Taylor K4 Equalizer.(Gear)(Product/Service Evaluation)

In today's hype-filled world, companies rarely undersell a product, but that's what Taylor Guitars is doing with their new K4 Equalizer. Yes, it's a sweet-sounding EQ but there's more to it. Designed by pro-audio guru Rupert Neve, and boasting a studio-grade analog preamp and a fistful of handy features, the portable K4 offers many of the attributes of a recording console's input strip. The single-channel K4 is designed to help you coax the best tones from an amplified acoustic guitar with minimum effort. To put the box through its paces, I tested it with a new Taylor 512CE sporting ES electronics, a CA Legacy with a Fishman Prefix Premium Blend mic-and-transducer system, a '92 Taylor 512C with a Duncan MagMic soundhole pickup, and a Takamine ENV760S with a CTP-1 Cool Tube preamp.

THE GOODIES

The K4 has an intelligent layout, with all of its jacks on the back panel, and all the knobs and most of the buttons on the front. The thick aluminum case promises a lifetime of duty, and the wood trim on the top suggests the K4's acoustic orientation. Thanks to its Neutrik combo jack-which accepts either a 1/4" phone, a 1/4" TRS, or an XLR plug--the K4 can accommodate active or passive, and high- or low-impedance input signals. Thus, you can plug in a guitar equipped with an onboard preamp system, a passive saddle or soundboard transducer, a magnetic soundhole pickup, or even just an onboard low-impedance dynamic mic. (The K4 is not a blender or outboard mixer, however. It processes one signal, so if you have a multiple-pickup system, you'll need to blend their outputs before they get to the K4.) The preamp automatically adjusts to the type of input signal it receives--you do nothing but jack in.

The box has two outputs--a mic-level XLR out for feeding a mixer, and a " out for an acoustic amp. Connecting a TRS cable to the 1/4" out generates a balanced signal--perfect for retaining fidelity in long cable runs. A single knob controls the volume of both outs, which you can use simultaneously. There's also a headphone jack with a separate Volume (and lots of gain), a Tuner out with a button to mute the main outputs (but not the headphones), and a button for phase-reversing the input and output signals to combat feedback onstage. Finally, a 3-way switch lets you dodge pesky ground loops.

The K4 arrived with a hip One Spot power adapter from Visual Sound, but the unit will work with any 3-15 volt DC source that has the correct polarity and current rating. Alternatively, you can run the K4 on batteries for up to ten hours. In battery mode, the green "on" LED turns red when the power drops below 3 volts. This power LED is the only visual feedback provided by the K4. When switching between different guitars and pickup systems, I found myself wishing for an input meter or a "signal present" LED.

The K4's slick effects loop has a front-panel in/out button and a rear-panel pre- and post-EQ switch. This gives you the option to, say, add reverb to the equalized sound or compress your guitar before sculpting its timbre. Monitoring through headphones rather than the mains, however, I was surprised to discover that ...