I received a beauty of a guitar with a swamp ash body and a very flat Indian rosewood covered maple, medium "C" shaped neck. The neck, with a three X three headstock configuration, is mated to the body using a proprietary T-Lock™ single bolt. It has a pearlescent white pickguard (there are four different pickguards to choose from), and chrome metal tone and volume knobs. You also get Taylor's smooth-working fulcrum vibrato bridge tremolo and all-chrome manually locking tuners (a la Schaller, Sperzel or Grover 505s).

I ordered my guitar with two Taylor single coils and a full-sized Taylor humbucker at the bridge position, a five-way switch, and volume and tone controls. There are eleven different pickup combinations available. You can specify: two mini or full-sized high gain (HG) or high definition (HD) humbuckers, two or three mini HD or HG humbuckers, three single coils, a two single coil and one full-size HG pickup split or vintage alnico (VA) pickups.

All the guitarists in my world and I love this guitar! It plays wonderfully with a fine open, alive and chime-like sound. We like the big fat magnet pole pieces, the way the whammy bar easily goes in and out, and the full body gloss/satin finish headstock combination. I would "class" this instrument as an excellent gigging guitar great for "chicken pickers", Blues players, and classic Rock aficionados.

The pickups are solderless and easily swapped out but we all wished there was a coil-splitter switch for the humbucker when we feel the need to quack like a Strat in position two. It would be a good addition to an already versatile axe.