Yairi WY1TS: A Guitar that Demands the Spotlight | Stage Series Folk/OM Acoustic Demo & Review

Video Transcript

Hey James G here with Tarpley Music in Fort Worth, Texas but remember you can always find us online right here at tarpleymusic.com. Today I've got an amazing high-end Alvarez guitar, a Yairi WY1TS. Now confession, I've been saying Yar-e for pretty much my whole entire career but apparently that is not it so I'm going to keep working on how to really pronounce that but anyway these are amazing guitars.

So it's the Alvarez line but by the famous luthier Yairi who unfortunately passed in 2014 but they're still the higher-end models of guitars that Alvarez has and we are now carrying them. They are awesome!

So this is a solid double A western red cedar top. With a lot of Cedar tops traditionally be on nylon guitars for that nice warmy tone. I love when they're on steel strings. I actually have a Seagull that has a cedar top and I really like the warmth of that in combination with East Indian Rosewood which is going to give you a full body of sound, so full body warm. However, you'll notice there's a lot of great sparkly highs in this that cut really really well.

As an OM style or a folk-style body, it is a one-piece mahogany neck with an extended neck joint and the it is X bracing. It's a FS2, so it's forward shifted. It forward shifts that X up a little bit with the sound hole so you get a lot of resonance coming down from here to allow that wood to move. And as a rosewood fretboard, real bone nut, real bone saddle. The bridge pins are ebony and of course, there's this gorgeous fade on this thing, the purpling and the Binding with all this abalone, it's just really gorgeous. So not doesn't sound gorgeous but it looks gorgeous.

It is a 25-inch scale length, so pretty pretty normal. This scale length is from the nut here to the Bridge measurement and this is a Rosewood bridge and it's called a direct-coupled and you can see or it's almost like a bi-level where you get a really nice great sharp angle down where it goes into the edge pins. A lot of sustain out of that thing.

And then lastly, we have the LR bags. This is a stage Pro element pickup but it's got three-band EQ. It does have a phase knob as well as a built-in tuner and it does have a notch filter. So if you're getting a little bit of feedback, maybe from a monitor if you're gigging or something, a lot of times that notch filter, you can move it and cut that out. So it's just great. This thing is killer. I can't wait to be able to play it for you.

So we're gonna mic it several different ways. We're also going to do some direct playing and some combination of that, and we're gonna do the best we can to kind of give you a representation of what this guitar sounds like.

DEMO

So we've heard the guitar on its own with some mics and direct. I want to know what it'd sound like in a mix with some music I did earlier. Alright, hit it boys.

In the Mix

Takeaways

All right, so a lot of times in conversation with guitars, especially acoustics, a lot of people will talk about oh, a lot of times you're getting a lot of high, freely prettiness with your higher-end instruments and that's really kind of it. And so there's an argument to be had there. But sometimes you get all the actual good woods and all the prettiness and everything, it all together and this is really what this guitar does. And at a price point, it's amazing to have the kind of inlays and purpling and the rosette and everything that it has along with the parts that it's using. I would easily put this up with a lot of three to four thousand dollar guitars on our wall. This is under three.

Just an incredible guitar to play. I've loved listening to this. It even sounds good in the in-ears. I mean, it's just so... I'm really excited to have people hear it and comment back on what they think. And the feel of it is just so comfortable. I can't explain. I can only explain how comfortable it is to me, but I can't do that for you. So you have to come down to Tarpley and put this thing in your lap and play it.

I would easily put this up with a lot of those really high-end guitars because that's exactly what it is. I mean, you get the best woods. You've got all the frilliness that makes it even more spectacular just to look at. And though generally speaking, I'm not really one of those guys, I don't really look at the frilliness and the color of certain instruments. I really could just play them probably blindfolded and pick a guitar because I go really off feel and sound and everything else.

But you have a guitar like this sitting on the stand in your house, every time you walk by, you're going to want to pick it up. Okay, and so that's a huge thing, especially people who want a really nice high-end guitar because they really want to learn that acoustic guitar, you're going to want to pick it up every time you see it. Not to mention that if you're doing videos or if you're an active musician who has photos and stuff like that, this stuff matters, right? So you get this really killer-sounding guitar that plays like a million bucks, looks like a million bucks, and it's really a win-win and you're under three grand. So this is really an amazing guitar, and I love just the regular Alvarez line as well.

In fact, my Workhorse acoustic is an Alvarez that I'm playing most of the time under a thousand dollars, and it's been great for me. So, man, this thing's just unreal. The rosewood, not just the look of it, it's just beautiful, but you feel a lot of the round roundness of the sound, and it's really the warmth of the cedar top. And the fretboard is so comfortable. So, this is really exciting, and I really hope more people will get down here as we get more of these guitars in and the models. But man, what a what a great One-Stop Acoustic Shop to get every gig that you think of. And that's why I try to play a little bit of kind of everything because I don't think there's anything it can't handle. Probably a million bucks in the studio.

So anyway, I hope you got some great information. I hope you enjoyed listening to this thing. It is absolutely amazing. Come down and see us if you can. If you did enjoy the video, of course, hit like there. And if you haven't subscribed to the channel after watching this, then you need to subscribe to the channel after watching this. And just hit subscribe there for us and join us. And of course, if you'd like to know as we drop more videos, we do it all the time. It is our full-time gig. So you can just turn on notifications and we will see you on the next one.