I FINALLY Play the YAMAHA REVSTAR...It Was Surprising!!

hey guys welcome back to the channel today we are looking at one of the most requested guitars this is the yamaha revstar yes welcome back to the channel i hope you guys are all having a very good day today now if you guys are long time viewers of the channel you know i'm a huge fan of the yamaha pacifica to the point where we even did a build on the channel so much fun but i've been getting requests to do the rev star for years and today is the day so we're going to find out what's new on these guitars because they just refreshed the entire lineup what the quality control is like and is it worth buying so we're going to dive in and find out what these guitars are all about and then plug them in and take them for a spin right now the first thing to note about the revstar is yamaha has finally made it easier to understand their lineup so there's three tiers there's the professional tier which is made in japan those are very high end very expensive guitars then there's the standard series which is what i have today and these are the mid-level ones they go for about 7.99 so we're going to talk about that how it competes in the marketplace versus other guitars and if it's a good buy of course and then there's the element series so and those are the entry level ones so professional standard element easy to understand different price tiers and different features so today we're looking at the standards let's jump in and see what you get for the money so let's find out exactly what we're dealing with before we plug these in and test out the tones now as i mentioned these are both standards one has humbuckers one has p90s and a tailpiece which definitely gives it a little bit more of a vintage vibe i think it looks really cool but spec wise identical other than the obvious differences of the pickups now yamaha has always done a very good job offering value for money i've i really felt like that 612 pacifica when compared up against a lot of guitars in the price tier uh offered yeah a ton of value so we'll see if that carries on here now there's a few notable things on this guitar on the neck number one stainless steel frets yes that makes me very happy you will play on this guitar for decades and not have to worry about fretware so absolutely fantastic especially in this price tier not a lot of guitars in that price tier have the stainless steel frets so that is a huge plus number two carbon reinforcement rods in the neck which means this neck is going to be stable so that's two huge winds right off the bat stainless steel frets carbon reinforced neck and satin this is a feature i absolutely love more manufacturers are doing this it just makes sense you get that shiny gloss beautiful body but you get the playability of satin on the neck so that's like three big wins on the neck stainless steel carbon reinforcement satin that makes me happy well so far so good when we're talking value for money now as i mentioned mahogany neck and the fingerboard is rosewood ah some really nice inlays there i think it complements you know the vibe of the guitar well i think they look really cool so yeah mahogany reinforced neck and rosewood fingerboard now as for the body it's a mahogany body there is a nice i'll try to catch it in the light there nice contoured heel joint on the back so mahogany body little uh belly scoop there as well and a maple top and all the rev stars are built like that so mahogany body maple top doesn't matter if it's painted or not now it is a chambered body and they've done most of the chambering in this area here and the reason for that is to get optimal balance and i gotta say this guitar i guess you can't see it but yeah it's extremely well balanced so all the chamberings here which leave some of the weight here which means no headstock dive so very well balanced the weight on this one was 8.1 pounds i threw the other one on the scale too it was 7.7 so those are just the examples i have but i think you could probably safely say between 7.5 to just over 8 is what you could expect in terms of the weight and finally let's talk about the electronics because there's a few unique things going on on these guitars now as i mentioned the specs on both are the same i'm back to the p90 model obviously but both guitars feature a five-way switch so obviously neck bridge and both now in position two and four they've done something i've never heard anybody do before they slightly delay one of the coils and i don't know what that's gonna do to the sound but we're gonna find out together in a second so yeah never heard of that before very interesting and there is a coil split there only it's not a coil split it's kind of uh a re-voicer for the tone so we'll talk about that in a second too so five-way switch obviously volume and tone and then you can pull the tone control and it's not a coil split but it kind of gives a a new unique tone to each one of the positions so again yeah we'll we'll look at that in a second but that's just a brief overview of what the new rev star is um so let's plug them in and find out what they sound like [Music] hmm [Music] so yeah that neck pickup nice and full when you dig in you get some brightness and when you kind of soften up nice big and full lots of sustain now when we pull out on the tone pot um it basically thickens the tone and adds a slight boost [Music] so [Music] it reminds me of like an old gretch that i had that had the tone toggle instead of the knob um and when you pull this out it kind of just gives you like half a roll off of your tone control really reminds me of that but it does boost the signal as well now i got to mention this tone control on the rev star is incredibly powerful probably one of the most dynamic ones i've ever used on a guitar if i roll that tone all the way off it's like super mellow [Music] [Music] so just to show you how versatile this guitar is just in the neck pickup i'll do the lick i'll do a lick three times open and then i'll pull the control and then i'll dial the the tone off [Music] so [Music] yeah ridiculously flexible so if you like to use your tone control there are a ton of tones uh just on the neck pickup very cool all right so let's quickly work our way through the rest of the tones then we're gonna hop over to the p90 and add some gain see what we can do there here we go neck pickup [Music] so [Music] [Music] now i gotta say that position two surprisingly funky i gotta say [Music] that one definitely kind of stood out to me uh for a humbucker equipped guitar that position two you're gonna be able to get some cool tones out of that so that's just a brief run through of uh yeah the rev star clean let's hop over to the p90s and add some gain all right you guys i've got some crunch dialed in and it's time to hear these p90s roar i'll be using the boost switch as we go along i'm going to start with it off and we'll start in the neck pickup maybe just doing a few lead lines and we'll go from there [Applause] oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so yeah right away those p90s sound great just so much grit to them let's go to the bridge and do some of the same stuff there [Music] now i gotta give a shout out to the inside positions on the p90 guitar so position four three and two uh i'm playing clean and it gives almost an acoustic guitar like tone really pleasing really clean and clear love it [Applause] so [Laughter] [Applause] yeah really beautiful tones on the inside positions there and then you guys heard with the gain on the neck and the bridge uh yeah really great tones on the p90s so here are my final thoughts on the revstar now when it comes to the pacifica which as you guys know i really love i had two gripes on that guitar number one the fretwork felt a little subpar especially on the 612 which was a little bit more money i felt like you know the frets shouldn't be gritty they shouldn't feel like a budget on the rev star they absolutely fix that these stainless steel frets are very good and when we look at the fret ends up close you can see they're rounded up high very nice all the way through it feels great you know sliding up and down the neck no snags fret ends very smooth and when we look at the front face also very shiny so yeah yamaha stepped up to the plate um and for yeah a guitar in this price range to have the stainless steel uh feels very good to play on that's a huge win and fingers double crossed if yamaha updates the pacifica which i think it is due for please yamaha if you're watching this put these frets on the pacifica they're good so rev star huge pass from the fretwork and a big upgrade over previous yamaha so that is huge now my second gripe from from the pacifica was the electronics were probably a little bit of a weak spot on that guitar uh of course never had one fail but the switch feels a little cheap the pots were small now i opened up the back of a rev star as you can see i'm going to say a 50 uh improvement the five-way switch metal looks very durable feels great to use downsize is still small pots so i would say that's a 50 percent improvement over the pacifica which is halfway there so yamaha just put full-size pots in your mid-range guitars so there you guys go i'm sure in the professional series the ones made in japan they'll have uh high-end electronics but it would be nice to see on the rev star but yeah some massive improvements in those areas now beyond those main improvements i'm happy to say the smaller details on this guitar are very well so overall construction excellent on the rev star standard the nut cut really well that's important on a three plus three design to keep your guitar in tune so that's really good and even small details like the strap buttons here look really nice and high quality a metal output jack here as well love to see that no plastic there the knobs look really good they feel awesome in the hand and even you know the posts on these guitars straight up and down no leaning just looks like it's really really well made so i'm very pleased with that so overall you know the construction on the revstar yeah gets a huge pass these are nice guitars mainly i gotta give props to the neck it's a joy to play the satin on the back the stainless steel frets and the carbon reinforcement rods means you're not going to have to be tweaking your neck all the time it's going to be very stable so got to give huge props to yamaha for this neck um yeah it just feels great to play on so love love love that and yeah as i mentioned maybe just a pod upgrade in the future would be due but everything else um has been an upgrade over previous guitars so the question at the end of it all is well should you buy one is it a good value for money and i think the answer is well yes it's an excellent value for money so i'm very happy that yamaha has continued that trend and the ravstar has always been a model that kind of flies under the radar you know and if you're the type of person who well just wants something different doesn't want to play a fender or gibson or maybe you own a fender or gibson and they're just looking for something different yeah the rev star absolutely brings in and i love that they have three price tiers now that japanese one way up high these guys very nice in the mid-range and then uh the element i think is around four or five hundred bucks somewhere in there so yeah it's nice to see different price price tiers um i would say if you don't own a guitar with p90s rock this just rock this and don't look back it's a really cool looking guitar and i think just personally this one is my favorite just love the vibe of it top to bottom i think it just is a very very cool guitar i love the tailpiece and the p90 so if you don't own a guitar with p90s and you don't want to you know spend a billion dollars uh this is a really good option you get the stainless steel frets you get the high-end neck and the p90s and just uh love the way they did did the fade to it's not like a front to back fade it's like a top to bottom just something a little different so yeah i really love this p90 model but both guitars are excellent thanks so much for watching i hope you guys enjoyed the demo if you did be sure to subscribe to the channel big shout out to the revstar fans out there hopefully you guys enjoyed it as well it's been a long time coming so i hope you enjoyed the demo all my information links to the guitars tab store t-shirt store all the gear i use all that stuff is linked in the video description below you can check it out there if you're interested other than that have yourself a great week take care

Channel: Darrell Braun Guitar

Views: 251,448

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Id: fufQNQOPpLE

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022