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• Review

There's also specific geometry involved. The bridge sits quite low and the thumb wheels are recessed into the top. "I'm really big on understanding the break angles at bridge," continues Hosler.

"When we did the SolidBody I spent a lot of time trying to determine the optimum angle that allows the string to stay solidly in the saddle as well as allow it, when you bend a note, to not have any more pressure than it needs to let the string length behind the saddle contribute to the ease of bending.

"Here on the T3/B, we tried to do the same thing. We found too much neck angle [pitch] altered it dramatically. So the combination of the roller bridge and a little flatter neck angle achieved it. I think that contributes to help keeping it in tune."

The pickups (previously used on the SolidBody Standard) pass to a shoulder-mounted three-way toggle and on to a master volume and tone. Nothing new. Pull up the volume knob and you split both pickups simultaneously, voicing the screw coil of the neck pickup and the slug coil of the bridge pickup.

The tone control has a similar duality. Down, the tone control taper gradual rolls off the highs as normal but then, by the end of its travel, focuses on the mids – a bit like pulling back on a wah pedal. Pull the control up and another capacitor is introduced to the circuit giving a different sounding roll-off, to our ears more standard, rolling off a lot of highs and mids by the end of its travel.

The inside electrics are all on a high-tech looking PCB and, like the SolidBody, Taylor says: "We designed a fused string ground (wired to the switch plate inside the guitar), so that in the event of faulty ground or funky wiring, the five-milliamp fuse will fry instead of you."

Sounds

Neither configuration of the T3 is particularly loud acoustically but both have a more than pleasant, lively resonance. Even unplugged, though, you can hear the slightly lighter, funkier resonance of the Bigbsy-loaded T3/B over the firmer, slightly fuller non-vibrato T3.

Starting off with a clean Fender-style channel both T3s display their sonic intent. It's big, bright and instantly country, rootsy rock and rockabilly all tied up. There's great clarity but not sterility with a little grain – quite Gretsch-like – poking through.

The two pickups are well balanced so the mixed position is typically a little softer, hollowed and textured. The neck pickup balances the spank of the bridge pickup with a silkier voice: not as fruity as an ES-175, more ES-335.

Yet even before we change amp sounds the versatility of the both T3s becomes very evident. Firstly, the coil-splits on the volume control lend, typically, a slightly sharper, lower-output and thinner tonality. Perhaps it's the sheer mass and air of the construction but they don't sound too thin, weedy or spiky.

There's a fullness and sweetness here that make the single-coil voices just as valid as the full 'bucker tones. With both single-coil voices selected there doesn't seem to be excessive hum pick-up and, although the mix doesn't seem hum-cancelling, the guitar seems quite 'quiet'.