Yamaha Revstar the Best Guitar Under 1k?!

so i get questions from you guys all the time about gear whether it's in the comment section or different social media platforms my email i love talking to you guys because we live in an age now where we can have a nice dialogue about this stuff and hopefully not be led astray we can really find something that works for us if we have a nice relationship and we trust the person on the other end of the camera right i've been doing this for a long time played a lot of gear so i enjoy talking to you about it and one of the questions i get a lot is how is the yamaha rev star have you played it so my buddy andy yamaha loaned me this one we're going to see him later in the video i did an interview with him out at sweetwater where he kind of talks about the nuts and bolts of this guitar we're going to talk about this this is the standard so this is the 799 model i really think it's one of the best guitars if not the best under a grand i'm going to play it through the andy timmons pedal i've been playing around with some higher gain pedals lately for fun this is a great pedal it's got a drive side it's got a boost side it's got a switch that kind of changes the feel almost if an amp was run at different wattages we're going to use that in the video with just the neck pickup and bridge pickups and the volume control that's it so you're going to see how i manipulate it a little bit i'm not going to put it on right just yet but check this out [Music] so that's the neck pickup very p90 it's not not too bright like a single not too dark and as i start to bring that volume down we know this is what can happen in a guitar but this guitar the taper is remarkable [Music] comes a different guitar [Music] and you'll hear it when i kick the gain on and play this tune that um it really really speaks it's pretty cool all right so killer guitar we're gonna play the track with the andy timmons pedal reverb and delays coming from my aux box my two rock balloon field drive big clean sound i like that when i'm using pedals because it really doesn't change anything okay all you're hearing is the stuff in front of it okay so let's hear the track then we'll run through the rev star [Music] um [Applause] [Music] so pretty great guitar a lot of fun sounds especially with the volume control i found that to be incredibly flexible using the pedal which we'll do in a little bit and i'll make that track available to you too that's a lot of fun to play over you're just going to jump over to my website you're going to put some information in grab it if you're not already a member of workingclassguitar.com that's my lesson site all right so let's talk a little bit about this guitar from top to bottom like i said andy will tell us later in the video but this is mahogany body uh maple top i believe got the kluson style tuners but these are the more closed gear variety i don't know if i can get a shot of that or not but yeah i don't know if it'll zoom there we go um and they they're they're more substantial you know the closed gear style i like that um stainless steel frets 12 inch radius feels really nice and playable the neck shape's a little flat probably a little flat for me but i got used to it p90 pickups we're going to talk about those volume and tone control and we talked about how great that volume control is so here is the neck pickup [Music] i always hear people say don't play chords enough when you when you guys demo guitars [Music] so there you go [Music] let me go right to the middle this is a classic p90 middle sound [Music] bridge very single coily [Music] it's going to sound good with game though now if we go to the two position they kind of do something in the wiring to give it more of those out of phase strategy sounds [Music] they'll call that quacky and this is actually pretty quacky very mid-range honky [Laughter] [Music] up to the four they go for that stratty number four position [Music] [Applause] [Music] so lots of stuff on board even this mid boost here on the um on the tone control it's going to boost your overall output give you a different frequency set too so if i'm playing something now it becomes jazz boxy [Music] and it'll do that on the bridge [Music] if you try it with an overdrive pedal it gets into that sort of like claptonish woman tone thing it's pretty cool actually so let's talk about overdrive and then we'll listen to andy talk even more about this guitar we'll take the top he'll have like a cross section of the body he'll give us all the ins and outs in the details let's play a little overdrive see how it works so now we should hear this with some overdrive i got the jhs andy timmons pedal lined up here and this is the clean sound [Music] and we're just going to use the boost side so boost no eq just hitting the front of the amp sounds nice turn it off [Music] pretty usable boost [Music] that's just that pedal now if we turn that off we're going to add the high gain side this is going to take you more into that sort of smoother sort of fusion blue sort of sound that's what i was looking for in a pedal just for some fun so here we go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now you can add the boost to it if you want [Music] [Applause] [Music] gets pretty gnarly and i've got it running pretty flat but you can add more eq to it if you want as far as high end goes uh you can do that let's hear a little bit of this how the compression changes when we change that switch [Music] whenever this happens on a pedal you're gonna have to turn the volume up [Music] you can go to this one compressed even more [Music] from what i know about petals that's probably something called a clipping diode that's making it do that and what happens is as you i think it's i don't know if it's add or remove diodes it becomes more compressed and gives you that more squishy compressed feel so it's got all those options in there i actually really like that i've been having a lot of fun with it you hear we use the heck out of it in that last tune that i played so cool combination fun stuff i just wanted to bring it to you because plenty of you have been asking about the red star and i just think it's a really really solid guitar for 7.99 i play a lot of these kind of guitars from 799 and 7099 and this one is really really solid so let's hear andy from yamaha talk about this and uh you know maybe you'll maybe you want to check it out maybe you'll want to ask me some more questions either way i'm always here for you so let's check out andy from yamaha talking about the revstar so you're gonna have a good time let's talk tell my friends uh this is andy from yamaha uh you know when i first met you it was at a gear fest where they had they had people so some people do that embarrassing it's embarrassing i walk into the yamaha booth and this guy gives me a bear hug i didn't know who he was and he was like i've been watching you on true fire forever and you know you're really really supportive and you you're one of the first people always comment on something and it's it's great i love having an ally here at yamaha thanks for bringing me into your ecosystem corey and julie it's one of those things i feel honored to be part of but i was a fan before i was a friend so so the cool thing is now i have this website where folks that are gonna be watching this i mean we'll be watching this on the tube but you they'll also see it there because a lot of the folks that i work with we do live streams once a month uh it's a private live stream that only subscribers can watch like um and one of the things i keep hearing is have you played the red star have you played the good rap star so from top to bottom i would love a run down for my example basically there's there's um second generation of revstar first one about six years ago a takeoff on a guitar we did in the 70s called super flightr look it up they're kind of cool wow but what we've done is we've kind of changed this guitar completely inside and out first thing we've done cory chamber the body now a lot of people will chamber a body just simply for weight room right but if you look at this is this thing is tuned so what yamaha does is we'll put frequencies and vibration into the wood to get the wood to tune so it sounds better so if your the guitar acoustically has now is a nice almost like a jangly open sort of tone to it i noticed that immediately actually as soon as i strummed it corey's playing the japanese version right we make three different models so then what made in japan we put carbon fiber into the body to add a little bit of rigidity but this is what you're seeing underneath that beautiful maple top and what i know about carbon fiber in bodies like this is that it does help with projection too like i know uh there's a particular acoustic company that has no martin has a carbon fiber bridge plate on one of their guitars and i it does help the volume jump out of the guitar so i can't imagine that that isn't the same for this it doesn't hurt so all the model all of the models now have chambered bodies the other thing we did is we put carbon fiber in the neck nice um reason being is we wanted to slim down the neck from the past generation so the other one had it felt like it was pretty substantial so this deer is they've slimmed it down on the back side and they went to a 12 inch radius on the fretboard as opposed to the 13 and three quarter that was on the last generation so this is going to feel more familiar right to us american guitar players that kind of grew up on the nine to twelve inch range absolutely so that's all the stuff that you kind of can't see cool woodworking sort of stuff but we can let's talk about the electronics a little bit okay so what we're going to do and i'll ask you kind of you can even kind of go through the switch please i'll be your van away yeah neck position p90 sound absolutely rich and lush [Music] yeah oh i hate you cory so it's one of those things that great now pull up on that tone control and do that same thing again [Music] i'd expect that treble bleed under the volume control too so i can roll down the volume i'm not gonna lose top end but now i've got this great jazz sounding thing my west montgomery octave comps it sounds like a hollow body now now it's got a big woodier sort of tone and it's hard sometimes to get humbuckers to fade like that on the on the volume control wow it's driving it [Music] too that is awesome it's extra extra signal coming down the cable it smacks the front of the amp a little different the amp's going to want to bloom out so for your viewers now the new refstar basically has five-way switching right i'm gonna give you two and four and he's going to hear it you're going to hear here in a second those kind of two and four out of phase quacky stratty sort of tones but then upper tone down tone down okay and then just give me that two and four a little quack [Music] um [Music] four yep [Music] really great i love if it's like [Music] there's a lot of really nice and it's not just typical two and four no there's something a little bit different to it that's really nice and we can show you pictures we can open up the back of the guitar there's some there's some cool magic going on in there but now having this passive mid boost thing for your viewers is like a guitar with 10 sounds and 10 usable sounds the thing about this mid boost i don't have to always go to a pedal board to get that extra signal if it's solo time i don't want to break the connection with the audience so if i can keep this and do that without having to nobody pays to see you tap dance they pay to see you play guitar so pull up on that switch and i'll get that extra signal out of it um so we'll be in four yep so and tone up yeah [Music] wow [Music] it really does wow [Music] it's like you've switched pedals to another guitar it's almost like it's it's a it's a little bit of a uh a tone stack shift it's a little more that mid-range woody sort of tone yeah but boy it smacks the front of the amplifier we designed the pickups ourselves at yamaha but german silver base plates form varwire we make them like the real deal yeah trapeze tail piece that's actually spring-loaded so if you're a jeff beck fan and you like smacking that bridge a little bit i can get a little hand tremolo out of it if i want to raise those screws up i'll actually loosen string tension if your players play at 11 loosen that bring that bridge up and you'll get a little bit more tactile play like the wrap around deal you know you can get a little spring as you come down the stainless steel fronts really so i'm going to give you stainless steel frets at the 799 price point and then also at the 1999 this is made in japan custom shop hard shell case all of that stuff but for 7.99 steel frets all of that electronic magic the carbon fiber in the neck we're going to give you the gig bag for it we're making lefties as well so we're going to do a lefty at 549 and then a lefty in that middle position as well so we're just having a great time there's three so there's three like stages of this guitar and and this is the top of the heap that's the top of the okay yeah nice oh man people are gonna love this but you're still getting all of the the like the bass foundation features for the most it's the one thing the indonesian guitar is so good it's almost over engineered it's that it's that good um there's a couple of differences that we do on the japanese one so we do a wood reforming treatment called ira or initial response acceleration it's a way of taking the wood fibers and through barometric pressure trying to get the wood to be a little bit more cohesive you do it on the japanese acoustic guitars the billy sheehan bass the mike stern guitar yeah it's just a way of kind of making that wood so the customer doesn't have to wait 20 years for that guitar to get played in it sounds almost like it's the best it's going to be that day boy that's really cool and i think what's important when we've seen this even this is a small show with you know your all your favorite youtubers and people like that the we've been able to really have nice one-on-one face time with companies and i'm learning things like i think i know kind of a lot i'm in this space a lot i i've known you for a while known a bunch of other manufacturers but like the technology that goes into wood and to make a guitar have that connection that you're looking for is pretty remarkable um and each company that i meet with they're doing something that like legit like engineers on a high level are taken care of it's wild and it's kind of neat that you know yamaha is a technical company right we do technology we have guys in white lab coats as i say but this is the marriage of the guys in the lab coats with the guys in the wood shop is how do we make those two things kind of come together to make the best possible instrument for for the for the viewer you know this is this is science this is really just mere woodworking there's right there's science and technology that goes into it there's technology in here the reason we went to stainless steel fred is as you're as your viewers know that yeah you're never gonna have to recrown them right you're never gonna have to replace them most in nashville where you live you go to any good guitar shop they're gonna charge you four to five hundred dollars to put them in so what we're going to do 799 for the standard version it's going to have stainless steel of the gig bag and all those bells and whistles that you need but you can still pay your rent at the end of the month and at yamaha we respect your paycheck you work hard for your money i want to give you the most guitar i want to give you more guitar than what that price tag says so that's the one thing about that 799 refstar it's like it's it's a thousand dollar guitar right that i can only charge 800 bucks for so you guys can pay your rent you can take your girl out for for a dinner but i can always have a nice guitar now if you're if you're if people want the made in japan one call your local store we're here at sweetwater i think they've got them in inventory we've got a dedicated that blue uh model over there is their dedicated color so this is kind of the place to kind of come and do this stuff you know the sales counselors take good care of you they're well trained we spend lots of hours on the phone and on video with them doing just what we did with you feature action and benefit so this is kind of what we just it's great for me because you know um my buddy robbie calvo plays these all the time we do love robbie here um and i said you know i've never gotten like a proper demo of the rep star and plenty of you have been asking about it and i see chris buck playing him all the time he's ridiculously great guitar player and wonderful guy so and the p90 i probably get more questions about p90s than anything because it's it's a little you know if you're not a historian if you haven't played a lot of stuff you're you're starting out you're probably going single coil or humbucker because you might not understand what you can get out of these and i've been a p90 player for years i have an old casino um you know a junior yeah and and i love p90s because they're a fat single coil and they can they can cut through more than the average you know you know three pickup singles i always think that a p90 gives me a better definition and especially like if you guys like to play with a lot of crunch and a lot of gain think of the you know green day for the last 15 years has been billy joe's been playing a les paul jr through a marshall and to me to my ear i get i can hear every string in the chord that he plays and that's the clarity that you're going to get out of this kind of an overwound single coil so it's like a fat telly or something yeah i mean i have a 63 i have a 63 sg junior and i will i will die with that guitar because it's my number one recording guitar for laying the foundation parts down you know and this i'm working on this really interesting blues record where it's some obscure stuff that i've done my way cover tunes right and a lot of the solos were neck pickup p90 you know almost all of them that tommy era of the who yep that's true oh my god that's that sound is just it's crunch but it's clarity so that's the benefit of getting our p90 pickup and then by adding the mid boost circuit it really can almost mimic that humbucking sort of tone with a little more meat on the bone too because i'm getting a little bit more signal out of it and there's no battery on board so we're doing it passively there's no active electronics it's all via magic it's really but i mean if you love i mean this is this isn't this isn't a strat it's it's rounder it's a little meatier but then but it's clarity yeah but then if i want to go [Music] love it my brother great to see you thank you so much for talking to my folks you guys ruled he rules yamaha rules see how we put this all together not scripted this is right off of his brain all right thanks so much thanks guys we'll see you so i got to thank andy from yamaha for sitting down with me he's a character he's a wonderful guy and i promise i'll get this guitar back to you andy as soon as possible we're going to do a couple more videos with it just because some folks have been asking about this one so much probably do a live stream probably do a p90 shootout should be a lot of fun and if you're enjoying this video and you want to watch some more and you want to be alerted please subscribe to the channel that would sure help me out a bunch and hit the thumbs up button too because that helps get these videos out into the the youtube universe my website's called workingclassguitar.com check it out for a bunch of free stuff like the track you heard and feel free to always ask me a question leave a comment or shoot me an email through any number of social media platforms i'd love to hear from you all right until next time we'll talk about more gear or another thing you can do on your instrument to become a better player i'm cory see

Channel: CoreyCongilio

Views: 80,690

Keywords: yamaha revstar, blues guitar, beginner blues guitar, beginner guitar lessons, stevie ray vaughan, bb king, eric clapton, joe bonamassa, albert king, albert collins, gary moore, fender, gibson, paul reed smith, PRS, John Mayer, Two Rock, yamaha revstar p90, yamaha revstar standard, yamaha revstar professional, yamaha revstar rss20, yamaha revstar rse20, yamaha guitars, revstar

Id: SX6K_aTft-g

Length: 26min 4sec (1564 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 23 2022