Tony L
Administrator
Yes - Yamaha really did turn out some well made guitars. I'm kinda conflicted with the straight through neck and that lovely stripe in the Fender shape though. My brain keeps protesting - no..no ... those horns need to be more symmetrical, and that headstock has to go..
For me its far enough away from a Strat to be its own thing and it’s in that ‘gold zone’ of Japanese guitars where they really started to innovate, but hadn’t gone all-out heavy metal bonkers (though I do think Vai’s Ibanez JEM is a proper design classic for sure).
The thing what the pictures obviously don’t indicate is how it feels and sounds, and it is definitely not a Strat. Compared to my ‘82 ‘Dan Smith’ hard-tail it is lighter, just perfectly balanced, has a fatter more ‘U’ than ‘C’ shape neck which I personally love, and has a much fatter warmer sound. If you live in the really crisp hollow ‘twangy/spanky’ zone of Strat world, e.g. Mick from TPS, then you’ll likely not like the Yam, which has a warmer, fatter, more jazzy sort of sound plus noticeably higher output (it really is a lot louder/bigger sounding). I don’t have enough real pickup experience to draw on, but I suspect it may actually be closer to P90s or a Jazzmaster sound than a Strat, though it has its own very comprehensive switching (every pickup can be on/off and in/out of phase), so it can get many fairly Strat-like tones.
The more I play both it and the 82 Strat the more different and individual I feel they are. I’m pretty certain I want both, i.e. the Yamaha is a Yamaha, not a Strat-replacement. It is its own thing and unquestionably my favourite guitar of any I’ve ever owned, but I still want a nice Strat as well. My plan is to keep looking around and eventually swap the Dan Smith for another Strat with a trem, as I really miss not having an instrument with one and that would dramatically reduce the overlap between the two.
By saying that I’ve always really liked owning instrument that are off the beaten track as you are starting off from a tonal pallet that is not too familiar/cliched, so maybe I need something with a whammy bar that isn’t a Strat at all! Back in the ‘80s I played an Aria SB-1000 bass, an active thru-neck job that didn’t sound like the P or J basses everyone else played, my current Shergold Marathon is the same in that it is its own thing and does everything I want or need. The first decent electric guitar I had was the ‘70s Fender Bronco, and no way are you going to sound like everyone else with one of those! It remains my favourite guitar aside from the Yam, I really regret selling it. Maybe I should just hunt down another. The Shergold Masquerader is interesting too as it is decidedly not Gibson or Fender, though to be honest it just isn’t as good as the SC-1200 so it gets little use, plus it could really do with a re-fret as they are very low and flat. I’d never sell that one though. I stuck a new set of strings on it last week so it is back in rotation to some degree.