Jumbo Taylor Guitar

The Jumbo, Taylor’s fullest shape and the Dreadnought’s early partner in crime, brought a big voice to the party. Together with Bob’s thin, ultraplayable necks, the Jumbo 12-string helped put Taylor on the map, and the iconic image of Neil Young playing an 855 in his concert film Rust Never Sleeps added a huge splash of street cred, to boot. A parade of other artists would continue to validate the Jumbo 12 as the new double-course gold standard, including David Crosby, Kenny Loggins, Prince, Peter Frampton and John Denver, and that list has steadily expanded in the modern era to include Dave Matthews, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, John Fogerty, Smashing Pumpkins, Trace Adkins, Tommy Shaw and others.

The playability and tone of a Jumbo mahogany/spruce 555 would lure Leo Kottke back to the 12-string in the ’80s after a decade-long hiatus due to chronic tendonitis. Kottke’s conversations with Bob Taylor would later spawn the 12-string LKSM and LKSM-6, which were designed with scalloped bracing and tuned down to C# to elicit the rumbling, “deep piano” voice that Kottke favored.

Although the Jumbo traditionally had the same bracing scheme as the Dreadnought, it was revoiced in 2003 to help distinguish its sound based on its different shape and size — an inch longer and wider than the Dreadnought. Jumbos have a big yet tight quality to the midrange, and a low end that’s robust without disrupting the tonal balance. The tone of the Jumbo shape is especially suited to our 12-strings since the full bass tones nicely counterbalance the additional treble strings.