Revstar
In a market dominated by two major brands – Fender and Gibson – how can Yamaha use its main advantage, agility, to innovate and craft it’s own section of the market.
I was part of the 2 man team tasked to re-think the design strategy of Yamaha Guitars. By talking to key stakeholders in the guitar market such as players, buyers, artist relation managers and reviewers the team completely re-thought the Yamaha guitar development process from the ground up. The new strategy was then put to the test by creating the next generation of guitars in close collaboration with the Yamaha design teams in Japan and LA.
The result – Revstar
To create Revstar the design team spent countless hours talking to players about their influences and inspirations, how they felt about every detail of a guitar from shape, colour and finish combinations to pickups, strings and playability. We delved into their buying journeys, tracking their reactions to different guitars from the first ‘on screen’ discovery right through to the moment they saw the real guitar in store. This was all to get inside the mind of the modern day player to understand how they ticked.
The overwhelming response was the players wanted something just a bit…different. With that came the birth of the Revstar, a guitar which draws it’s inspiration from Yamaha’s motoring history and Cafe Racer motorbikes.
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The result is a lineup of guitars where every detail matters and nothing is left to chance. Every curve, every cutaway and tone knob has been painstakingly crafted to give the player something inspiring, something different.
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