The A-Team

Yamaha continues to tackle the age-old electro dilemma with its update to the popular A Series. Has it found the answer?

- Rob Laing

Any acoustic player wanting to play on stage will know it can lead to a fundamental compromise. There is traditionally a gap between how we enjoy the sound of our guitars and the way they’re represented plugged in. Piezos, transducers and magnetic sound hole pickups are all avenues players can take, based on their tastes and needs, but none can represent the character and tonal detail of their guitars like a large diaphragm condenser mic. It’s the recordist’s choice, but one that presents too many obstacles of feedback and positioning in live performance to be practical. Even piezo/ mic blend systems can fall victim to the issue.

So where now in the search for improved acoustic tone? Enter Yamaha, a leader in stage-ready acoustic technology for decades – and in an update to its A Series, it may have just offered us a very desirable solution. This is a series with a clear aim: “natural amplified tone”. So the A3R and flagship Japanese A5R model are built for stage use, but the considerations to general playing enhancement made here go further than the  new SRT2 (Studio Response Technology) pickup system. We’ll get to that in due course.

Both tops have been treated with Yamaha’s ARE (Acoustic Resonance Enhancement), its take on torrefaction, to offer more vintage voiced warmth. If the effect of torrefaction on a model’s tone is sometimes hard to distinguish, the rich dark gold hue of the A5R’s vintage natural solid Sitka spruce top suggests the process played a cosmetic role, too.