the product”.
R: Great idea.
(Nate laughs)
G: Yeah, so I actually worked with them to do that. That’s available on our website and through our dealers.
R: And about how much do those sell for?
G: Oh, like twelve bucks.
R: Really? So there is no excuse for anybody out there.
G: There is products out there. There is some really great renewable dehumidifiers, also. A company called Everdry has a product that has silica glass in it and absorbs a lot of moisture and it has a little color indicator on it and when it is done, you take it out of your case and it has a little plug on it that flips out of the back. You plug it into the wall and it dries to glass beads out and you can keep using that for ten years. That thing is thirty bucks.
R: Wow. Wow.
N: Okay.
R: So, there is no reason why our dealers, your dealers, everybody’s dealers shouldn’t get active doing this.
G: Right.
R: Especially if you got a guitar that you spend thousands of dollars in some cases, even twelve to thirty bucks is nothing in comparison to opening up your case and seeing a crack.
G: Yeah.
R: That’s got to be heartbreaking to open up and see it split.
G: It is. Man, we work so hard on those guitars when we build them. We fuss and suffer over every little scratch and ding as it’s getting built and going through to be cased up and sent to its new home and it’s heartbreaking for us, too, even though it’s not our guitar anymore to see one that’s been broken.
R: But you guys built it, yeah.
G: Yeah. Hey, on the humidifiers, I wanted to mention something else that we started talking about last year. When you’re humidifying or dehumidifying a guitar inside its case, everyone is so used to putting things in the soundhole of the guitar.
R: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure.
G: It doesn’t have to go there. Your case is the chamber.
R: Okay.
G: A safer place, really, is in the cutaway area or behind the heel of the guitar. There’s really no benefit to having that product laying in the soundhole and if something were to happen, let’s say you put too much water in our something and it leaked out by mistake…
R: Yeah, it wouldn’t get in the guitar. Wow, I’ve never even thought about that.
G: Yeah, instead of dripping in the guitar...
N: Yeah.
G: ...it’ll drip in the case.
R: That’s a good idea.
G: Yeah and it’s going to do the same thing. You’re maintaining that environment in the case.
R: That’s a great point.
N: And I have a lot of dealers that I, and I don’t think we touched on this, is different times of year. A lot of times, I actually have dealers that will stay away from buying acoustic guitars from us in January and February because they’re like, “Man, every guitar I get in is cracking” and I’m always sitting there going, “Well, when the guitars come in, you need to take care of it” but not only that, we’re shipping guitars on cold, freezing trucks in the middle of the wintertime and they want to get it in, unbox it, take it and put it on a wall.
R: Oh my goodness, yes. Instead of wait for 24, 48 hours.
N: That’s right.
R: So, what do you guys recommend on that? That’s a good topic that you bring up because I know dealing with another high end manufacturer, they had labels at certain times of the year, like, I can’t remember if it was 48 hours, but to have it acclimate. What are you guys recommending?
G: That is more of a concern for the finish.
N: Oh, okay.
R: Oh, interesting. Okay.
G: So, if you’re using lacquer finish…
R: So it doesn’t check.
G: So it doesn’t check.
R: So, you guys really don’t have to deal with that, right?
G: We don’t use lacquer, yeah.
R: Now, tell us why because you guys use UV, right? So it is no concern.
G: Yes, it is polyester based finish. So, our finish isn’t going to check. Now, if it’s 30 below, yeah, give it a couple hours.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: Normal things in the U.S. …
R: If you’re in Alaska and you’re outside with the eskimos, you know…
N: Then you need to leave it a couple hours, exactly.
(Nate continues to laugh)
G: Then the wood can kind of check.
R: Freak out. Okay, yeah.
G: But in normal circumstances, even in the dead of winter, within the continental U.S. ... I mean we ship guitars all year back and forth. We're not concerned with that.
R: That’s an interesting point that you bring up. I would always, I mean I always tell people to give it 24 hours to acclimate, so maybe…
G: It doesn’t hurt, but man, when that guitar… if you’re the consumer when that guitar comes to your house… yeah.
R: Yeah, you’re ready to open it up. So a couple hours should be good enough?
G: Yeah. For Taylors, yeah. You’re going to be fine. No concern there.
R: Okay. What have we not asked that you think is important for us to bring up or is there anything?
G: Yeah, going back to what you were just talking about, the dealers, a couple tips there because I’ve seen stores that know a little bit about humidity, but they’re not on point so they might as well be doing nothing. If you’re a store that’s going to sell nice, high-end acoustics, you need an acoustic room or a maintained space. If you don’t have that space, you can still get your guitars in the winter time. Just leave them in the case if you’re not going to create a safe environment for them. I’ve seen a lot of stores that have a dedicated acoustics room and their humidifier is like a little one gallon humidifier like you would put in a baby’s room. It is not enough. You need a humidifier sufficient for the space.
R: Or a couple of them, even.
G: Yeah.
N: Now, is that something you walk in and say, like, you visited a dealer and you’re like, “Hey, that’s not correct. You need to change that.”?
G: Yeah. Absolutely, because we want them to be successful.
R: You don’t want them calling and being like, “Hey, we got a Taylor that’s cracked”, right?
G: Yeah. I’d walk in and go, “Well, this is why you have some cracked guitars. Look at your room. Let me help you here. You’ve got a door on your acoustic room, but it stays open all the time. Close the door. Put a sign on there that says ‘Keep Door Closed’. You’ve got 100 watt light bulbs shining on all the guitars on the top row.”.
R: It produces a lot of heat, yeah.
G: “Get some LED lights or even put a dimmer on it. You can still get a good effect without having that full blast heat. Get your humidifier. Make sure someone is maintaining that humidifier”, you know? The little tiny humidifier I just mentioned, this one dealer…
R: Yeah, we’ve got two in the shop that are empty.
(Nate laughs)
R: So I need to walk out of here and go fill them things up and use them, right?
G: Not today! Not today. Not in here.
N: Remember, it’s raining in the warehouse right now.
R: Not today, you’re right but nonetheless...
G: But still, someone has got to own that.
R: ...maintaining it is a good point. We have a guy that has kind of been slacked in that area, so store owners, managers need to make sure that that is being maintained.
G: This is your job. Every day you come in, check it. Check it again at lunch time. Check it again before you leave.
R: Really? Okay.
G: Yeah. Someone has got to own it.
R: It is super important, though. I’m glad you’re bringing that up.
G: And same thing with dehumidifiers if you’re in Florida or our distributor in Thailand where it’s 90% humidity pretty much year round. He came to one of the Taylor youth sessions and went back and took some action and followed up with us. It was a great success story to hear.
R: Okay, tell us about that.
G: He got… he got these giant humidifiers or dehumidifiers for all his stores. So, all his stores are in shopping malls and they would leave the doors open.
R: Oh, sure. The humidity comes in.
G: So he just changed his whole plan. He got giant dehumidifiers for every store, started leaving the door shut, made a new sign in the shape of a water drop to put on the doors saying, “Please come in. We keep the doors closed for humidity reasons” and within a month of him having them, he told us his employees started coming up to him and going, “Man, all the guitars are playing better”.
R: Oh, really? Wow.
G “What is going on?” because they were all just swelling up. The action is getting higher.
R: They felt good. The guitars were happy.
G: Yeah, they were back to normal. It was like awesome. What a great success story. So if they can maintain humidity in Thailand, you can maintain humidity anywhere.
R: Okay. Well, then you got happy guitars and we all like happy guitars.
G: Yeah, happy guitars.
N: You guys also have a line of killer electric guitars. How does this translate over to that?
G: Our electric line now consists of a T5, which is kind of a hybrid acoustic and electric guitar. Exact same rules apply. That guitar is all solid wood. It’s completely hollow with a brace top, kind of like an acoustic guitar would be so exact same rules apply. Our other electric is a T3 which is like a semi hollow body electric with two humbuckers. Now, that guitar still has a solid wood neck and fretboard, back and sides, so even though it’s going to be a lot tougher than an acoustic, you still want to be aware. Even solid body electric guitars can be affected, too.
N: Fret ends, sure.
R: Fret ends is what we see a lot.
(Unintelligible - talking over each other)
G: Of course, sharp fret ends on a solid body strat or tele, it can happen. You want to be aware of it. The body is usually not going to do anything because it is a big, thick piece of wood. R: Piece of wood, yeah. Okay, so you had mentioned, a little while ago, your website. So all of our dealers should go to, what is it, Taylor.com?
G: Taylorguitars.com
R: Taylorguitars.com and navigate with us through that. Is there a pull down that says “hydrating guitars”?
G: There is a support section. Once you go to the support section, you’ll see a lot of care topics at the bottom. You can click on each one. They have a little either text sheet or a lot of them have a video also, talking and demonstrating what the care topic is. A lot of stuff there, and there is so much stuff on YouTube, also. You can just go to YouTube and put some stuff in that we’ve created.
R: Awesome. Awesome, well, we’ll get the word out even more especially going into, like you brought up, the winter. That’s a time where we hear it the most, so this is a topic over the last two or three years that we’ve tried to do our part and we really appreciate you coming in. Next time you come in we’re going to talk about something besides hydrating. We’re going to talk about Taylor and all the cool stuff that you guys got and all the models, but we appreciate you coming in. Parting, we have a gift for you. So, there is a gift.
N: Yeah!
G: Alright. I love gifts.
R: Hopefully, it feels nice and cozy on you. It’s a t-shirt that says “The Music Retail Show”. So, we always appreciate you. We always appreciate Taylor. We love hanging out with you guys, so…
G: Well, thanks. I love what you guys do here, too.
R: Thank you. Thank you.
G: Such a great, unique business you guys have here. I just love it. Any place you got a dozen or more repair guys, I’m in.
R: Unique! Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
N: It’d be easy to get you here. You love Nashville, too.
G: I do.
R: Yeah! So, we’ll have to do it again. You want to wind us down, Nate?
N: Yeah! So, obviously go to Taylorguitars.com for any education, whether you’re a dealer or just an end user. Man, I’m telling you, we appreciate it. Thanks for coming in, and yeah, hopefully we’ll do this again sometime. Everybody, thanks for tuning in.
(Outro music plays)
N: Alright guys, welcome back to another episode, another great episode. Glen had a lot to say. There is a ton in it. You might want to go back and listen to that again, but hey, you know what? If you like it, great. Please share this episode with whoever you think might need to listen to it. Also, give us positive reviews on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you listen to it. Also, jump over to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Please follow us. You can see what we got going on there as well, but yeah. We appreciate it and hope you guys have a great week!
UnknowN: Own a music store or sell guitars online? Need more inventory to stay competitive in today’s market? MIRC is the nation's largest wholesaler of quality used guitars. Visit www.mircweb.com to become a dealer today! Thanks for listening to The Music Retail Show!
R: Yeah! We got Glen Wolff in from Taylor. We just got back from the NAMM show.
N: Glen, welcome.
R: Yeah, welcome Glen.
G: Thanks, glad to be here.
R: So, we’re going to release this in a couple weeks, probably 2, 3, 4 weeks. We just finished up the NAMM show. Glen is still in town, so the timing is absolutely great.
N: Perfect.
R: We’re going to talk on a unique topic that is easy to overlook. We’re going to talk about hydration and hydrating guitars. I know that probably a lot of guests are saying, “Wait a minute, you’ve got Taylor in here and you’re going to talk about hydration. Why not talk about Taylor guitars?”. So, we probably will touch on a little bit on different models and different things. Maybe Glen can share some things that they have going on over at Taylor, but right now, we’re going to talk about hydration. So, Glen, I know this is a topic you probably talk about all the time, but we have a whole bunch of stuff that we want to get into. We have a lot of dealers that are concerned with hydration and I know for myself, up until you guys came along, I didn’t have the knowledge or I didn’t have the background of it. So, I do want to jump in and talk about it. I’m going to let you kick if off a little bit and then we’re going to start in on some questions.
G: Sounds great.
R: Yeah.
G: Yeah, I talk about this all the time. I mean, I often say if hydration or humidity wasn’t an issue, I could have half the people that I have in service.
R: Yeah.
G: I spend a lot of time not only talking to end users and consumers and our dealers but even our distributors all over the world that have really a vast array of different problems.
N: Sure.
R: And what are some of the problems that you guys get with hydration? I know we deal with it a lot here and on climate whether it’s dry or it’s moist. I mean, we see the guitars move a lot, but I’m sure it is nothing to the level that you guys experience because you’re dealing with guitars all across the world. So, what are some of the things that you guys look for or what are some of the things that you guys see a lot of?
G: Yeah, well, everything we see in the world, we almost see it all in some version in the U.S. because the U.S. is so big and so different. We have desert regions. We have Hawaii and Florida which are really tropical and humid all the time. We have areas that are really dry in the wintertime and really wet in the summertime, like Nashville.
R: Let’s talk about that. I’m from Arizona. Now, when I was in Arizona working retail, we never ever ever dealt with hydration and looking back on it, oh my goodness. What a mistake that is because it was super super dry. We’d turn on the air conditioning and any moisture that we had, it would suck it out. We’d turn on the heat and then, you know… we’re always dealing with the different elements that were going on but we thought, “Oh, the guitars are perfectly fine” but looking back again like I was saying, we’re always adjusting them, always compensating for the way they played, so with that, you know you’re talking about regions. We lived in Arizona but obviously you and we deal with customers all over the United States. So, what about that customer in Florida? What about that customer is Michigan in the summer and the winter? What are some of the things that we should look for with that?
G: Well, you can boil it down to something really easy. You know, it is really simple and I always want to throw in that the things that I’m saying here go for any acoustic guitar.
R: Any brand, yeah.
G: Really any instrument. It goes for anything made of wood, really.
R: Gotcha. Gotcha.
G: The thing that you want to do to make it easy on yourself is just buy a little digital hygrometer. You can get them for ten bucks on Amazon. A lot of music stores carry them. A lot of different brands out there. An inexpensive digital hygrometer is going to give you a reading within 5% and that is plenty accurate enough to maintain a healthy guitar.
R: What level should we… what should we try to achieve when we get that?
G: Shoot for 50%.
R: 50%, okay.
G: A good range is 45 to 55.
R: Okay. Can you over hydrate a guitar?
G: Oh yeah.
R: And what happens then?
G: Well, you know, when the guitar gets dry, it basically shrinks. The wood shrinks. The top sinks down.
R: So that is why we get fret end issues.
G: Fret ends poke out. The guitar starts to buzz, especially on some upper frets, first thing you’ll notice. When it gets really dry, the wood will eventually crack. Nobody wants that to happen.
R: Gotcha. Gotcha. No, no, no.
G: The exact opposite happens when it gets wet. The wood starts to swell up. Your action gets high. Their frets can actually look short on the fingerboard when it’s swollen.
R: Okay.
N: Because it is pushing to top up? Is that kind of what is happening?
G: Well, it’s swelling, yeah. It’s swelling up so it’s like putting a big balloon inside the body and just blowing it up. The whole thing catches up and the guitar is now holding all this excess water weight. Your tone changes. It gets dull and funny sounding because the wood can’t resonate the way that it would if it were closer to 50%.
R: Gotcha.
G: So the thing about humidity, it is like, “Why should I care about humidity?”. Well, do you want your guitar to always sound and play the same as the day you bought it? It’s like, I’m thinking it sounded and played pretty good the day you bought it, that’s why you bought it.
R: That’s why you bought it! Yeah, absolutely.
G: So that is what is in it for the player. They can relate to that right off the bat.
R: Okay, so in a store, you got a great… you guys have a lot of great stores with your products in, so what is the environment in that store that is optimal for you guys? I mean, I know at another retailer we had what we called a “Taylor room” and in there we had a couple different hydration machines that we were pumping moisture into the air, but that was just us and I’m sure there is a lot of other people that do the same thing. So, ideally, what should a music store do?
G: That same range, 45 to 55. Some different things to be aware of for a music store verses just maintaining your guitar inside your case. In a music store, you’re going to have different zones. So, you want several hygrometers in your room. A lot of stores like to put their best guitars high up on the wall with little spotlights on them.
R: Interesting. Ooooh, the heat.
N: So no one can touch them?
(Nate laughs)
G: Yes! So, they look really great, but there with the lights on them, it’s hotter up high, so it is drier up high.
R: Yeah, but the heat. That’s true. I’ve never even thought about putting a hydrometer up there. That’s a good idea.
G: Yeah, you got to. I mean, from one row to the next, it could be 10% drier up on the ceiling.
R: Well, yeah. Absolutely. Wow, I never even thought about that.
G: So, if you’re just barely keeping the range, you’re almost at 45 down at eye level.
R: Yeah, most of them are low to the ground or chest high.
G: Yeah, up there, you could be drying your guitars out. I’ve seen it all the time.
R: Wow, I’ve never even thought about that.
N: It’s true, and those lights are them. Absolutely.
R: And now, you brought up cases. I mean, I know a lot of music stores and we would do the same thing, is take guitars and if you have excess or there is certain guitars, you’d put them in a case. So, how does that affect guitars?
G: What a music store wants to be careful of is having some cases that are also properly maintained...
R: Okay.
G: ...humidity wise. So, this is something that a lot of guys never even think about, but let’s say you have the most perfect guitar room in the world. All the guitars are at 50% everywhere in the room. It is maintained perfect. It is a nice room. There is no room for a big pile of cases in that room, so you stick them out in the warehouse. Everybody does it. If the warehouse is 10% humidity because you’re in a dry climate, now all your wooden cases are drying out. So, what you’re going to do, not thinking about it, is sell a customer a perfect guitar out of your room. “Hey, let me go get you the case” and you grab that case that is all dried out and you’re telling the customer, “Now, the safest place to keep your guitar is in the case” and he’s going to put his guitar in the case, and that case, since it’s at 10%, it wants to be at 50%, too, so it…
R: It sucks all that moisture out.
G: It sucks right out of the guitar, and you could end up having your customer ruin their brand new guitar without thinking about it.
R: Thankfully, I’m not going to Hell for that because I’ve done that for years, but anyways…
(Nate laughs)
G: It’s just being aware, and you know… you don’t have to maintain all your cases, but have a couple of each size ready to go. Either throw a humidifier in the case out in the warehouse of just bring a few cases in your acoustic room. Have them prepped and ready.
R: Gotcha.
N: I’m interested only for the fact of the people that you talk to. I mean, percentage wise, how much education like this are you constantly having to work with with your dealers? You guys have done a great job over the years, and so, you know, a lot of your guitars are in a great environment, or is this a constant thing where you’re like, “Man, we have to constantly put this message out because people are just doing whatever they want”?
G: That is a great question, and it never ends.
N: It never ends.
G: I came to terms with that a long time ago.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: I’ve been a dealer for 20 years, and you can never let up because think about how many new stores are coming along all the time. How many new store employees? How many veterans that don’t…
R: Don’t care, yeah.
G: Well, they never had to learn. Maybe they’re in Southern California, very close to us, where you really don’t have to do much because it is naturally right in that 50% range all the time. They never had to address it, or somehow they got by.
R: Wow. You guys suck. I want 50% all the time in our climate
G: That reminds me. What a lot of people are experiencing…
(Nate laughs)
R: It’s like 100% out there right now, but anyways, go ahead. I’ll quit cutting you off.
N: Yeah, it’s raining in the warehouse right now.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: It is warm out. A lot of people experience this and don’t even realize that they are. So, one of the funny things that we hear is the guy will come in with his guitar and will go, “Hey, my actions a little low. Can you make me a winter saddle?”.
R: Yes, okay.
G: “Just a taller saddle because I’ve had that for my other guitar” and I’m like, “A winter saddle? What are you doing?”. “Well, in the winter, my guitar starts to buzz. So, I take out the saddle that is in there and I put in my winter saddle that is a little taller”.
N: Seriously? I’ve never heard of that.
R: Yeah, I have. I have.
G: What is really happening is their top is shrinking because their guitar is drying out and in their mind, they’re fixing it by putting a taller saddle in, but they’re ignoring the humidity issue.
N: They can’t… well, I don’t know. Sometimes, I feel like it’s moving ever so slightly that if you put the guitar up, you can’t see it or could you see it? I’m assuming you’d be able to see the guitar moving that much.
G: It is a subtle thing, and it is a hard thing to see if you’re not working at a guitar factory or a music store and you’re not used to looking at it. You’re really not going to be able to see it. It is a slight enough… now, in extremes, yeah, you’re going to see it. The whole top can look something like a bowl, you know?
N: Yeah, sure.
R: So, music stores, about 50%. That is what we want. Now, is that for the acoustic room or the whole store or a combination?
G: It’s the acoustic room. You know, if some stores are too small or they’re laid out in a way where they can’t have an acoustic room and then it’s kind of a struggle to maintain a whole store, but some people try to do that just because of the size of the store.
R: Now, you brought up hard showcases and you gave us some great, great information there as far as cases being dried out, but what about gig bags? That is another thing that a lot of people want gig bags. They have cases, but they also have gigs back if they’re going back and forth, or just to store in there so it doesn’t get dinged or knocked over, but what about gig bags?
G: Yeah, that’s a great question and at Taylor, we sell a lot of models that come standard with a gig bag and not a hard case, but the same rules apply. You can maintain the humidity inside a gig bag pretty much just as easy as you can inside a case. A lot of people think you have to have a case, but a case isn’t vapor proof, you know?
R: True, true.
G: It doesn’t block it off. What a case does is it gives you a little bit of a barrier because all that wood is already holding 50% moisture and if your guitar is in it and you forget to check the humidifier, the guitar can get a little moisture from that case instead of just kind of drying out into the air, but the main thing to think about is you’re stopping that flow of air over the guitar which is going to make it change the fastest. So, in a bag, air is not blowing right over it and even with a humidifier in the bag, you know, you’re creating some extra moisture for the guitar to draw from, so yeah. You’re not off the hook with a gig bag. You can do the same thing.
R: Okay, now, so, you guys are manufacturer. You guys do all the wood. You guys deal with all this stuff. So, if hydration is an issue, why don’t you just make tops of guitars and backs and sides that are dried out? Why not use dry wood? Completely dry wood.
G: Well, the range that we choose gives the guitars it’s best chance of living anywhere in the world. We’re shooting for that 45 to 55% humidity range. That is kind of right down the middle worldwide. So, a guitar that gets a little over humidified right now would really be swollen if we used wood that was, say, dried down to 10%. Yeah, it wouldn’t dry out and crack, but if you had just a little bit of moisture in the air, now it is going to swell up. So, you still have a problem.
R: Yeah, I gotcha.
G: So, at that range where we’re building them and this is where all the manufacturers are building their guitars.
R: It’s the sweet spot.
G: Yeah, it really is the best spot and you got to know that as a manufacturer, the last thing we want is for a guitar to crack. We do everything we can possibly think of. I mean, the steps we go through to treat the wood and kind of preshrink the wood, if you think of it that way. You know how when you buy a t-shirt, if it’s not preshrunk hot and you wash it once and it shrinks down 2 sizes. You can’t even wear it.
R: Yeah, that’s horrible. I hate shirts that a preshrink, or they shrink. They need to be preshrunk.
(Nate laughs)
N: They’re not preshrunk.
G: They’re not preshrunk, yeah. So, we kind of do that with the tops. What we do is we dry them out, rehumidify them. Dry them out again, rehumidify them so that when they do dry, most of that movement is done with. It is going to move a minimal amount, but it is wood, it can still move more.
R: Okay, so say a guitar is at 50%. How much movement can we expect?
G: When it’s…
R: If it’s at 50%, is it pretty well stable at that point? Does it move much, maybe a little bit, or is it pretty consistent?
G: Well, the environment dictates that. The guitars at 50% if it’s an environment around 50%. It is not moving at all. That’s why you want to maintain it with the humidifiers, and that is where your digital hygrometer is your friend. You don’t have to guess. You don’t have to cite the top. You don’t have to be an expert. All you got to do is look at it once in a while and say, “Hey, my hygrometer is reading 35%. That is a little too dry. I better get a guitar humidifier in there”.
R: Now, is that month sensitive? I mean, is there certain months that we need to really, really pay attention or is that months and your demographic? Like, if you’re in Florida, you get a lot of moisture. You got a lot of humidity and you talked briefly about having too much and what it can do, but is there certain times of the year that you should pay more attention to it?
G: Yeah, well, most people in the U.S. have a problem with the guitars getting too dry, and as a rule of thumb, once you turn the heat on in your house, that is when you really need to think about your guitars.
R: Gotcha, and I learned that when I’m putting a lot of lotion on my hands, your guitars are dry as well.
G: That’s a good way to think of it, yeah.
R: Is that an accurate way?
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: Well, you’re drying out.
R: Oh, I’m drying out, so I’m thinking, “Oh man, the guitars are drying out as well”.
N: I’ve got naturally dry skin.
R: Yeah.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: Think about the doors and windows in your house a lot of times. In the summertime, it is like, “Man, I can’t even open this window”. Why is that? The wood swelled up. In the wintertime, the wood shrunk and now it flies right up.
R: Okay. Well, I built a house last year that had crown molding and I looked up above my stove and seen a little bit of a gap on the seam of the crown molding. Well, I looked up the other day and it’s gone because it shrunk.
G: You haven’t been burning anything in the stove, hopefully, at this time of year.
(Nate and Glen laugh)
R: Well, no, no, no, no, no. There is more moisture in the air.
G: Yeah, it’s swelling back up. It’ll probably open back up.
R: In the winter, yeah, it will, and I do have a humidifier. I’m hydrating my house. I run it and put moisture in the air because it does, it dries out even in my house. Like I said, I’ve just paid attention to this. I know it’s a crazy topic and a lot of times, people go, “Why are we talking about hydration? It’s not that big of a deal!” but over the last several years, I have found out it is a big, big, big deal. Another way I want to bring this up, and of course, we have used guitars so I don’t want to minimize it and say it’s less of a big deal, but with new manufacturers, that’s got to affect a warranty, would it?
G: Well, you know, damage from humidity issues…
R: It’s not your fault.
G: ...it’s never covered. It is never covered by warranty. If you dry your guitar out, it is kind of like dropping your guitar. Warranty isn’t insurance.
R: It’s neglect.
G: It is. It really is.
N: How much on the owner, when you guys ship guitars, are you guys getting a lot of people that are very… that are attentive to this. I mean, are they like, “Oh, yeah. We got to make sure we take care of these” or just something that you have to really… again, I’m coming back to the dealers. I’m wondering to how much do dealers really need to pay attention to this and how much are they willing to?
R: So you’re educating the dealers to educate the consumers, is that correct?
G: Absolutely, yeah, because we want Taylor owners to be happy. We want them to love their Taylor guitars. We want them to love their Taylor dealer.
R: And buy another one.
G: Or 7.
(Glen laughs)
R: Absolutely.
G: It’s all about being happy with your purchase and that gets back to we're doing everything we can to educate our customers because we want them to avoid any issues that they can run into. So, that is why we put so much emphasis on training the dealers and training consumers directly. We have lots of info on our website, lots of YouTube videos with Bob Taylor himself showing how to use guitar humidifiers and bring one back to life after it’s dried out. There is a lot of great stuff out there, and it’s not that the guitars are extra sensitive. We just know how they can react, you know, in spite of everything we do to make it as stable as possible, they’re still wood and if we’re going to keep using wood, wood makes the best sounding guitars, we’re not going to switch to something else, and it’s all about maintaining it. It’s easy to maintain. You just have to know a little bit. We want the dealers to know enough to have this talk with their customer as they’re buying the guitar and not wait until they have the problem. So for us, it’s huge. We have a thing called “Taylor University” where we do sales training. There is a lot of online stuff we do with our dealers. We’ve also done tons of in person training. We’ll fly 20 or 30 dealers out to the factory at once for training, and that is not just sales stuff. I’ll go in and have a big humidity talk with these guys at the same time and man, you just see their eyes light up when you say something they never thought about.
N: I can imagine.
G: Like, I had one dealer. He was talking about remodeling his acoustic room and after I was talking about how all the wood in your acoustic room is also going to be absorbing moisture. A lot of people do the…
R: I was getting ready to, yeah… I’m glad you’re bringing that up.
G: Yeah, they do wood walls, which look great. Rough cut lumber with guitars hanging, it looks beautiful.
R: But it’s sucking moisture as well.
G: It’s sucking moisture and that’s not a problem if you maintain it. You just have to realize that that’s another factor in your room, so you’re going to need a stronger humidifier.
R: I never thought about that, yeah.
N: I haven’t either.
G: And this particular dealer, we get done and he goes, “You just saved me a ton of money” and I go, “Well, how did I do that?” and he goes, “I was trying to decide to go with natural wood floors in my acoustic room or laminate and I’m going laminate”.
(Richard and Nate laugh)
R: Well, I don’t blame him there. Yeah, that’s good information. Now, so when are some of the, we’ll come back to this topic, but what is some of the cool stuff that you guys are doing right now? Whether it be bracing or models. I was looking, at the show, I was looking at, I can’t remember the model if it was like a 614 or something like that, but seeing the flame maple on the back and sides and I was just like, “Man, this thing looks beautiful”, but outside of woods, what else are you guys doing? I know, and I’m jumping ahead, maybe it was at the winter show, you guys released some different bracing. You can correct me if I’m wrong.
G: That’s the big story right now.
R: Okay, well, let’s talk about that.
G: No, that’s the big Taylor story right now, v-class bracing. So, Andy Powers has departed from traditional x-bracing. Right now, it’s available on all of our all solid wood grand auditorium models.
R: Okay, and why are you guys doing that? What are the advantages to that?
G: The advantage is… we call it a new sonic engine. So, with the v-bracing, it increases the stability of the guitar from headstock to the tail end. So it is more of one solid structure from end to end. So, we get increased sustain. We get projected volume. It’s kind of like a line array speaker now or 20 feet away it is just as loud as it is right in front of the guitar. The craziest thing that happens is the intonation is off the charts accurate.
R: Interesting.
N: This is new this year?
G: Yup, just came out this year. We had a lot of models at the summer show that are being built now with this v-class bracing.
R: Okay, and what models is that? Is that…
G: It’s all of our grand auditoriums right now.
R: So, it doesn’t matter the, the series…
G: Yes, the 300 series and higher.
N: That’s the 14 series?
G: Yeah.
R: Well, it’s interesting you brought that up because I’ve never done backflips over maple. It’s not my favorite wood type when it comes to a guitar, but like on the 600 series, for some reason, after you guys did that, I was like, “Man, I think this bracing is affecting the way this maple sounds because it sounds like a million bucks”. Am I crazy?
G: You’re not crazy, you know...
R: Okay.
(Nate laughs)
R: Not relating to guitars.
N: At least about that. At least about that.
(Glen laughs)
R: Yeah, okay.
G: Is this thing on?
(Nate and Richard laugh)
R: Yes.
G: No, well, Andy did everything he could to our x-brace design guitars over the past several years. I mean, every little minor tweak you could think of. So, the 600s are the maple series. They were sounding killer even before the v-class came along. What a lot of people do designing a guitar, they’ll take a rosewood guitar and say, “Hey, we want to make a maple guitar” and just swap out the rosewood for maple and not redesign the guitar for that tone wood. That is why it doesn’t sound good because it is two different woods.
R: So maybe that’s what I’ve been hearing in the past were the various manufacturers.
G: Yeah, but you know, Andy approached it more from his knowledge of classical instruments. There is a lot of great sounding arch tops, violins, cellos, and they’re made from maple. So they were already doing really well and then with the v-class bracing, they’re just up to a whole nother level. I want to go back on the intonation point because it is kind of confusing if you just think about, well, how can bracing on a guitar change the intonation at all?
R: That’s a good question, yeah.
G: Intonation, most people think of it just as the scale length. Where is your nut? Where is your saddle? Where are your frets placed? That is a big part of it, but beyond that, it is what are the notes or the sounds this instrument is creating and with the v-class bracing, the top is moving side to side instead of like a four-way motion and we’re getting less disharmonic overtones coming off the top to begin with, so it is moving more musical. The notes and their overtones are much cleaner and purer. So, every time you play a chord or a note on a guitar, you have the fundamental and the overtones and there is a mix of overtones a lot of times especially in chords and complex chords that sound a little off. The guys in the studio, for years, they’ll retune their guitar for different parts of the song. A lot of people don’t realize that. They’ll play part of a song and go, “Well, now I’m moving up the neck. It’s not quite in tune. Let’s cut there. I need to retune. Let’s do this part and then we’ll go back to this other part” just to get it perfect because they hear that well. So, with this guitar what we’re finding, the guys playing it and playing things they would normally avoid on an acoustic guitar, just go, “Man, this is amazing”.
R: Man, all because of the bracing?
G: Yeah. Yeah.
R: Wow.
N: Now, as far as your education with hydration, does that play into this as well?
G: It does.
N: I mean, it just kind of brings it all back together.
G: Yeah, it still applies. Same rules apply. You still want to maintain that guitar at 45 to 55%. The guitars, from what we’ve seen, are more stable than an x-brace guitar. They’re still going to move because they’re wood, but they move differently as the wood starts to dry and they don’t move as much, but they would still eventually dry out and have some action issues. They could still crack. It’s still the same materials, but they’re stronger and more stable.
N: You know what, I would I assume that as high quality as your instruments are, there is probably still an optimal level that the instrument performs at. It obviously has to be within that hydration percentage, I would assume.
G: Yeah, that’s where it’s going to be playing its best.
R: Now, what about finish because we have some guitars that are satin, some that are gloss. How does that affect the humidity and all that? I mean, does a gloss guitar help hold it in? Does a satin breathe it out? Tell me what your thoughts are there.
G: Yeah, well, you know, Bob has answered this question a lot of times, so I’ll get the answer right from him because…
R: Oh, good.
G: And people ask us all the time, “Why don’t you just finish the inside of the guitar and you won’t have to worry about humidity?” but it’s not true. The finish doesn’t stop water vapor from passing through into the wood. That’s what we’re dealing with. It’ll stop water. You can pour water on the finished guitar and it’ll run off, but we’re talking about water vapor, you know? That’s like at a molecular level, it’s small enough to pass through that finish. So, even if you had finish inside of the guitar, it’s not going to stop that from happening. Plus, it’ll look really messy.
N: Has anybody tried that? I’m sitting here picturing somebody finishing the inside of a guitar.
R: It has got to affect the sound, too.
G: It would, yeah. It’s adding weight.
R: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
G: It’s not a good thing. I’ve seen some, not that Taylor has done, but I’ve seen some customers send their guitars on for repair that have dumped a quart of lacquer in it and swished it around or something. I’ve seen some wacky stuff.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: But that’s not going to help. Satin finish protects the wood just as well as glossy finish, you know. It’s just getting the coating over the wood.
N: That Taylor satin is some of the best looking satin I’ve ever seen.
R: Yeah, it really is.
G: Oh, and we’ve got a brand new silent satin finish. I don’t know if you guys noticed the builder’s reserve guitars inside the room.
R: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s beautiful.
G: All satin finish. We call it silent satin finish. It’s a new process that is really quiet. A lot of satin guitars, you know, there is a slight roughness to them and it rubs up against your shirt in the studio and stuff. You can hear the swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. The silent satin is pretty much silent.
N: Slick. Is it that K14 we had? Was that it? We had those K14s.
R: I’ve seen it on something. It is. It’s really, really nice. Now, on that topic and maybe you know maybe you don’t, sometimes satin, if it’s rubbed a lot, it will turn gloss. Does this help with it not glossing, or do we know yet?
G: I don’t know yet. It’s such a new finish for us. We just started using it in January, so I would expect it to gloss up a little bit. That’s just what happens.
R: Those are beautiful finishes. You’ve said a lot of smart things and I should’ve started this by asking, give us your job description there. You have a wealth of knowledge, so let me cut in and you tell us what your job description in some of that is, and then we’ll continue.
G: Yeah, sure. So, I’m the customer service manager at Taylor, and what that means is customer service… we have all interactions with consumers. We’re the go-to group. I’ve got 5 people in my group and whether it's a phone call, email, web chat we do these days, lots of ways to reach out to us. It’s anything you want to ask Taylor guitars. The cool thing about our group is everyone is really educated in guitar repair. I have… some of my guys have decades of experience in production and repair, so they’re really knowledgeable. When you call Taylor with any question, we’ve going to do our best to help you. If it’s repair related, we’re going to try to troubleshoot it over the phone with you. We don’t just have a room of people saying, “Well, just ship it here and we’ll fix it”. We’re going to say, “Did you check the battery? Try replacing the string. Maybe adjust the truss rod. We have a video on our website that shows you how to do it”. We’re going to try to walk you through and get that thing fixed as quick and easy as possible.
R: Now, on that topic, what is your background because you have guitar repair experience and all that as well, so…
G: I do. Well, I’ve been at Taylor for 20 years. When I started there, I was in the repair shop. It was just me and 2 other guys doing all the repairs that came back to the factory. I’d say within a couple years of doing repairs, I started helping the customer service guy. It was just one guy doing that job and that became my job half the day, then three quarters of the day, then they were like, “Glen, do you want to be a repair guy or service?”. So, I made the move to service. I worked with him for a while, then he moved on to sales and I became the service manager. I’ve seen a lot of growth in the company. A lot of different tasks have been divvied up to other people, but that’s really our focus now.
R: Okay, well, I want to take a brief departure. I’ve got tons of questions popping in my head and I don’t want to get too side-tracked with them, but one thing I appreciate about you guys’ company, and we try to do that MIRC, is talk about the company culture. Everybody I’ve met at Taylor, no exclusions, everybody I’ve met, and you guys probably keep some employees from people, but all of them are good people and that is something that I can’t say, unfortunately, about every manufacturer, although most of them have great employees, but you guys have great employees. What are you guys doing different at Taylor that maybe we can share with some of the people that are listening?
G: Man, I wish I knew. It just feels natural, you know?
R: Okay.
G: The same approach I have to service. You just want to do what’s right, and I think that’s something that comes down from the top. So, it starts with your leaders. It is the trickle down effect. It is amazing how many great people are at Taylor, and if you walk into our HR area, we have a ten year wall, where once you’ve been there ten years, you get your picture taken and put on the wall…
R: Interesting. Oh, that’s cool.
N: Oh, really?
G: ...and that wall is huge and it’s full.
R: Okay. People come there and don’t want to leave, right?
G: Yeah.
N: Yeah, lifelong employees.
G: It’s amazing. There is a ridiculous number of twenty year veterans.
R: Wow, that’s you!
G: That’s me now!
R: Yeah!
N: How many were there when you started?
G: Oh, let’s see. That was ‘98. There was probably about… I think back then we had maybe three or four hundred employees total. Now, worldwide, it’s 1,000.
R: Oh my goodness, so you guys have gotten more.
N: Oh my goodness, that’s...
R: Because you were at 750, give or take, and so you guys are over… you guys are about 1,000.
G: Yeah.
R: Wow.
G: We build a lot of guitars.
R: Now, in Mexico, you guys have ping pong tables. Tell us about that.
G: Well, we do in El Cajon, too.
R: Do you?
G: Yeah.
R: And why haven’t I been invited? I want to come out! I can play some mean ping pong!
G: Well…
N: It’s the Taylor Guitars Ping Pong tournament.
R: Yeah!
G: You’re going to challenge some pretty good players from what I hear.
R: Alright, alright. I better brush some of the rust off.
(Nate laughs)
N: We’ve always talked about getting one here, but we just never have.
R: Yeah, we need to.
G: There is great benefits at Taylor, you know. It’s a great company to work for. It keeps the people happy. Break times are for taking breaks, you know? We’re not trying to force you to work through break time and not tell anybody, so...
(Nate laughs)
G: The ping pong tables are just in the areas we have some space, and yeah. Every break time, there is guys playing. Just try to walk by there.
R: Yeah, no. One of these days I am going to get out there and take a look at it because it sounds like fun. It’s the kind of vibe that I think more companies need to have part of their business because I think it does, it gives employees escape, even if it’s for 10, 15 minutes to take a break from the day so they come back fresh.
G: Yeah, yeah. It’s fun.
R: Yeah. The ping pong table will probably be some… we need something different. We’re in the south. We eat.
G: I’ve noticed that.
N: We eat a lot.
R: Yes, and I was actually… we’re going to be… fourth of July is coming up in a couple of days, so when people hear this, it will be a few weeks, but fourth of July will be here in a couple days and I think we’re going to barbeque. Probably tomorrow, so… we should’ve done it today!
N: We had a bunch of barbeque last week, too.
R: Yeah, so, we like eating.
G: Back to the Mexico thing, I just wanted to mention something because this is a common question. People wonder where we make our guitars. We have two factories, one in El Cajon, California in the San Diego area, and one is in Tecate, Mexico, right across the border. It is less than an hour drive between the two factories, and it’s kind of a state of the art facility that we have in Tecate.
R: Yeah, I’ve heard great things about it.
G: It’s a brand new building. It was maybe done… less than two years since it’s been completed, but it’s really amazing. Everything was laid out under one roof from the clean end to the dirty end. It’s just mind blowing, and the cool thing about having those two factories so close is we have department managers that manage both factories. So, the finish guy will go to Mexico a few times a week and check on things.
R: And the product coming out of there, people say, “Oh, that was made in Mexico”. You hear all these different people say different things. The product is great. I mean, it is great. It’s Taylor. It’s Taylor product.
G: That’s the thing, it’s our factory. We didn’t hire a factory to build guitars and put Taylor on the thing. It’s our factory.
R: Exactly, it’s your factory, and it’s a great way for people to get introduced to Taylor. It’s at a price point that most everybody who wants a guitar can get. So, if you’re looking for a great quality guitar, but you don’t have the budget that you will in five or ten years, that’s a great guitar. I mean, we’ve gotten them in and man, some of them sound amazing or all of them sound amazing. So, no concerns there. We love it.
G: And they have the same lifetime warranty that our U.S. based guitars have.
R: Interesting. So, you guys… okay, because a lot of manufacturers, depending on where they are and what is going on, they’ll change the warranty. So, you guys are doing lifetime just like you do in America.
G: Buy a brand new Taylor from an authorized dealer and you’re set.
R: So, there is no reason why someone shouldn’t have a Taylor guitar.
G: Yeah, you’ve got nothing to risk.
R: Gotcha, man, that is amazing.
N: That is the one and two hundred series?
G: Well, it starts with the babies.
N: Okay.
G: So, Babies, GS minis, Big Babies, Academy series, 100 series, and 200 series. Anything with a layered back wood and sides is made in Tecate. The solid wood guitars, which is 300 series and up, are made in the U.S.
R: Now, tell us the difference of those because a lot of times, people… sometimes, I can hear it and sometimes I can’t in a solid wood guitar, but a lot of those, man, they sound amazing, so having a laminated back and sides is of no concern, but tell us what the difference is.
G: Well, yeah. They still sound great. Most of your tone is coming from the top of the guitar and we use a solid top on everything. It’s so, so many times, you know, it’s not just the materials, but the design of the guitar that’s really critical also. So, a lot of our laminate models, like a 110 for example, I’ve played them against some other brands that are made of all solid wood, but they really don’t sound very good. So, even though it looks good on the tag, you still want to play and listen to a guitar. What you gain by going with all solid wood is just a sweeter resonance to the guitar because you don’t have the layers of wood and glue that are trying to vibrate musically.
R: Structurally just as good?
G: Yeah.
N: Yeah, I’ll tell you what, you pick up like a 614 and then you play a 214, it still has that same Taylor feel on the guitar. It really does. It plays absolutely great. I’m also assuming that by hydration, whether it’s a baby Taylor or a 914, you guys would always think the same exact thing across the board.
G: We do. Now, layered wood guitars are… the back and sides that aren’t layered wood, aren’t going to move as much as solid wood guitar, but you still have a solid wood top. You’ve got a solid wood neck and fretboard, you know. It’s still very important, but they are a little tougher humidity wise, but same rules apply.
N: A little bit more resistance.
G: Yeah.
R: Which is good, because a lot of times you’re getting newer players or maybe people that haven’t been playing as much so they’re not paying attention with hydration as someone who has been playing for ten or fifteen years, so that’s probably kind of a blessing to them.
G: Yeah, it just makes it a little bit easier.
R: What do you got for us, Nate?
N: Man, I don’t know. This has been a great conversation. What are some of the things that… what I’ve, we’ve stumbled across with our dealers is, a lot of times, what are some misconceptions that maybe people are doing when they think they’re hydrating their guitars correctly, but maybe they necessarily aren’t because I think I’ve stumbled across a lot of people, like you said, “Oh, we’re down in Florida. It’s humid everywhere”. That might be somebody just sloughing it off. Well, somebody might be going, “I’m trying to hydrate my guitars” but what are some things that they really need to be thinking about, but they’re actually not doing it correctly?
G: That kind of comes back to the digital hygrometer. It’s going to tell you what to do.
N: So, you just got jump right in. That is what everybody needs to get.
G: Quit guessing. People hear, “Hey, I’m supposed to humidify my guitar”. They live in Florida. They wet their humidifier everyday and put it in there. Then, they’ll blow their guitar up just not fully understand what they’re supposed to do. What you’re supposed to do is keep it in that 45 to 55% range, no matter what that means. If it’s down to 30, you’re adding humidifiers to bring the level up. If you’re over 55, 60%, you’re using dehumidifier to bring that level back.
R: Okay, talk about dehumidifiers. That is… this is a great thing. Let’s talk about that. So, how should we use those?
G: There is some really great products on the market. One of the easiest products out there is that D’Addario two-way humidification system. It’s three little pouches that… it’s the only product that works in both directions.
R: Interesting.
N: Oh, okay.
G: It’s going to maintain this 48% humidity level in your case automatically.
R: Really? Okay.
G: So, you just throw those in the case, store your guitar your case and it’s going to do the work for you. You just have to check the packets once in a while. When they’re dried out, they feel like jelly inside, when they’re dried out, they’re done. If the humidity creeps up a little bit, they’ll absorb some of that excess humidity. So, that is a great choice for anybody with a brand-new guitar. It’s a great way to maintain a good humidity level.
R: Do most stores stock those?
G: Yeah, most stores carry D’Addario and Planet Wave stuff. If not…
R: Is that who you guys recommend? Is there a brand or style that you guys recommend?
G: They’re the only ones making that product right now.
R: Okay. What about other products to hydrate?
G: If you’re in more of an extreme environment, let’s say you’re in a desert area, those packets from D’Addario, they might dry out pretty quick. You might have to buy a new set every three or four weeks.
R: Geez. Yeah, okay.
N: Wow.
G: If you’re in that kind of environment, you want to use a water based humidifier that you can refill. A couple great ones are from Music Nomad and also from Oasis. Those are two brands that are refillable.
R: I’ve seen the Oasis one. That’s cool, okay.
G: The Music Nomad one looks like some you may have seen. It’s just the plastic container with a sponge inside and there is holes in the container...
R: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
G: ...but the sponge material they use holds ten times the amount of water of a normal sponge. So, it holds a lot.
R: So, it could be… demographics could dictate which kind you get, one that absorbs and one that gives. Okay.
G: Yeah, and for absorbing, everyone has seen little silica gel packets that you get in your shoes or electronic gear…
R: Yeah, absolutely.
G: …but for a guitar, think big. Think, like, a large amount of silica gel.
R: Twenty times that size.
G: Yeah. So, you can get that. There is bamboo charcoal products which absorb moisture. It’s an all natural product.
R: Really? I’ve never heard of that.
N: Yeah, I’ve never heard of that either.
G: Yeah, we sell those off our website. I work with a company that was already making these and I said, “Hey, just repackage some and call it a guitar dehumidifier. You’ve already got the product”.
R: Great idea.
(Nate laughs)
G: Yeah, so I actually worked with them to do that. That’s available on our website and through our dealers.
R: And about how much do those sell for?
G: Oh, like twelve bucks.
R: Really? So there is no excuse for anybody out there.
G: There is products out there. There is some really great renewable dehumidifiers, also. A company called Everdry has a product that has silica glass in it and absorbs a lot of moisture and it has a little color indicator on it and when it is done, you take it out of your case and it has a little plug on it that flips out of the back. You plug it into the wall and it dries to glass beads out and you can keep using that for ten years. That thing is thirty bucks.
R: Wow. Wow.
N: Okay.
R: So, there is no reason why our dealers, your dealers, everybody’s dealers shouldn’t get active doing this.
G: Right.
R: Especially if you got a guitar that you spend thousands of dollars in some cases, even twelve to thirty bucks is nothing in comparison to opening up your case and seeing a crack.
G: Yeah.
R: That’s got to be heartbreaking to open up and see it split.
G: It is. Man, we work so hard on those guitars when we build them. We fuss and suffer over every little scratch and ding as it’s getting built and going through to be cased up and sent to its new home and it’s heartbreaking for us, too, even though it’s not our guitar anymore to see one that’s been broken.
R: But you guys built it, yeah.
G: Yeah. Hey, on the humidifiers, I wanted to mention something else that we started talking about last year. When you’re humidifying or dehumidifying a guitar inside its case, everyone is so used to putting things in the soundhole of the guitar.
R: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure.
G: It doesn’t have to go there. Your case is the chamber.
R: Okay.
G: A safer place, really, is in the cutaway area or behind the heel of the guitar. There’s really no benefit to having that product laying in the soundhole and if something were to happen, let’s say you put too much water in our something and it leaked out by mistake…
R: Yeah, it wouldn’t get in the guitar. Wow, I’ve never even thought about that.
G: Yeah, instead of dripping in the guitar...
N: Yeah.
G: ...it’ll drip in the case.
R: That’s a good idea.
G: Yeah and it’s going to do the same thing. You’re maintaining that environment in the case.
R: That’s a great point.
N: And I have a lot of dealers that I, and I don’t think we touched on this, is different times of year. A lot of times, I actually have dealers that will stay away from buying acoustic guitars from us in January and February because they’re like, “Man, every guitar I get in is cracking” and I’m always sitting there going, “Well, when the guitars come in, you need to take care of it” but not only that, we’re shipping guitars on cold, freezing trucks in the middle of the wintertime and they want to get it in, unbox it, take it and put it on a wall.
R: Oh my goodness, yes. Instead of wait for 24, 48 hours.
N: That’s right.
R: So, what do you guys recommend on that? That’s a good topic that you bring up because I know dealing with another high end manufacturer, they had labels at certain times of the year, like, I can’t remember if it was 48 hours, but to have it acclimate. What are you guys recommending?
G: That is more of a concern for the finish.
N: Oh, okay.
R: Oh, interesting. Okay.
G: So, if you’re using lacquer finish…
R: So it doesn’t check.
G: So it doesn’t check.
R: So, you guys really don’t have to deal with that, right?
G: We don’t use lacquer, yeah.
R: Now, tell us why because you guys use UV, right? So it is no concern.
G: Yes, it is polyester based finish. So, our finish isn’t going to check. Now, if it’s 30 below, yeah, give it a couple hours.
(Nate and Richard laugh)
G: Normal things in the U.S. …
R: If you’re in Alaska and you’re outside with the eskimos, you know…
N: Then you need to leave it a couple hours, exactly.
(Nate continues to laugh)
G: Then the wood can kind of check.
R: Freak out. Okay, yeah.
G: But in normal circumstances, even in the dead of winter, within the continental U.S. ... I mean we ship guitars all year back and forth. We're not concerned with that.
R: That’s an interesting point that you bring up. I would always, I mean I always tell people to give it 24 hours to acclimate, so maybe…
G: It doesn’t hurt, but man, when that guitar… if you’re the consumer when that guitar comes to your house… yeah.
R: Yeah, you’re ready to open it up. So a couple hours should be good enough?
G: Yeah. For Taylors, yeah. You’re going to be fine. No concern there.
R: Okay. What have we not asked that you think is important for us to bring up or is there anything?
G: Yeah, going back to what you were just talking about, the dealers, a couple tips there because I’ve seen stores that know a little bit about humidity, but they’re not on point so they might as well be doing nothing. If you’re a store that’s going to sell nice, high-end acoustics, you need an acoustic room or a maintained space. If you don’t have that space, you can still get your guitars in the winter time. Just leave them in the case if you’re not going to create a safe environment for them. I’ve seen a lot of stores that have a dedicated acoustics room and their humidifier is like a little one gallon humidifier like you would put in a baby’s room. It is not enough. You need a humidifier sufficient for the space.
R: Or a couple of them, even.
G: Yeah.
N: Now, is that something you walk in and say, like, you visited a dealer and you’re like, “Hey, that’s not correct. You need to change that.”?
G: Yeah. Absolutely, because we want them to be successful.
R: You don’t want them calling and being like, “Hey, we got a Taylor that’s cracked”, right?
G: Yeah. I’d walk in and go, “Well, this is why you have some cracked guitars. Look at your room. Let me help you here. You’ve got a door on your acoustic room, but it stays open all the time. Close the door. Put a sign on there that says ‘Keep Door Closed’. You’ve got 100 watt light bulbs shining on all the guitars on the top row.”.
R: It produces a lot of heat, yeah.
G: “Get some LED lights or even put a dimmer on it. You can still get a good effect without having that full blast heat. Get your humidifier. Make sure someone is maintaining that humidifier”, you know? The little tiny humidifier I just mentioned, this one dealer…
R: Yeah, we’ve got two in the shop that are empty.
(Nate laughs)
R: So I need to walk out of here and go fill them things up and use them, right?
G: Not today! Not today. Not in here.
N: Remember, it’s raining in the warehouse right now.
R: Not today, you’re right but nonetheless...
G: But still, someone has got to own that.
R: ...maintaining it is a good point. We have a guy that has kind of been slacked in that area, so store owners, managers need to make sure that that is being maintained.
G: This is your job. Every day you come in, check it. Check it again at lunch time. Check it again before you leave.
R: Really? Okay.
G: Yeah. Someone has got to own it.
R: It is super important, though. I’m glad you’re bringing that up.
G: And same thing with dehumidifiers if you’re in Florida or our distributor in Thailand where it’s 90% humidity pretty much year round. He came to one of the Taylor youth sessions and went back and took some action and followed up with us. It was a great success story to hear.
R: Okay, tell us about that.
G: He got… he got these giant humidifiers or dehumidifiers for all his stores. So, all his stores are in shopping malls and they would leave the doors open.
R: Oh, sure. The humidity comes in.
G: So he just changed his whole plan. He got giant dehumidifiers for every store, started leaving the door shut, made a new sign in the shape of a water drop to put on the doors saying, “Please come in. We keep the doors closed for humidity reasons” and within a month of him having them, he told us his employees started coming up to him and going, “Man, all the guitars are playing better”.
R: Oh, really? Wow.
G “What is going on?” because they were all just swelling up. The action is getting higher.
R: They felt good. The guitars were happy.
G: Yeah, they were back to normal. It was like awesome. What a great success story. So if they can maintain humidity in Thailand, you can maintain humidity anywhere.
R: Okay. Well, then you got happy guitars and we all like happy guitars.
G: Yeah, happy guitars.
N: You guys also have a line of killer electric guitars. How does this translate over to that?
G: Our electric line now consists of a T5, which is kind of a hybrid acoustic and electric guitar. Exact same rules apply. That guitar is all solid wood. It’s completely hollow with a brace top, kind of like an acoustic guitar would be so exact same rules apply. Our other electric is a T3 which is like a semi hollow body electric with two humbuckers. Now, that guitar still has a solid wood neck and fretboard, back and sides, so even though it’s going to be a lot tougher than an acoustic, you still want to be aware. Even solid body electric guitars can be affected, too.
N: Fret ends, sure.
R: Fret ends is what we see a lot.
(Unintelligible - talking over each other)
G: Of course, sharp fret ends on a solid body strat or tele, it can happen. You want to be aware of it. The body is usually not going to do anything because it is a big, thick piece of wood. R: Piece of wood, yeah. Okay, so you had mentioned, a little while ago, your website. So all of our dealers should go to, what is it, Taylor.com?
G: Taylorguitars.com
R: Taylorguitars.com and navigate with us through that. Is there a pull down that says “hydrating guitars”?
G: There is a support section. Once you go to the support section, you’ll see a lot of care topics at the bottom. You can click on each one. They have a little either text sheet or a lot of them have a video also, talking and demonstrating what the care topic is. A lot of stuff there, and there is so much stuff on YouTube, also. You can just go to YouTube and put some stuff in that we’ve created.
R: Awesome. Awesome, well, we’ll get the word out even more especially going into, like you brought up, the winter. That’s a time where we hear it the most, so this is a topic over the last two or three years that we’ve tried to do our part and we really appreciate you coming in. Next time you come in we’re going to talk about something besides hydrating. We’re going to talk about Taylor and all the cool stuff that you guys got and all the models, but we appreciate you coming in. Parting, we have a gift for you. So, there is a gift.
N: Yeah!
G: Alright. I love gifts.
R: Hopefully, it feels nice and cozy on you. It’s a t-shirt that says “The Music Retail Show”. So, we always appreciate you. We always appreciate Taylor. We love hanging out with you guys, so…
G: Well, thanks. I love what you guys do here, too.
R: Thank you. Thank you.
G: Such a great, unique business you guys have here. I just love it. Any place you got a dozen or more repair guys, I’m in.
R: Unique! Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
N: It’d be easy to get you here. You love Nashville, too.
G: I do.
R: Yeah! So, we’ll have to do it again. You want to wind us down, Nate?
N: Yeah! So, obviously go to Taylorguitars.com for any education, whether you’re a dealer or just an end user. Man, I’m telling you, we appreciate it. Thanks for coming in, and yeah, hopefully we’ll do this again sometime. Everybody, thanks for tuning in.
(Outro music plays)
N: Alright guys, welcome back to another episode, another great episode. Glen had a lot to say. There is a ton in it. You might want to go back and listen to that again, but hey, you know what? If you like it, great. Please share this episode with whoever you think might need to listen to it. Also, give us positive reviews on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you listen to it. Also, jump over to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Please follow us. You can see what we got going on there as well, but yeah. We appreciate it and hope you guys have a great week!
UnknowN: Own a music store or sell guitars online? Need more inventory to stay competitive in today’s market? MIRC is the nation's largest wholesaler of quality used guitars. Visit www.mircweb.com to become a dealer today! Thanks for listening to The Music Retail Show!