Wow, and I am just having my first cup of the morning here. I have the model you ordered and it has quickly become among my favorites and usually the first guitar I grab. To put it in perspective, I travel for a living and bring a guitar with me(hence the CF guitars I own) but when I think it will be safe I wanted to bring a GC sized Taylor, so I acquired the 322e for this purpose.
I wouldn’t say it is better than my Custom coco/euro spruce GC but is a great compliment to it. It isn’t better than the K24ce BE but I have really come to like the GC size for comfort and responsiveness in my fingerstyle play so I grab it first(i also had surgery on my arm a few months ago so that plays into it a little).
Now to your point, the 522ce vs 322e. I have the 12 fret of the all mahogany 522 and it has become one of my least played guitars, but not because there is anything wrong with it. I actually just played it yesterday and it has a slightly “richer” tone maybe? So hard to describe the differences in tone, but there is one. The 12fret has noticeably more bass response but to my ear the 322 has a more balanced response.
As to strings, I do like the Elixir PB on it but have tried SCGC low tension and am currently using the D’Addario XS PB strings which sound great to my ear on it. I like the SCGC strings on the 522 but not as much on the 322, YMMV.
Looking forward to hearing your experience on a guitar that seems to punch well above its weight in my herd. The 322 gets more than 1/2 the play time here and you can see all the other guitars in the signature(my wife says I may have a problem….)
