Modern guitar design is all about evolution, and that’s exactly what we see in the new Revstar II range. “Officially, we started the product development process in October 2018,” remembers Yamaha’s manager of the Guitar Development Group, Takashi Yamashiro. “However, we started to discuss and research after releasing the first series: how we can improve them to meet customers’ and artists’ feedback? We had a target to get more feel/vibration/ring acoustically, better playability, and also update the sound to meet the needs for modern music.”
The key to the new guitars, then, lies not in a lot of fancy new hardware and parts but in the basic structure of the instruments – something you can’t see. It all starts with Yamaha’s Acoustic Design process. But what on Earth is that?
“Acoustic Design was used on Revstar and the latest version of the FG and FG Red Label guitars,” explains Julian Ward, global strategy manager for Yamaha Guitars. “It’s a way to objectively understand what makesinstrument is vibrating together. Things like, how do the neck and body work and interact? What are the resonant frequencies? Where are the weak and strong spots on the instrument itself? [Things] that were similar irrespective of the specific tone of a guitar.
