Yamaha perceptions

lincolnblue

I wonder if anyone is like me in always discounting Yamaha acoustics? I don't know whether it's just that growing up Yamahas were always the cheap and cheerful brand - you could get a guitar for £90. Whilst I realise they do a massive range including some wonderful guitars, there's a part of me that just always discounts them

tomjax

I've played some great guitars by Yamaha, but they always seem to have too narrow a nut width for my tastes so I've never felt the urge to buy one, however good the tone and build. 

TheMadMick

I still hold the "cheap and cheerful" perception of Yamaha. However, I've bought a couple over the years that should dispel that. A lovely LL6 and a great A3CR. The moral as ever is let your ears decide (although you do need to be careful - what you hear initially is not how the guitar will turn out eventually and what we hear is not what the "audience" or the microphone hear).

fps

Love my ACR3, ridiculous for the price, has served me well for 9 years and counting.

sev112

Bert Jansch was quite happy with his

EreforGuitarGear

Love my Yamaha silent guitars... the Slg200s is my go to gigging guitar.

Andy79

People discount the old ones too. 

They are very underrated but I think they struggle most with the clean almost sanitised image, no soul like a Gibson or Martin but the high end stuff is magical, the craftsmanship is out of this world. Just ask the lucky buggers who scooped up those crazy deals at Peach earlier this year, the entry level stuff is dependable and the 1970s stuff is just glorious 

Zoonyboy

I think Yamaha guitars are really well designed and built. I have an SA 2200 which is as good a semi acoustic as you will find (and I own 3 Gibsons and 4 Collings) also a Yamaha Silent guitar for recording, again, excellent. Recently I bought a CPX 12 -string, and it is superb, with a great sound and playability. A factory is a factory, and Yamaha have been making instruments almost forever, they are superb engineers, but I would go nearly-new, and I would go as upmarket as possible, maybe into the recent but second hand market for the best deal. You should not go wrong.

gazrichards

Back when I worked in the trade the Yamaha 310 was the best bang for buck acoustic around (a bit like the Pacifica is for electrics) and the apx stuff sold like hot cakes. Everything above  that in the range was as good as it should be but I think people don’t like paying a grand for a guitar brand that they can also pay £100 for. I never stocked the very expensive Yamaha stuff but could get away with selling up to £800 ish products of theirs and they easily held their own with takamine etc at the time. 

DavidR

Very pleased with Yamaha FG5 I bought in the Spring. Relevant that I learnt on an FG back in the 1970's.

Sputnik

As a long term Yamaha devotee with an SA2200 that I could never part with and an AES1500 that just makes me smile, I resolved my classical guitar dilemmas with the purchase of a top flight Yamaha NCX2000R.  I'm not a traditional classical guitarist, so to be able to find my perfect combination of a full width nut, fabulous tone woods, stunning build quality and a realistically low action with an adjustable truss rod ticked every one of my aspirational boxes.  For me it's  the most comfortably playable instrument I could ever have imagined.

Moleman

Sorry but I do not recognise these Yamaha ‘perceptions’ at all. I have owned a couple of SA2000’s, an SG1500, an LL400 and a FG180. All were marvellous guitars with superior build quality. Unfortunately we guitarists are a marketing man’s dream and unfailingly pay ££££ for a guitar with the ‘right’ brand on the headstock above all else.

Gandalph

I’ve never played a Yamaha but heard some really good things about the fs3/fs5.
Some of the 70/80’s one’s go for crazy money - the North American Guitar has a 1980 L-55 in stock at just over £13,000!

sammysaber

I guess perception might be age related as well - must have been around 1984 when I was about 14 deciding between an electric guitar or keyboards - at that age I had to be "supervised" so instead of Denmark Street I ended up at Harrods where the guitars I tried were Yamaha, as were the upright pianos at friends' upper middle class homes.

Moleman

I will admit that Yamaha does have a rather staid, conservative image in the notoriously fickle guitar market. The thing is that the same conservative image could be seen as a strength. My perceptions of Yamaha guitars are formed by having owned and played them and in every case the sound, feel, materials and construction quality were superior to other guitars at their respective price points. 

Remember that back in the late 1970’s, Yamaha electrics such as the SG and SA series were built to take on The Big G in it’s own backyard and everything simply had to be better: binding, finishing, construction quality and electrics. 

As for their acoustics, Yamaha have always led the field at the budget end of the market but conversely their high end acoustics are as good as anyone else’s. Maybe because the Yamaha brand is a huge Japanese conglomerate that also manufactures motorbikes and consumer electronics it just doesn’t carry the cache that the big USA brands have?

CountryDave

I’ve owned a few Yamaha acoustics. Still own an FG with a solid top which sits on a stand in the living room and probably gets more play time than any other guitar in the house.
I had an LL16 for a while which was a stunningly good instrument and am currently pondering the purchase of either an LS6 or 16, or possibly a silent guitar as they have a smaller body and I’m a short arse.

Fatboylim

TheMadMick said:

I still hold the "cheap and cheerful" perception of Yamaha. However, I've bought a couple over the years that should dispel that. A lovely LL6 and a great A3CR. The moral as ever is let your ears decide (although you do need to be careful - what you hear initially is not how the guitar will turn out eventually and what we hear is not what the "audience" or the microphone hear).

I totally agree, the A3CR are gems and an equal to the high end Martin Guitars I tried (18s to 28 Martins). 

Yamaha covers bespoke, high end, mid range and cheap guitars. Perhaps worth categorising where they sit.

The old classical-laminate FGs from the 70s only get 90% the way to the Standard series Taylor 400s and Martin 15s and up. They are still better/equal  to the lower standard Taylor and Martins.  I have a Yamaha FG300 that pushes a Taylor 710 but really only 90% of the way. 

The A3CR really stands out as an equal to many of the Taylor (400 above) and Martins (18 and above). 

The bespoke all solid Yamaha
90s LL500, LL400,
70s FG1500, FG2000, FG2500
really outshine the Taylor and Martins. They sit closer to the smaller luthiers like the Santa Cruz, Goodall, Collings and Atkins. At this level the quality is the same, all are hand voiced, just the style type that differs.

Then there are the aged guitars like the Martin 00-21, Gibsons and Guilds etc. There are some unique gems that just cannot be compared. I heard only that the 1960s Yamaha L53 might be close to those.  But I haven't tried that one. 

Just my personal journey to date. 

Has anyone had a chance to compare Yamahas against different brands and grades? 

Basher

I have a late-70s/early-80s (I think) L-25a that is a splendid guitar. I've owned it since about 1984 and it's remained while things like a Brook and a Larrivee have gone. I've played a few Taylors, Fyldes and the like and I've not found one that I like as much as the Yamaha.

It's a bit battered about these days but still sounds nice. Body is made of something called jacaranda that I believe is in the rosewood family. Doesn't really get the playing time now I've got an OM (I'm a shortarse and this is a big 'ol dread!).



https://live.staticflickr.com/3560/3483156185_485d549764_c.jpg

Fatboylim

Basher said:

I have a late-70s/early-80s (I think) L-25a that is a splendid guitar. I've owned it since about 1984 and it's remained while things like a Brook and a Larrivee have gone. I've played a few Taylors, Fyldes and the like and I've not found one that I like as much as the Yamaha.

It's a bit battered about these days but still sounds nice. Body is made of something called jacaranda that I believe is in the rosewood family. Doesn't really get the playing time now I've got an OM (I'm a shortarse and this is a big 'ol dread!).



https://live.staticflickr.com/3560/3483156185_485d549764_c.jpg

That is a very nice guitar. It's unlikely to be beaten by a Martin or Taylor. It's more on par with Santa Cruz! That one would be fun to try out. 

Andy79

Not much point in talking about this and that beating this or that. Yamaha have their own thing going on. The 70s guitars for example,  they don’t sound like  Martins. Why should they
 
They were built pretty uniquely with laminated tone wood in an effort to stop them splitting when they were exported to different climates. That makes them sound the way they do. I love 70s Yamahas but unfortunately most necks have now settled in a position which renders them unplayable and uneconomical to repair but in my opinion if you find a decent one you’ll have a very capable square dred, even if the bass is a tad boomy

@Basher that is a lovely guitar. I’ve had a couple of early L series guitars and the history is hard to pin down

Basher

Thanks for the comments @Fatboylim and @Andy79.

It's definitely not one of the  particularly desirable ones from the Japanese workshop as mine was made in Taiwan. I did ask Yamaha if they knew anything about it and they said "There were a couple of hand crafted guitars lines from Taiwan that were excellent quality. Same techniques just different factories".  

They also told me that these are hard to date exactly as the serial numbers were just issued sequentially, rather than in a coded format that could indicate the year of manufacture.

I bought it in Workington, Cumbria where there were very few decent used guitars, and far fewer decent acoustics, for sale at the time. It was rare to find anything affordable with solid timbers so I pushed the boat out and bought this. It was in excellent condition and clearly fairly new.

Funnily enough, it appeared shortly after Bert Jansch had played at the local small theatre and I've often wondered if there was a connection. It was an odd coincidence as he was playing a similar looking L-series at  the time (with the distinctive oval inlays). I guess any connection is just fanciful nonsense but you never know. 

Anyway, it's a nice guitar. Very low action and the sound is quite ...err... "produced". Probably not a very helpful term but it sounds very even across all the strings - not particularly boomy or toppy, quite smooth. It makes it very easy to record. It's not really been used for many years so maybe it would open back up a bit if I were to play it for a bit. Some of the Yamaha dread-sized L series I've heard on YouTube have a huge bass!