Guitaripedia

Every guitar has a story.

Taylor

314ce

Nobody writes songs about the workhorse. They just keep reaching for it.

May 2002, a London TV studio. John Frusciante, who would rather be holding a Martin, is playing a Taylor 314ce. The acoustics on the band’s new album were Taylors borrowed from Rick Rubin, because Rubin wanted Taylors. That’s about as glamorous as the 314ce’s story gets, and it’s one of the best-selling acoustics made in America anyway.

Introduced
2000
Type
Grand Auditorium acoustic-electric
Class
Production
Read the story · 3 min

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Taylor 314ce Grand Auditorium cutaway acoustic on a stand
Photo: 佐藤将人 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0Taylor 314ce Grand Auditorium; Venetian cutaway and Expression System knobs visible.

The short version

  1. 1994

    The shape

    Bob Taylor designs the Grand Auditorium.

  2. 1998

    The 300 Series

    Taylor’s catalog jumps from 38 models to 61, and the 300s debut with sapele back and sides.

  3. 2000

    The letters “ce”

    One price guide starts the cutaway, pickup-equipped 314ce here. Taylor doesn’t give it a separate year.

  4. 2002

    On television

    Frusciante plays a 314ce on The Jonathan Ross Show, early on the By the Way tour.

  5. 2015

    ES2

    The 300s get Taylor’s Expression System 2 pickup. One marketplace dates it from 2014.

  6. 2018

    V-Class

    The new bracing reaches the 314ce that summer, at $1,999 street.

  7. 2024

    Fifty years

    A 50th Anniversary 314ce, limited to 1,974 guitars.

  8. 2026

    Next Generation

    New bracing, a new neck joint, and a new pickup, all under the same three digits.

Side A

A1

Borrowed from the producer

May 2002, London. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are on The Jonathan Ross Show, early on the tour for By the Way, and John Frusciante has a Taylor 314ce.

He didn’t pick Taylors. As he told a guitar magazine the next year, the acoustics on the album were Taylors borrowed from Rick Rubin, because Rubin wanted Taylors and Frusciante preferred Martins. The 314ce is the only Taylor model anybody has caught him with. Which Taylor played which part on the record isn’t on record, so don’t go pinning a track on this one.

It’s a very 314ce way to end up on television. Not the dream guitar. The one that was there, and worked.

A2

Three digits and two letters

A Taylor model number is a sentence, and this one is short. The 3 is the 300 Series. The 1 means a six-string with a softwood top. The 4 is the body, the Grand Auditorium. The c is the cutaway, the e is the pickup.

So an 814ce is the same shape in rosewood, a step up the ladder. A plain 314 has no cutaway and no pickup. A 324ce swaps the spruce top for hardwood. Once you can read it, you can read the whole wall at the shop.

One price guide calls the 314ce a cutaway dreadnought. It isn’t. The Grand Auditorium has a dreadnought’s 20-inch length and 16-inch lower bout, then pulls the waist in to 9-5/8 inches. Same footprint. Different guitar on your lap.

A3

Thirty-eight models, then sixty-one

Bob Taylor drew the Grand Auditorium in 1994. The 300 Series came four years later. In 1998 the catalog went from 38 models to 61, and the 300s made their debut with sapele back and sides.

Sapele came in as an alternative to mahogany. It’s a bit harder and a little brighter, and people sometimes call it African mahogany because it looks the part. It isn’t. Over a Sitka spruce top, with a Venetian cutaway and a 25-1/2-inch scale, that was the recipe: all solid wood, without the rosewood bill.

When the letters “ce” first went on it is less certain. One price guide starts the 314ce in 2000, two years after the 314. Taylor doesn’t give it a separate date. Keep both.

Flip the record · By the numbers

  • 3-1-4

    300 Series, six-string with a softwood top, Grand Auditorium. Then c for cutaway, e for electronics.

  • 9-5/8"

    The Grand Auditorium waist. Same length and lower bout as a dreadnought, pulled in at the middle.

  • 61

    Models in the 1998 catalog, the year the 300 Series arrived. It had been 38.

  • 1,974

    The 50th Anniversary 314ce run, one for every year since 1974.

Side B

B1

Same name, different guitar inside

The name has stayed still. The guitar underneath it hasn’t.

The pickups changed first. Taylor’s Expression System 2, three sensors behind the saddle, reached the 300s in 2015. A marketplace label says 2014. Keep both. Before that there was an older Expression System.

Then the bracing. In the summer of 2018 V-Class came to the 314ce, at $1,999 street. Before that it wasn’t a V-Class guitar at all. Then, in 2026, the Next Generation version: scalloped V-Class bracing, an Action Control Neck you can adjust from the soundhole, and a Claria pickup with Volume, Tone, and Mid-Contour controls in the soundhole. And the older ES2 314ce was still in the catalog right beside it, at the same price.

So when someone says they own a 314ce, ask what year. It could be any of several guitars.

B2

A workhorse with no famous owner

Taylor’s own buyer’s guide called the 300 Series the gateway into all-solid wood, and it put the 314ce plainly:

“A workhorse… without the glamour and top-shelf price tag.”

That page lists who plays it: gigging musicians, studio players, people at home. No names. The famous Taylor owners belong to other models. The rosewood 814ce gets the house list. Prince’s purple Taylor is a 12-string jumbo. Taylor Swift’s small one is a Baby Taylor.

Taylor calls this one of the best-selling acoustic guitars made in the U.S. That’s a ranking, not a number. Nobody has published how many there are.

B3

Fifty years, 1,974 guitars

In 2024 Taylor turned fifty and made a 50th Anniversary 314ce: a torrefied top, an edgeburst finish, gold tuners, and a run of exactly 1,974, one for every year since the company started in 1974. It’s out of production now.

For its birthday, Taylor took the workhorse and gave it gold tuners. It still didn’t get a famous owner. It never really needed one.

Frusciante would have rather had a Martin. In May 2002, on television, he had a 314ce, and it did the job. That’s the whole résumé, and it’s a good one.

Put this on

You’ve read about it. Now hear it. Here’s what this guitar sounds like, and what to listen for.

  1. Red Hot Chili Peppers · 2002

    Red Hot Chili Peppers on The Jonathan Ross Show

    31 May 2002, early on the By the Way tour. A 314ce is the only Taylor model Frusciante was seen with, and this is one of the sightings.

    Watch it on YouTube

The cast

The people, and the specific guitars, that made the legend.

  • 2002

    John Frusciante

    314ce

    Seen with one early on the By the Way tour. The album’s acoustics were Taylors borrowed from Rick Rubin; which models went on which tracks isn’t on record.

  • 1994

    Bob Taylor

    The Grand Auditorium shape

    Designed the body four years before there was a 300 Series to put it on.

Liner notes

Specs, construction, rarity, value, and every source we used.

Sitka over solid sapele, a Venetian cutaway, and a factory pickup — Taylor’s mid-line Grand Auditorium, not the rosewood 814ce and not the hollow T5.

Body
Grand Auditorium, Venetian cutaway; solid Sitka spruce top; solid sapele back and sides, 2-piece, no wedge. Scalloped V-Class with relief rout; gloss body; black binding; firestripe pickguard; white single-ring rosette (.047"); no armrest. Shape page: 20" long, 16" lower bout, 9-5/8" waist, 4-5/8" deep. ES2-page staff (Josh M., 5 June 2026): upper bout 11-5/8", waist 9-1/5". Do not average.
Neck
Neo-tropical mahogany, satin, standard carve. Action Control Neck (long tenon). Not the 1999 Taylor Neck. ES2-page staff (Josh M., 26 June 2025): the standard 314ce neck is built in El Cajon. Studio necks are made in Mexico.
Fingerboard
West African Crelicam ebony, faux-pearl Weathervane inlays, black binding. Taylor.com omits fret count and radius. Guitarguitar: 20 frets. Music Zoo: 15" radius, and mahogany back and sides — keep Taylor.com’s sapele. ES2-page staff (9 July 2026): Jescar frets, about 63% copper, 18% nickel, the rest zinc. Not on the Next Generation tab.
Scale
25-1/2". No millimetres on Taylor.com. Mix flagged.
Pickups
Claria under-saddle piezo and soundhole preamp. Not ES2. Not three magnetics.
Hardware
Crelicam ebony bridge and pins; black Tusq nut; white Micarta saddle; Taylor nickel tuners; D’Addario XS .012–.053. Deluxe hardshell case.
Electronics
Claria. Soundhole Volume, Tone, and Mid-Contour.
Finish
Gloss body, satin neck. The ES2 page is gloss top, satin back and sides.
Nut
1-3/4" on the Next Generation tab. Studio is 1-11/16". ES2-page staff (Glen W., 17 April 2025): 1-1/2" at the nut, 2-3/16" at the bridge. Mix flagged.
Open the full research fileConstruction details, the complete player record, production numbers, dated value estimates, and sources

Living cart = Next Generation 314ce (taylorguitars.com, UPC 00887766143338, $2,499 USD, fetched 1 October 2026). Scalloped V-Class, Action Control Neck, Claria, gloss body, paddle peghead. The older /314ce page (UPC 00887766128014) was still listed that day at the same $2,499: V-Class (not printed as scalloped), Expression System 2, satin back and sides, Gemstone inlays, “Tropical Mahogany” neck, peghead type Standard. Its overview says a firestripe guard and white binding; its spec tab says a black guard and black binding. Don’t pick. Don’t flatten the two UPCs. 314ce Studio ($1,999; SEB $2,099) is torrefied spruce, a 1-11/16" nut, no binding, a gig bag, and a Mexico-made neck. 314ce-N is nylon, fan-braced, ES-N, $2,499. 324ce is a hardwood top. The 50th Anniversary 314ce LTD (2024) is closed. No Gibson SKU. No T5 SKU.

*Mix flagged. Taylor.com prints inches only. Jerry’s Reverb listing of an ES2 / V-Class 314ce prints nut 1-3/4" (44.5 mm). Guitarguitar’s Next Generation table prints scale 25.5" (648 mm). French Wood & Steel converts the Grand Auditorium scale 25-1/2" to 63.5 cm — a 25" conversion, not 25.5". Do not average. Do not invent a millimetre the factory page did not print.*

Construction

Taylor needed a Grand Auditorium under the rosewood flagship. The buyer’s note (3 November 2017) calls the 300 Series the gateway into all-solid wood, and the 314ce “a workhorse… without the glamour and top-shelf price tag.” Sitka over sapele, a Venetian cutaway, a factory pickup. That is the job.

The number is a sentence (taylorguitars.com model-numbers page): 3 = 300 Series, 1 = six-string softwood top, 4 = Grand Auditorium, c = cutaway, e = electronics. An 814ce is this shape in Indian rosewood. A bare 314 has no cutaway and no pickup. 314e drops the cutaway. 324ce is a hardwood top. Third digit 0 is the dreadnought. Blue Book calls the ce a “Venetian cutaway dreadnought.” It isn’t.

The shape predates the series. Taylor’s Grand Auditorium page: Bob Taylor’s design, 1994. 1998 is this series, on the 50th-anniversary timeline: the catalog went from 38 models to 61, and “the 300 Series makes its debut, sporting sapele back and sides.” Wood & Steel (Winter 2015): sapele came in during the late 1990s as an alternative to mahogany — harder, a little brighter, “sometimes mistakenly referred to as African mahogany” because it looks like khaya. The timeline caption also says El Cajon’s new building was operational in 1998. That dates a factory, not a production total.

Blue Book’s non-cutaway 314 is “mfg. 1998–2006, reintroduced 2013–2015.” Its 314ce variant is “2000–present,” with Expression System 2 printed across that whole run. ES2 is not a 2000 pickup, and the page is not a spec. Keep 1998 for the 300 Series and the non-cutaway 314. Blue Book dates the cutaway-and-electronics 314ce from 2000; whether a 1998 “ce” existed is contested. This plate starts in 2000.

The neck splits the same way. Taylor dates the Taylor Neck to 1999, so a 1998 guitar — if the ce existed that early — is the older bolt-on. The 2026 cart is the Action Control Neck: long tenon, string height from the soundhole, no shim. Don’t put either joint on a guitar you haven’t dated.

The brace and the pickup move together.

  • Summer 2018 is when V-Class reaches this model (MusicRadar, 29 June 2018; Guitar World, 3 July 2018). Street then $1,999: Sitka/sapele, Venetian cutaway, ES2, Gemstone inlays, gloss top, satin back and sides, hardshell. Before that rollout, this 314ce was not a V-Class guitar.
  • ES2 itself is a 2014 design, three piezos behind the saddle (Taylor’s tech sheet, via the 814ce). On the 300s it is a 2015 change. Alamo Music (30 April 2014) still had those models on the older Expression System. Shimamura (23 February 2015) and Wood & Steel Winter 2015 — “New for 2015, the 300s sport” ES2 — are the arrival. Reverb files “314ce with ES2 Electronics 2014–2018.” Marketplace label. Taylor’s magazine says 2015. Keep both. ES2’s controls, on Jerry’s listing, are volume, bass, treble, and a phase switch. Claria’s are Volume, Tone, and Mid-Contour in the soundhole.
  • Reverb’s ES1 file covers 2004–2013 Natural. Reverb also lists a “314ce with Fishman Electronics.” No Fishman price, and no factory year-table, turned up for that pickup. Don’t date it.
  • 2026 is the Next Generation recipe in the spec table: scalloped V-Class with a relief rout, the Action Control Neck, Claria. Music Zoo (8 January 2026) puts the 314ce in the first Grand Auditorium group to get all three. The ES2 URL was still listed at the same $2,499 on 1 October 2026, and Willis Music still had UPC 887766128014 on 18 September 2026. Two guitars, one model name. No Taylor note turned up, of the kind posted for the 814ce, saying Next Generation had replaced this model.

It is not a T5: hollow, f-holes, three magnetics, 2005, scale 24-7/8". It is not a Martin OM-28: 25.4", and the current Standard has no Venetian cutaway and no factory pickup. Taylor’s own shape page gives the Grand Auditorium the dreadnought’s 20" length and 16" lower bout, then a narrower waist. Same footprint, different outline.

Players

No named-serial shelf. The 2017 note lists gigging musicians, studio players, and people playing at home. No names on that page.

John Frusciante. Ground Guitar, citing a June 2003 Guitarist interview: the acoustics on By the Way were Taylors borrowed from Rick Rubin, who wanted Taylors rather than the Martins Frusciante preferred. Ground Guitar: the only Taylor model he was seen with was a 314ce, early on that tour, including The Jonathan Ross Show, 31 May 2002. A sighting on a secondary page. The Guitarist issue was not in hand. It is not a tracking sheet that pins the album to this model. Keep both.

Not this guitar. Buckingham, Hall and Oates, and John Rzeznik are Taylor’s house list for the 814ce, with no serials even there. Jason Mraz’s signature is a nylon. Taylor Swift’s small Taylor is a Baby Taylor; a red T5 is a T5. Prince’s well-known purple Taylor is a 12-string jumbo; the smaller purple custom sits on the T5 plate.

Rarity

You can order a new one. The ES2 product page calls the 314ce one of the best-selling U.S.-made acoustics. That sentence is a sales rank, not a unit count. No current-year factory total turned up. Serials date a guitar. They don’t count one.

The name covers several recipes — bolt-on if a 1998 ce exists, then whatever pickup the year actually had, V-Class from summer 2018, Next Generation from 2026 — and the ES2 page was still in the catalog beside it. Ordinary El Cajon production until a label says otherwise.

The closed count is the limited. Guitar.com (29 March 2024): the 50th Anniversary 314ce LTD stops at 1,974 guitars, one for each year since 1974. Taylor’s page now says out of production. Torrefied top, edgeburst, gold tuners. That is not a count of shop 314ces. Studio, Blacktop, Terracotta, and the nylon 314ce-N are other orders.

Value

Informal estimate, 1 October 2026. Not an appraisal.

Ask vs sold. Split the UPC before you read a number. No celebrity hammer. The 2014 Taylor price-list MSRP $2,198 and the July 2018 V-Class street $1,999 are old lists, not 2026 street.

New street. Taylor.com Next Generation 314ce $2,499 (UPC 00887766143338) and the ES2 /314ce $2,499 (UPC 00887766128014), both fetched 1 October 2026. Willis Music, 18 September 2026, still had the ES2 UPC at $2,399 from $2,499. Named new ask, not a hammer: Jerry’s Music on Reverb, ES2 / V-Class, serial 1201173024, cut from $2,399 to $1,899. On the ES2 page’s related rail: Studio $1,999; Studio SEB $2,099; Studio Blacktop and Studio LTD Terracotta $2,199 each. The 50th Anniversary 314ce LTD listed $2,799 and is out of production. 314ce-N $2,499 is the nylon. A Studio price is not a Next Generation price.

Used, V-Class / ES2. Reverb’s “314ce with V-Class Bracing” guide, 414 orders, Good to Mint, “all models” mix. An earlier capture printed $1,100–$1,627. A later read of the same URL printed $1,098–$1,623. Same order count. Do not average them. Printed solds on both reads: 18 December 2025 Mint $1,345; 11 December 2025 Good $1,100; 4 December 2025 Excellent $1,300; 20 November 2025 Excellent $1,599 and $1,500. The sold list stops in 2025. Don’t invent a 2026 midpoint. Not a Claria comp.

Used, ES1. Reverb’s “314ce with ES1 Electronics” guide (2004–2013 Natural): $814–$1,374 (358 orders, Good to Mint). Sample sold: 12 December 2025 Excellent $1,200. Older pickup. Not the Next Generation guitar.

Used, Studio. Different nut, torrefied top, Mexico neck. An earlier capture of Reverb’s Studio Special Edition guide: $1,052–$1,552 (21 orders), with a 20 December 2025 Excellent sold at $1,395. This pass’s page did not reprint the dollar widget. Don’t fold that band into the $2,499 guitar, and don’t update it from a blank widget.

Vintage / collectible. No pre-war 314ce market. 1990s and 2000s examples trade as used modern Taylors. The 1,974-guitar anniversary LTD is not a comp for a shop 314ce. No 2024–26 Heritage or Christie’s hammer isolated.

See also

  • taylor-814ce — rosewood Grand Auditorium flagship; not this sapele 300-series guitar
  • taylor-t5 — 2005 hollow thinline with three magnetics; not this flat-top
  • martin-om-28 — Martin’s 14-fret auditorium; no Venetian cutaway and no factory pickup on the current Standard

Sources

Guitars this one gets compared to, confused with, or descended from.