Big Ideas

Acoustic giant Yamaha downsizes and gets travel-friendly with a new compact electro that has a surprisingly big heart.

- Rob Laing

The rise of the compact travel acoustic has been surprisingly meteoric. The two dominant American makers, Taylor and Martin, have recently enjoyed huge hits in the burgeoning market for small acoustics. For Martin, Ed Sheeran’s preference for its diminutive LX1E ‘Little Martin’ meant the company could barely keep up with demand in the wake of his commercial breakthrough. He’s had three signature models since.

Meanwhile, the success of Taylor’s trailblazing Big Baby concept led to the development of its GS Mini auditorium guitar under the design vision of luthier Andy Powers. Launched in 2011, it defied expectations about how big a small guitar can sound and met with huge commercial success.

Not wishing to be left out of the party, Yamaha has now entered the ring with its own take on the genre. Yamaha has made models that could be termed as ‘travel guitars’ in the past with the APXT2 cutaway and JR mini folk series, but those were three-quarter size guitars, with 579mm (22.8-inch) and 538.5mm (21.2-inch) scale lengths, and seemed meant for smaller hands. Now, the return of Yamaha’s CSF series after 15 years marks its most determined move yet into the compact acoustic market, but it’s telling that despite the marketing images of campfires and tents, the ‘travel guitar’ phrase isn’t mentioned, with the description instead being ‘compact folk guitar’. Its scale is 600mm (23.6 inches) and the notion of a guitar that could occupy middle ground in the Yamaha line emerges. So does the idea succeed in practice?