As the CEO and president of Taylor Guitars, which has been in the upper echelon of acoustic guitar-making since 1974, Andy Powers has a lot on his plate. And while the business side of things is paramount, Powers’ passion is forever centered around the making of the instruments.
“It stems around trying to create an instrument that feels inspiring to a player,” Powers says. “It could be inspiring in familiar, fresh and new ways. But I want somebody to feel joy when they pick up the instrument.”
Taylor’s lines range from high-quality, budget-friendly instruments to ornate guitars that’ll make your jaw drop – but the approach never changes.
“The trick is to try and take that one individual instrument and then scale that up in a way where you don’t lose the magic of the first one,” Powers says.
“That’s difficult to do, so most of what we spend our time working on is eliminating the accidental customization that might happen on a shop floor. You’re trying to create a method where every single guitar you build comes out exactly the way you intended it to – even when your own hands weren’t the ones touching it.”
At over a half-century old, Taylor is still a new kid on the block, which means Taylor lives in a gray area, straddling the line between classic design and modern innovation. With this in mind, as far as Powers is concerned, the sky is the limit.
To that end, he says, “One of the things that makes us unique is that our history is defined by changing what we see fit to change.”
You come from a guitar-building background, so how would you describe your role at Taylor?
I come from a guitar-making and playing background, not really so much of a business background. But I started building and playing guitars from a young age, so all I’d ever really done was build. A lot of my focus was on actually building the instrument itself.
I still think about an instrument that might be interesting to a player – maybe an adaptation of a guitar we’re making now, maybe something totally new or something that might be an improvement to an existing guitar. I’ll go build those instruments by hand.