Alvarez-Yairi FY-95 Acoustic Guitar with direct coupled bridge

guitarz.blogspot.com:

We've seen Alvarez guitars here on Guitarz before. Remember the Dana Scoop?

I'm always a fan of wacky ideas. Sometimes they amount to nothing more than gimmick, other times they can be revolutionary. I like that people keep thinking and pushing forward

I have to admit that the coupled bridge on this Alvarez-Yairi is very intriguing to me. I've never played one so i cannot speak to it's quality. I suspect that since Kazou Yairi's name is attached it must be of some level of quality. I have repaired a number of lifted bridges in my time so I can see an immediate advantage.

Has anyone played one before? How was it?

R.W. Haller






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1990s Alvarez Successor - a lesser-known guitar from the company who like taking unexpected chunks out of their bodies

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You may remember the Alvarez Scoop guitars which had an extended lower cutaway which actually passed beneath the strings as if threatening to bisect the guitar body in two. Here we see a lesser known model from the same company, the Alvarez Successor. Once again, it has a big chunk taken out of the body - this time the wood has been banished from behind the bridge/locking trem. Whether this is in any way beneficial to the performance of the guitar, I really couldn't say. But then it is a hangover from the pointy guitar excesses of the later 1980s when image seemed far more important than practicality.

Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of US $499.

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Alvarez Dana Scoop Nashville, Telecaster-inspired guitar with extreme cutaway

guitarz.blogspot.com:

We've looked at these mid-1990s Alvarez Dana Scoop guitars before (here and here) but the guitar featured in this eBay auction is the first that I have seen of the less common Telecaster-inspired Nashville model.

Made in Korea, the guitar features Alvarez's own "designed by EMG" passive pickups and is finished in a very fetching translucent blonde that to my eyes is reminiscent of a Fender Mary Kaye finish. Note that the scoop cutaway is not quite as radical as on the other guitars in the Scoop range and only extends beneath four strings as opposed to all six.

This guitar is curently listed on eBay with a start bid of $499.99 and a Buy It Now price of $599.99, but note that the auction finishes later on today (in 14 hours time at the time of writing).

G L Wilson

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - 10 years and counting!

Alvarez Dana Scoop AE650TRW mid-1990s extreme cutaway guitar wih Tri-Force pickups

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It's funny, these Alvarez Dana Scoop guitars with the most extreme cutaway imaginable were everywhere for a brief period in the mid 1990s and then vanished almost without a trace. I can only assume that the styling dated very quickly and players didn't want to be seen with such guitars. I'll wager there's a lot of these cased up under beds and in attics.

Despite their prolonged absence, a couple of these guitars have turned up on eBay recently. This white example is, to give it its full name, rank and number, an Alvarez Dana Scoop AE650TRW featuring a licensed Floyd Rose trem and TriForce pickups. According to the seller, the "Tri-Force/single coil system [...] produce[s] humbucking, single coil and 2 single coil tones". I guess that means there some series/parallel options in there, as well as coil tapping which is implicit. Of course with no physical space in which to mount a neck pickup, a system such as this is desireable so as to squeeze as many tones as possible out of this guitar.

This guitar is currently being offered for sale on eBay for a not unreasonable $549 (so long as this guitar isn't too mid-1990s for you).

See also this post which generated quite a few readers' comments when we looked at a similar guitar.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Alvarez Dana Scoop

guitarz.blogspot.com:
I was beginning to think I'd dreamt this guitar years ago, because I've been trying to find a photo of one for years to put on this blog and could not find a trace of it. OK, it would have helped if I could have remembered the name of the instrument. I had it in mind it was something like an Aria; it seems that I got the initial letter correct, for it's an Alvarez Dana Scoop with a Modulus graphite neck, and was a model made between 1992 and 1995.

At the time this design was being hailed as the next big innovation in the world of guitars. And then it was never heard of again.

The lower cutaway of this could be described as extreme. The "scoop" cutaway actually extends beneath the strings at the top of the neck. (No room for a neck pickup, you'll notice.) It supposedly enhances the guitar's sustain and resonance properties, and eliminated phase cancellation between the neck and body resonance.

Personally, I would have thought a lot of those qualities could have been enhanced by the use of a graphite neck, rather than the eccentric body design.

I'd like to know where these guitars have been since the mid 1990s? Were they so embarrassing in appearance that they were hidden away never to be seen again?

G L Wilson

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