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Until the start of this year all Taylor's electrics were hard-tails. The T3/B is technically the first one with a vibrato (a new-design fulcrum vibrato will be offered on the Taylor SolidBodies later in the year) and it's hugely ironic that such a forward-looking company known for its precise, impeccably made instruments should choose a vibrato designed in the fifties.

"I don't know whether you remember from your last visit, but we'd made a prototype T5 with a Bigsby on it," says Taylor's David Hosler. "Doyle Dykes had come in – I wasn't here, I was in England – and he was talking to Bob [Taylor] and asked if he could borrow it for a recording where he needed a Bigsby-equipped guitar.

Doyle took it and he also played it at a show, I think at the Ryman in Nashville, and next thing we were flooded with e-mails about putting a Bigsby on a T5! I was still objecting 'cause I'm like, man, it looks cool but it doesn't work that well."

What changed Hosler's mind? "I came across this roller bridge and then I was in Germany having dinner with Fred Gretsch [the owner of Bigsby] and he says, You should put a Bigsby on one of your guitars, and I'm thinking, okay, perhaps now we can.

"So we got a couple of Bigsbys on guitars and then did some stuff with the pickups, found the right locations and we all felt that it just worked! It's one of the few times I can say we really didn't have to work that hard to do it, but I was waiting for the thing that would make the Bigsby really functional and the roller bridge just did it for me."

See Guitarist editor Mick Taylor put the new T3/B through its paces:

Like the T5, Taylor's first 'electric', the T3 is a big, single-cutaway guitar. Its body is approx 505mm (19.9-inches) long and 408mm (16-inches) wide. Width-wise that's pretty much the same as an ES-335, although the T3's body – thanks to its single-cut design – is nearly an inch longer.