810 Brazilian Rosewood Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar

Bob Taylor launched his career crafting Dreadnoughts and Jumbos, working with shapes he inherited from the American Dream guitar shop, where he started his career. "Our Dreadnought early on was pretty boxy, and the Jumbo was a big square thing too ” kind of the American Dream take on the J200 or the big Guild stuff of the1970s," Bob recalls.

He gradually reworked those shapes and sounds into a more smoothly contoured look and refined tone. The rosewood/spruce 810 became a Taylor stalwart and was for many years Bob's preferred model, favored for its robust tone and workmanlike aesthetic.

In 2003 the Dread was revoiced to better appeal to traditional flatpickers. A cannon, it boasted 50 percent more volume and a stronger bass response, and yielded a potent growl when players dug in, without upsetting Taylor's sonic balance. Bob later applied his short-scale ideas to the Dreadnought, and it proved to be a winner. Like the short-scale Grand Concert, the slinkier feel allowed players to lighten up on their attack and play up the neck. It gave the Dreadnought more versatility than it had ever seen. Short-scale or standard, it delivers a vintage Dreadnought sound for the 21st Century.