In short, Taylor’s new neck is rigid from the end of the headstock to the upper end of the fingerboard. It attaches to the body only with bolts, and the heel and the fingerboard extension fit into pockets of such tight tolerance that they are essentially invisible. From the outside the guitars look like the Taylors of old. In the pockets is a mated pair of tapered shims, and the neck can be reset by removing the bolts, changing the shims, and reassembling, a process that’s done on screen in less than five minutes. It’s sort of a wildly sophisticated version of the Fender Micro-Tilt neck. The headstock is also finger jointed to the neck, and Bob uses a press to demonstrate that the breaking point of the joint is at least as strong as that of a one-piece neck. There are other new features, but you should get the video to check them out.

The tape is carefully crafted to convince even the guitar idiot that the new neck is a real step forward, not just a gimmick. Paper models and dissected guitars abound as examples of old and new technology. Bob’s explanations are crystal clear. The video opens with a disjointed and rapid factory tour, and later there’s footage of a robo-luthier milling a body to accept the new neck system. A parking lot shot of Bob setting a guitar on fire with his giant magnifying lens would have livened things up, but on the whole this video is watchable and informative.

I’ve been a fan of Bob and his guitars since they hit the scene. I’m certainly willing to concede that the new neck is a step forward. Not that neck sets are that big a deal. The typical well-made guitar may go decades before distortions in the body make the action unplayable. Spending $200–$400 every ten years to keep a valuable old friend serviceable isn’t such a burden. Putting a shim under the fingerboard extension during a reset will keep the neck playable even on a cutaway guitar. This is a normal part of life for vintage-instrument enthusiasts and anyone else who keeps an instrument long enough for it to show some age. For decades to come repairmen are likely to make a good living from resets. The fact that your Taylor dealer can now keep your ax in fine playing form (and perhaps for free) as the years go by, and keep the joinery looking factory-new, will likely take some time to gain as a sales pitch.

But there’s a philosophical side to this that I can’t ignore. Taylor was already a frontrunner in high-tech guitar making, but according to their website they had to install equipment capable of higher precision in order to implement their new neck technology as invisibly as they wished. Forget the issue of patent infringement — a guitar factory has finally gone where hand builders probably can’t afford to follow. The impact may be years in the future, but if demand for technically refined instruments snowballs, the definition of a well-made guitar may change in a way that puts the lone luthier in jeopardy. But I suspect that the CNC revolution has just begun, and its impact on our industry probably can’t be guessed at from our vantage point.

Alone among the crafts, the more a handmade guitar looks like a factory product, the more successful it is deemed. Traditional concepts and cosmetic perfection are market priorities, regardless of what most musicians maintain, and guitars are seldom made as a personal statement of creation.

Where is our James Krenov? Krenov founded a school of furniture making that eschewed trick joinery, shiny finishes, and overstated decoration in favor of an elegant simplicity of design, surfaces that displayed tool marks (especially his beloved hand planes) as the sign of a human creation, and oil or wax finishes that let the wood feel like wood. Not that Krenov’s ideas would transfer directly to the guitar. But enough craftsmen were so enamored of Krenov’s ideas that they bucked major trends in furniture design until their market presence couldn’t be ignored.

Orville Gibson briefly provided such an influence before he sold out to a corporate entity, and we certainly have contemporary builders who are founts of inspiration, but by and large guitar makers still strive for factory perfection at the expense of personal statement. For the last decade or so the factories have followed the lead supplied by the little guys and the one-off builders. Now we have a sign that the factories may lead where the rest of us can’t follow.

The factories will always furnish the world with 99% of its guitars. In the future the “one-percenters” may need a new ethic to explain their presence. I hope to see the day when handmade guitars are so distinctive that they need no logos to identify their makers. ◆