“I asked Taylor, ‘How would you feel about putting a five-string guitar on a six-string neck tuned in a very strange way”: Taylor teams up with Jacob Collier for signature acoustics that declare standard tuning DAEAD – and they’re accessibly priced

Taylor Guitars and musical polymath genius Jacob Collier have expanded their signature guitar collaboration with a pair of five-string acoustic guitars that are designed, built and priced to take his unorthodox DAEAD alternate tuning to the masses.

Typically, we think Taylor and think high-end acoustic guitars, but Collier’s new models are released as part of the GS Mini and Academy Series lineups, and as such make a serious acoustic guitar for beginners and young players serious about the instrument.

And serious, absolutely, about playing a guitar that offers something quite different from our standard EADGBE six-string configuration.

For Collier, this collab has been a dream come true. Quite literally. The tuning, the idea of a five-string guitar (he also has a signature five-string headless electric guitar with Strandberg), came to him in a dream.

“I dreamed of this guitar tuning for many, many years before it existed,” he says. “I asked Taylor, ‘How would you feel about putting a five-string guitar on a six-string neck tuned in a very strange way, with exactly the same range as a normal guitar, but just with a different set of intervals? ‘And they said yes, which changed my whole life.”

The new Taylor x Jacob Collier models comprise the Jacob Collier Academy 22e, a Grand Concert acoustic with a solid walnut top, layered walnut on the back and sides, and a Fishman Presys VT acoustic guitar pickup system, and the Jacob Collier GS Mini, which has a solid torrefied spruce top, layered sapele on the back and sides.

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Solid tops at these prices are just the half of it. These are replete with signature details. As you’d expect from Collier, there is a splash of colour, with the GS Mini featuring a rosette graphic co-designed with Collier himself.

The Academy 22e ships with either a mahogany or maple neck, has a smoked eucalyptus fingerboard and matching bridge. The GS Mini has a West African ebony fingerboard and bridge, and a mahogany neck, and it’s a compact little guitar with a 23.5” scale compared to the Academy 22e’s 24.875” scale.

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And there is luxury to these builds, with the Academic 22e featuring a bevelled arm-rest to improve ergonomics. It’s the sort of feature we are using to seeing in higher-priced instruments.

We like the muted, classy aesthetic on this, with the matte natural finish and the Baltic birch marquetry three-ring rosette, plus the small 4mm dot inlays on the fingerboard.

Collier says he hopes these guitars, which ship in his DAEAD tuning, will take this alt-tuning – and the five-string concept itself – mainstream.

“These new 5-string models are a total dream come true for me,” he says. “Each is so distinct in their own right. For them to be accessible to more people, while maintaining the same spirit that inspired the original designs, is a wonder. I’m so looking forward to more folks having the opportunity to discover this five-string world and make their own magic with it.”

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Why DAEAD tuning? Collier believes it opens up the fingerboard. Some have said it has reimagined guitar completely, which seems hyperbolic but that’s what alternate tunings do as they making chord voicings and intervals that were hitherto out of reach easier.

Can Collier’s success – can these Taylor signature models make DAEAD as popular in pop-music/singer-songwriter circles as, say, DADGAD is in folk? We shall see. What is beyond dispute is that we’re dealing with a guitar custom-built for a wholly unique guitar player.

“Jacob is so gifted – a one-of-a-kind musician,” says Andy Powers, chief guitar designer, president and CEO of Taylor Guitars. “After hearing him write and perform music on these instruments since their creation, we're excited to expand this collaboration with models that make the acoustic guitar accessible for entry-level players while offering an inspiring new sonic palette for experienced players to explore.”

The Jacob Collier Academy 22e is priced $999, while his GS Mini is priced $699 (UK prices TBC, prices include a gig bag). For more details, head over to Taylor Guitars.