When we first launched the American Dream Series back in 2020, we set out to create a family of guitars that would offer a premium experience for everyday players that would more easily fit the budget of working musicians. The result was a collection of three Grand Pacific models offering all-solid tonewoods and V-Class bracing, crafted in our U.S. factory and offered at a great price.
Now, we’re thrilled to add a new guitar to the American Dream lineup: the AD22e, the first member of the family featuring the Grand Concert body shape.
Our most compact full-size body style, the Grand Concert’s 24-⅞” scale length helps bring the player’s hands closer together, providing a comfortable, intimate playing experience complemented by the slender, easy-playing Taylor neck design. The AD22e’s all-solid-wood construction includes sapele back and sides plus a mahogany top, generating a bold midrange response with a woody, focused quality that emphasizes the fundamental note. Players will notice minimal ringing overtones, providing a remarkably clear, warm voice that will appeal to fingerstyle players as well as flatpickers and traditional strummers.
Along with its natural tonal qualities, the mahogany top also contributes a natural compression effect to the guitar’s response, helping to smooth out an uneven attack so that notes and chords come through perfectly balanced and articulate—very helpful for recording applications, an area where the AD22e excels.
Inside, our revolutionary V-Class bracing scheme helps enhance this guitar’s voice with more power and longer, richer sustain. It also helps clean up the intonation down the neck, resolving sour spots and dissonance that can frustrate experienced players and recording engineers.
We’ve opted to omit the cutaway for this model, helping maximize its resonance and preserving a traditional look and feel.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Taylor if it weren’t comfortable to play. Along with the smaller dimensions of the Grand Concert body shape and the Taylor Neck, the AD22e boasts chamfered body edges that give it an even smoother feel for playing seated or standing. Combined with the slinky fretting feel, it adds up to a truly inviting experience.
For visual appointments, the AD22e sports the performance-forward aesthetic of the American Dream Series, and the cleaner approach helps keep this model affordable. A 2.0-mil-thick matte finish gives the guitar a soft sheen while preserving the grained feel of the woods, and the single-ring rosette offers a striking contrast against the natural hues of sapele and mahogany. Other details include 4mm dot inlays in Italian acrylic, black purfling for the top and a faux-tortoiseshell pickguard. A smoked eucalyptus fretboard and nickel tuners round out the package.
The AD22e also includes our proprietary ES2 acoustic pickup, which faithfully translates that warm, punchy tone into clean plugged-in sound for live or studio situations.
Like the other guitars in the American Dream Series, the AD22e ships with our new AeroCase, a soft-sided case that provides plenty of structure and protection at less than one-third the weight of a traditional hardshell case.
Start looking for the AD22e at authorized Taylor dealers starting this winter.
