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Obviously there are many comparisons in plans to Martin models, but I was wondering if anyone knew where I could acquire some plans for a guitar that resembles a Taylor 314-CE. I'm particularly interested in that one because it's one of my favorite factory guitars and I absolutely love the comfort of the design in my hands. At any rate, any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks once again.

Michael:

When I was looking for plans to make a Taylor 12 style, what I ended up doing was to go to the Taylor website, drag a JPG photo (tiny) of their bracing scheme from this page: http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/features/bracing/Types.aspx, and then copy the specs from the "Show complete specs" pull-down menu on the Taylor 12 model page. (Here's the page for your 314ce model: http://www.taylorguitars.com/Guitars/Acoustic-Electric/300/314ce/)

What I did with the tiny JPG photo was enlarge it to a full page size, then draw a grid over it so I could then make a full-size plan. The complete specs list gave me a few other measurements to go by.

I also went to a local guitar store and asked them if I could trace the body shape of a Taylor, so I could figure out the cutaway shape, especially.

It was a bit of work to do all this, but it worked out okay. You can see how mine turned out on this page: http://home.comcast.net/~kathymatsushita/Projects/htmlpages/tc1.html

Oh, yeah....also, John Hall of Blues Creek Guitars has molds for Taylor size guitars.

Hope this helps.

Kathy Matsushita

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Kathy Matsushita
San Jose, CA USA
http://theamateurluthier.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kathy.matsushita