Taylor Academy 12e Walnut/Spruce Grand Concert Electro Acoustic Guitar

Built with a solid spruce top and layered walnut back and sides, the compact, inviting Academy 12e offers an approachable playing experience for guitarists of all skill levels. The torrefied spruce top, treated with our special roasting process, serves up bold sound with plenty of projection and a touch of aged-in warmth and sweetness.

The armrest carved into the lower bout makes for a more comfortable feel for your strumming arm, while the Taylor neck features a slender profile that accommodates your fretting hand, making this a great choice for new learners. With built-in ES-B electronics for easy amplification and a padded gig bag for transportation, the Academy 12e is more than ready for the next step in your musical journey.

Taylor Academy 12e Concert Features

• Solid torrefied spruce top for seasoned warmth and depth
• Compact Grand Concert body with an inviting feel
• Taylor Neck makes fretting notes and chords easier
• Built-in armrest for enhanced playing comfort
• Includes electronics, built-in tuner and lightweight gig bag

Clarity and balance reign in this small, comfortable body shape

The smaller body and tapered waist make it the ultimate studio and stage guitar

The small-body Grand Concert debuted in 1984 to meet the needs of a new wave of adventurous acoustic fingerstyle players. In contrast to the traditionally darker, boomier voices of bigger body styles like dreadnoughts and jumbos, the GC’s compact size and tapered waist kept the overtones in check.

It was also more comfortable to play while sitting down, and the guitar’s slightly wider neck gave players more room for complex fingerings. The GC’s smaller sonic footprint also fit cleanly in a mix with other instruments when tracking in the studio and with a band on stage, making it a useful tool for professional session and side players.

Our current generation of GC models continues to accommodate fingerstylists with finger-friendly traits like a shorter 24 7/8-inch scale length, which makes fretting easier and adds a slightly slinkier feel on the strings due to the lighter string tension. If you feel more comfortable with a small body or favor controlled overtones, a Grand Concert is a great option.

The smallest of Taylor’s full-size body shapes. Its compact dimensions make for a physically comfortable guitar with an intimate feel and sound. The smaller footprint keeps the overtones in check, contributing to a focused, articulate sound that’s well-suited for recording and stage work.

Like koa, walnut’s density and stiffness yield bright treble notes, but with a more present midrange that splits the difference between rosewood and mahogany. The bass tones initially produce a woody character that will grow richer with time and extended play.

Sound: Another beautiful hardwood, walnut has a similar density and stiffness to koa, with a similar tightness initially. Like koa, it tends to have a bright top end, but with a more present midrange, somewhere between mahogany and rosewood. Walnut also starts off a little deeper on the low end, initially giving it a slightly woodier sound than koa. The low end will continue to fill out after being played in.

Goes Well With: Players who like a blend of brightness, projection and warm overtones. A smaller-bodied walnut guitar with a cedar top would likely appeal to fingerstyle players, while flatpickers and strummers on a larger body with a spruce top will find ample horsepower, low end and crisp highs to support an aggressive attack.

ES-B Acoustic Electronics

This version of our ES-B electronics incorporates Taylor’s Expression System 2 piezo design elements and features a multifunctional onboard preamp with a built-in digital chromatic tuner and active tone-shaping EQ control. The preamp/tuner unit features an LED display for tuning and low battery indication, along with a Volume control and 3-band EQ. The preamp/tuner is powered by a 9v battery.

With an alkaline battery, battery life expectancy when using the preamp only is over 500 hours, and when using the tuner is over 50 hours. Plugging in the guitar will activate the battery. A low battery indicator on the LED display (located on the preamp circuit board) will light up when the battery reaches 4.5 volts.

Taylor Academy 12e Concert Specs

• Top Wood: Sitka Spruce
• Back Configuration: Layered
• Body Binding: None
• Armrest: Yes
• Top Finish: Matte
• Back/Side Finish: Matte
• Neck Wood: Maple
• Fretboard Wood: West African Crelicam Ebony
• Fretboard Inlay: 4mm Dot Italian Acrylic
• Fretboard Binding: None
• Neck Finish: Matte
• Scale Length: 24-7/8"
• Peghead Inlay: None
• Peghead Type: Standard
• Peghead Binding: None
• Bridge: West African Crelicam Ebony
• Nut & Saddle: Nubone Nut, Micarta Saddle
• Bridge Pins: Black
• Strings: D'Addario XS Coated Phosphor Bronze Light (.012 - .053)
• Pickguard: None
• Tuners: Chrome (100/200)
• Number of Strings: 6 String
• Orientation: Right Handed
• Body Shape: Grand Concert
• Bracing System: X Bracing
• Cutaway: Non-cutaway
• Colour: Natural
• Electronics: ES-B