This is a year 2000 Taylor DDSM Doyle Dykes Signature – #74 of 200

Here’s a very special Taylor for the serious acoustic player and collector.

This is a 2000 Taylor Doyle Dykes Signature DDSM, number 74 of just 200 produced, and personally signed by Doyle on the back of the headstock.

Doyle Dykes is one of the great American fingerstyle guitarists, with a career that has taken him from touring with The Stamps Quartet and Grandpa Jones to the Grand Ole Opry, major international stages and countless performances alongside some of the finest players in the world. His playing draws on Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, Duane Eddy and beyond, but he developed a completely individual style combining extraordinary fingerpicking technique with country, gospel, rock, classical and flamenco influences.

It is therefore no surprise that the DDSM was designed as a serious performance instrument. Doyle demanded a great deal from his guitars, and the specification reflects that.

The 2000 DDSM features a single Florentine cutaway Grand Auditorium body with a solid Sitka spruce top and highly figured Big Leaf Maple back and sides. The maple gives the guitar a particularly immediate, focused response, with strong projection and a clear, singing midrange, while the spruce top provides the dynamic range required for Dykes’ fingerstyle approach.

The original specification includes a comfortable Hard Rock Maple neck, bound ebony fingerboard with distinctive half-circle pearl inlays, 25½" scale length, ebony bridge, abalone rosette and ivory-key binding. The transparent black finish is particularly dramatic, allowing the figuring in the maple and the grain of the spruce top to show through beautifully. Gold Schaller hardware completes the specification.

One of the really interesting features of this limited edition is the L.R. Baggs Doyle Dykes Signature pickup system. Developed specifically for Dykes’ demanding live requirements, the system uses individual under-saddle elements for each string, giving the player an unusually articulate amplified response and allowing the character and dynamics of complex fingerstyle playing to translate convincingly on stage. Contemporary reviews were particularly positive about the L.R. Baggs system as a serious alternative to Taylor’s own electronics, and in our opinion vastly superior to the Fishman systems that Taylor fitted back then.

This example is the long scale 25.5" version.

This particular guitar is in excellent overall condition, with just a few light marks and signs of careful use. There is a small professionally executed finish repair on the lower bout near the output jack, which is barely noticeable. We think that for a 26 year old guitar its phenomenal.

The playing experience is exceptional. The action is astonishingly easy, the intonation is excellent and there is plenty of life remaining in the beautifully polished and crowned frets. We have given the guitar a thorough workshop inspection and it is ready to play.

The highly figured maple is particularly difficult to photograph because of the deep, glossy black finish. Some of what appears in the photographs is simply reflected light rather than marking, and the translucent finish reveals considerably more depth and figuring in the flesh than photographs can really convey.

This is a rare opportunity to own one of the original 2000 DDSM limited editions — an instrument built around the requirements of one of the world's most distinctive acoustic guitar players.

Number 74 of 200, signed by Doyle Dykes, and supplied with its original brown Tolex deluxe Taylor hardshell case.

A serious player's Taylor with genuine provenance, a fascinating specification and a voice all of its own.