YAMAHA REVSTAR RSE20, RSS20, RSS02T & RSP02T APPROX £399, £649, £649 & £1,599
CONTACT Yamaha PHONE 01908 366700 WEB http://uk.yamaha.com
Combining Yamaha’s long and storied history with a dash of motorcycle ‘Café Racer’ heritage plus a mixture of Japanese craft styles, Revstar originally launched in 2015 after quite a lengthy gestation period. We were among the many involved in evaluating the various prototype stages, which occurred around the world, and the time and expense involved in the process was certainly a rarity in our experience. The final multilevel Revstar range was impressive, although (barring a couple of additional models) it remained rather static. Oddly, too, there were no flag-waving Revstar signature artists, though Yamaha Artist Services (YASLA) in Los Angeles crafted many custom artist models – not for public consumption – that hinted at the many directions in which Revstar could go.
There’s little doubt that the new Mk II models are informed by seven years of feedback. It’s typical Yamaha: a slow-moving corporation that doesn’t act on whim or ‘flavour of the month’. Outwardly, the new guitars don’t mess with the recipe too much, but, as we explain, pretty much every feature has been evaluated and tweaked and new ones added.
So, what’s changed? Let’s start with the body. It retains the original Revstar’s outline style – clearly inspired by Yamaha’s classic SG outline, with the bass-side pointed horn pulled upwards, along with the lesser known Super Flighter from 1977 – but has been slightly increased in size and is now chambered mahogany throughout the new range. There’s a thin maple top (approximately 6mm), as before, on the higher level Standard and Professional models, and the latter level also gets two thin carbon graphite reinforcement
