Longtermers

A few months’ gigging, recording and everything that goes with it – welcome to Guitarist ’s longterm test report

- DAVE BURRLUCK 

Yamaha Revstar II RSS20

Unbelievably, it’s been a year since Yamaha took the wraps off its redesigned Revstar II range. The series originally launched in 2015, the result of a lengthy design and evaluation process that – even for the careful, considered brand – was a rarity. The new range groups the guitars into three levels: the start-up Element, the mid-priced Standard (both Indonesianmade in Yamaha’s own factory), and the upper Professional level, which uses bodies and necks that are made in Indonesia but assembled, finished and set up in Japan.

Outwardly, the new guitars don’t look very different from the original models, using a very similar, slightly wider pointed horn double-cut style that harks back to Yamaha’s SG and the lesser known Super Flighter from 1977. But internally there are some fundamental changes. All are lightly chambered, and the Standard and Pro models add a thin 6mm maple top. They also use graphite reinforced three-piece mahogany necks with stainless-steel frets on a slightly rounder 305mm (12-inch) radius rosewood fingerboard, which is bound on both like the top edge of the bodies.

We’d asked for a loaner guitar, but the 2022 launch generated so much interest that Yamaha simply couldn’t meet the demand. Speaking to Yamaha’s Dan Stock earlier this year, we discovered that the backlog had been sorted and we were dispatched a Standard model, the RSS20 in Swift Blue – one of six available finishes from the new range.