As a worship leader, I have specific requirements for an acoustic guitar. One, it must sound great; two, it must play well; and three, it must be a snap to use – no fussy setups or a lot of additional gadgets just to make it sound decent. As a family man who needs to carry a little girl to church, however, I must add a fourth requirement: it must be easy to carry around. The first three aren’t always easy to find even in a decent guitar; the fourth is next to impossible.
Enter the Taylor GS Mini. I won’t bore you with its specs and details, which are all available on the internet anyway, so suffice it to say it’s the one guitar that fits all four of my criteria to a T. As Taylor itself puts it, it’s a “small guitar with a big sound” – and I can attest to that fact. It’s not as small as the Baby Taylor, but then again it doesn’t suffer from the same small sound. It’s small enough to make it easy to travel with, but it plays like a full-sized guitar and even sounds better than most guitars I’ve played.
I was introduced to the GS Mini by my best friend Tito, with whom I shared dreams of owning an Ovation since we were children. Having outgrown our lust for the Ovation, we had both gone on our separate searches for THE guitar. We both went through our respective slews of guitars, but we were never really satisfied with what we had. Finally Tito discovered the GS Mini, and somehow we both knew this was IT.
I was able to try one at RJ Guitars (the official Taylor distributor in the Philippines) in Makati, and it blew me away. It had a strong, complex sound, lots of overtones, and it projected so loudly that I swore it was louder than my full-sized Ibanez dreadnought (a fact that would later be confirmed). It didn’t sound like a small guitar, and it didn’t feel like it was one fret shorter than regular scale. It was, for all intents and purposes, a full-sized guitar. Minus the full size.
I think the best thing is the cost. While people who aren’t familiar with guitar prices would balk at the price tag, it actually represents a huge discount. You wouldn’t usually be able to buy a US-made solid-top guitar for less than $1,000; the GS Mini lists at half that amount. For the first time, it’s possible to own a Taylor for $500.
Long story short, I was able to purchase a GS Mini by selling off two guitars. Now I’m happy with my guitar, and I think this is the one I will grow old with. I’ve used it at church several times with great success. The optional magnetic pickup (called the ES Go) is kinda tricky to tweak, but after playing around with it for some time I think I finally found its best settings.
I’ve already told my wife that this is the last guitar I’ll ever buy, and fortunately, the GS Mini is making it easy to stick to my word. Quite simply, I haven’t looked at another guitar since getting this one.
Random Posts:
How much po ang bili nyo sa GS mini nyo? And ano po yung sinasabi nyong optional na pickups, kasama na po ba yun sa package?
hi dan. sa rj guitars ko binili at P30k. medyo mahal but then again i was able to pick the best one from their stock. the optional pickup is called the ES Go. magnetic pickup siya. i bought mine in the US, can’t remember how much, but at rj guitars it’s about P4.5k.