Yamaha Revstar II Standard RSS02T

About the Yamaha Revstar II Standard RSS02T

This Standard-tier Revstar II pairs a maple-topped, chambered mahogany body with a carbon-reinforced three-piece mahogany neck, the chambering a product of Yamaha's Acoustic Design process introduced across the entire Revstar range in the 2022 relaunch to shape resonance, cut weight and improve balance rather than being a cost-saving shortcut. Two Yamaha-designed VP5 P90-style single-coils with Alnico 5 magnets handle pickup duty, wired through a 5-way switch that goes well beyond a standard 3-way Les-Paul-style layout: positions 1, 3 and 5 give the expected neck, blended and bridge tones, while positions 2 and 4 engage out-of-phase wiring for thinner, hollowed-out textures a conventional P90 guitar simply doesn't offer. The master tone control doubles as a push-pull switch for Yamaha's Focus Switch, a passive boost circuit built around an added transformer in the signal path that rolls off treble while pushing bass and lower-mids forward - functionally similar to swapping in overwound pickups, but available instantly without ever touching a cable.

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Sound character of the Yamaha Revstar II Standard RSS02T

The VP5 P90-style pickups deliver articulate barre chords and lead lines with a touch more midrange honk than a typical single-coil, well suited to funk riffing and slide blues alike, while running moderately lower output and less noise than classic P90 units for an overall cleaner, clearer voice. Flipping to the 5-way switch's out-of-phase positions (2 and 4) thins and hollows the tone out dramatically compared to the standard neck/blend/bridge settings, adding a genuinely distinct textural option most P90 guitars lack entirely. Pulling the Focus Switch reshapes everything on top of that: treble rolls back, bass and lower mids push forward, and sustain increases in a way that mimics overwound pickups - a tonal shift best suited to high-headroom amps, since smaller amps can turn that added low-end push into mud rather than the intended fuller voice.

What owners of the Yamaha Revstar II Standard RSS02T say

Reception is strongly positive, with a Premier Guitar review calling the guitar a great deal overall and suggesting it's capable of being the only stage guitar a player needs, thanks to its wide tonal range spanning crystal-clear cleans to punchy power chords. The articulate, lower-noise voicing of the VP5 pickups draws specific praise relative to vintage P90s. The one real point of friction noted is that players attached to the rawer grit of traditional P90s may find this guitar's clarity-focused voicing trades away some of that character in exchange for its added versatility - a deliberate design trade-off rather than an inconsistency.

Playability & handling of the Yamaha Revstar II Standard RSS02T

A Premier Guitar review called the guitar an absolute dream to hold, crediting the satin neck finish with making it feel faster and more precise under the hand, and found it stays balanced with no neck dive despite weighing around 8 pounds. Compared directly against a Gibson SG Classic, the reviewer found the Revstar slightly heavier but noticeably more balanced and comfortable over extended playing sessions. Jumbo stainless-steel frets are built to weather years of road use before showing wear, while the glossy body finish paired with a satin neck back gives a deliberately different feel between the two surfaces rather than uniform gloss throughout.

Recommended accessories & strings for the Yamaha Revstar II Standard RSS02T

The Focus Switch works best paired with amps that offer plenty of headroom - smaller or more compressed amps can turn the bass-and-mid boost into unwanted mud rather than the intended fuller, more sustained lead tone. Beyond that, the pickup and switching versatility makes this a genuinely pedal-friendly platform across a wide range of genres rather than one tuned narrowly for a single style.

Technical data for the Yamaha Revstar II Standard RSS02T

Price history for the Yamaha Revstar II Standard RSS02T

Cheapest seen: 570 EUR  ·  Most expensive seen: 846 EUR

The history of the Yamaha Revstar II Standard RSS02T

Revstar launched in December 2015 as Yamaha's first entirely new electric guitar series in more than a decade, styled after the café racer motorcycle culture of 1960s Tokyo and London and drawing specific visual inspiration from Yamaha's own XS650 motorcycle - a genuinely cross-disciplinary design exercise for a company that builds both instruments and motorbikes. The original lineup won both the iF Design Award and a Red Dot "Best of the Best" award for its styling. This RSS02T belongs to the Revstar II generation, a complete 2022 relaunch that restructured the series into three tiers - entry-level Element, this mid-tier Standard, and the Japan-made Professional - and, notably, extended chambered-body construction via Yamaha's Acoustic Design process across every tier rather than reserving it for the top of the range.

About Yamaha as a manufacturer

Background on Yamaha's unusually broad position as both a major instrument maker and a motorcycle manufacturer is documented elsewhere in this project's Pacifica research rather than repeated here - a detail directly relevant to this guitar, since Revstar's entire design language traces back to that motorcycle heritage.

Notable players & recordings featuring the Yamaha Revstar II Standard RSS02T

No verified, model-specific signature-player association was found for this guitar. The broader Revstar series was developed with input from professional guitarists and industry experts worldwide during its design process, but without a specific named-artist signature tie to this model.