“Taylor Guitars was began 50 years in the past – that is our fiftieth anniversary. I’m shocked that we stayed in enterprise!” remarks Bob Taylor, co-founder of one of many main guitar firms on the planet.

He could also be shocked, however the remainder of the guitar world isn’t; Taylor has been producing top-quality acoustic guitars for half a century, a few of which now discover themselves within the fingers of the world’s best-loved gamers, together with Taylor Swift, Jason Mraz, Zac Brown and so many extra.

“We make numerous guitars,” Bob goes on. “You’ll be able to run however you possibly can’t conceal from it: we’ve made numerous guitars and so they’re all over the place.”

Guitar.com not too long ago had the pleasure of visiting Taylor HQ in El Cajon, California for a tour of its manufacturing facility, and to have an in-depth dialog with Bob about his beginnings as a guitar maker, and the legacy his firm has created some 50 years later.

“After I was 12 years previous I obtained thinking about guitar taking part in,” he tells us. “This was lengthy earlier than I made a guitar. And I believed, ‘That is enjoyable. I wanna be taught to do that. I purchased somewhat $3 guitar – acoustic – from a neighbour throughout the road. I performed that guitar for some time.

“Fairly quickly it had painted-on binding. Sooner or later I sawed the neck off of it – I attempted to make an electrical guitar out of it. For me, fixing an issue wasn’t the primary factor; it was discovering out how issues labored. The whole lot I owned I took aside. My guitar making was actually loads about, ‘How is that this factor made? What’s this factor across the soundhole – is that painted or or Inlayed?’”

And whereas Taylor Guitars is a convincing success story now, Bob’s humble beginnings lasted for a number of years earlier than the corporate actually obtained off the bottom. In our dialog, he remembers partnering with co-founder Kurt Listug and a 3rd worker, Steve Schemmer, to buy the store all of them labored for, American Dream in 1974, when Bob was nonetheless a teenager.

“I had the mind to have a look at wooden and machines, and work out what a guitar may very well be and the way we may go about making it. And Kurt had the mind to place collectively authorized paperwork and funds. He does what he must do and I do what I have to do. We don’t actually get all up in one another’s choices.

However regardless of their promising collective enterprise acumen, Bob says it was “years” earlier than they began getting cash. “I survived on consuming Campbell’s tomato soup and liverwurst as these have been two actually low-cost meals to purchase… I feel we have been six years into it once I stated, ‘I wanna receives a commission!’

After all, these gradual beginnings ultimately blossomed into one of many largest guitar firms on the planet right now, and that was largely attributable to modifications out there within the late ‘70s and ‘80s, upon the rise of disco music and glam rock.

“The opposite acoustic guitar producers shrunk,” Bob remembers. “Martin shrunk from their all-time 135-year historic excessive of constructing 20,000 guitars a 12 months. They solely made 5,000 guitars on the most… We had gotten as much as making three guitars a day. And swiftly as an alternative of us making one guitar and Martin making 80 in a day, they have been making 9 guitars a day and we have been making 4.

“Gibson give up making guitars – that they had shut down. Guild had shut down. Individuals weren’t doing it… However when the market got here again, we had some chops and some sellers. We had somewhat little bit of a reputation. So we obtained to develop with the regrowth of the acoustic guitar enterprise.

“We turned the scale of a few of our rivals by the market shrinking them. It couldn’t shrink us. We couldn’t be shrunk any smaller.”

Watch the total Guitar.com interview with Bob Taylor above.