The Baby Taylor 3/4-size acoustic guitar is a finely-crafted dreadnought-style steel string instrument that delivers a surprisingly rich, full tone in a travel-size package, at quite a diminutive price. The Baby Taylor Series has helped popularize the student/travel-size guitar market since its introduction in 1996, and today these versatile axes can be found in the hands of seasoned pros looking for a different tone or playing experience as easily as they can be found in the hands of younger players learning their first chords. The 3/4-size Baby was joined by the 15/16-size Big Baby in 2000, a slightly-undersized dreadnought with full-bodied tone in a very comfortable package, at an equally comfortable price. Taylor has also recently released the Taylor Swift Baby Taylor, featuring Swift’s custom-designed rosette ornamentation for those up-and-coming country pop pickers in your family. These are not the low-end, difficult-to-tune student guitars with poor intonation and painful action that all too often typified entry-level instruments. The Baby Taylor line is crafted with the same attention to superior quality and tone that has defined the Taylor brand for decades. The Baby and Big Baby models feature back and sides which are constructed of a sapele laminate, for excellent tone and resistance to warpage. Sapele is a tropical African tonewood related to mahogany, and is similar in sound and appearance. The laminated wood construction provides more strength and stability at a lower cost than the solid wood pieces used on higher-priced guitars, and still delivers a tight, crisp tone. Both the Baby and Big Baby body styles feature an arched back, for added strength and volume. The real meat of a guitar’s tone, however, comes from the top, or soundboard, and these Babies’ solid Sitka spruce or mahogany tonewood tops are reinforced with Taylor X-bracing, engineered to deliver maximum resonance and tonal balance despite their diminutive size, with the spruce top yielding a slightly brighter tone than the mahogany. The mahogany necks with ebony fretboards are precision-cut to fit securely in the body, and are designed using Taylor’s innovative bolt-on neck approach, as opposed to the more traditional glued-in neck joining method. This design is a highly stable, effective and efficient approach to guitar manufacturing, as proven over the years with thousands of satisfied customers playing thousands of magnificent-sounding Taylors.
While the Baby and Big Baby Taylor are certainly well-suited for children, or adult players with smaller hands, they also lend themselves well to exploring alternative tunings, especially the so-called Nashville, or high-strung tuning, where the lower, wound E, A, D and G strings are substituted with their lighter-gauge, unwound counterparts, and tuned an octave higher. This produces a light, airy tone that provides a nice counterpoint to standard-tuned guitars, as can be heard on the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” “Kansas’ Dust in the Wind,” and numerous country tunes.
So whether you’re looking to expand your tonal palette, need a 3/4-size guitar for travel or to teach your kids their first tunes, or want a slightly-undersized dreadnought for kicking back by the campfire, check out the Taylor Baby and Big Baby guitars. They’re bound to grow on you!
