A Japanese Luthiers Half Century Anniversary at the Gorham Brothers

Come join me on a field trip to Syracuse, New York in search of a Yairi…

I have a deep connection to a city that lies adjacent to my home. It happens to be the last stop on the rust belt, known to many as the “salt city”. It’s home to the Great New York State Fair, and is the final resting place for the legendary guitarist Elizabeth Cotten. My hometown of Auburn is just shy of a forty minutes drive west of the fairgrounds and I spent my youth watching Bret Hart wrestle at the War Memorial, to countless weekend trips to the carousel mall with my family. As I grew up I spent most of those impressionable years going to local shows and gigging at the Westcott Community Center, Dinosaur Barbecue, and the frozen tundra known only as the Lost Horizon.

The music community as a whole wasn’t very vibrant. However, there were various scenes with some good things happening over the years. You wouldn’t be out of place while watching a stoner metal outfit play alongside a solo acoustic deadhead at some bar, all while the straight edge hardcore icons play down the block to a sold out community center. Throw a university into the mix and you get a deeply involved city full of hibernating weirdos, looking for anything to pass the time. There’s a silhouette of a troubled skyline enduring the long winter nights, as the streets echo in a cold silence, there are those of us that garner a collection of wonderful and weird old guitars.

There is a place for weirdos such as myself to buy guitars from and that is at Gorham Brothers Music, a family owned and operated music store that was established in 2011. They specialize in used and vintage equipment with some new offerings thrown into the mix now and again, as well as a full service guitar and amplifier repair shop right in store. They even have their own line of custom guitar cabinets (old soul) that are beautiful sounding pieces of furniture, in the vein of what Emperor were doing out of Chicago. I wouldn’t categorize this as the place for lawyers to seek out their next mantle piece, and you’ll understand why when you listen to their band, Engineer.

I had some goals in mind during my trip back home. The first was getting my dad his dream guitar that he saw one day while at Speno’s Music, buying a kick drum pedal for his grandson. He’s been trying to learn for years on and off, struggling to get into a routine. I never really saw myself as much of a great teacher o make him feel comfortable about learning. I am like him in a lot of ways so I knew that all it might take is for him to have the guitar he dreamed to keep hi inspired to keep practicing. His main guitar now is a Guild X-175 Manhattan special in fjord green that is sporting a bigsby vibrato, and it rips.

After trading in an old guitar we had kicking dust for his new Guild I felt inspired to unload another one that I no longer for something that would be used by us both. I was looking for a great sounding acoustic to leave at their house to record with while visiting home and for my dad to familiarize learning on acoustic as well as his electric.

I remember friends raving about how great Yairi’s are during my days of working at the Guitar Center on Erie boulevard, just down the road from the Gorham brothers. I recently found some inspiration after I stumbled upon a great interview that Premier Guitar did with Ben Chasny (of Six Organs of Admittance). He plays a WY-1 model acoustic/electric that was originally designed for Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. If those two references do nothing for you then it’s also worth mentioning that it’s the only acoustic guitar Joe Bonamassa plays live. Now you better be convinced.

Sadly, there were none to be found in central New York. However, there were similar models for sale over at Ish Guitars, which is a high-end boutique shop also in the area. So I set up an appointment with the team over there at one of the top ten PRS dealers in the world and made my way to Syracuse the following day.

My first stop was for some lunch at the always bustling Brooklyn Pickle, followed by a visit on over to the Gorham Brothers, as a means to distract my wandering mind with more options just in case Mr. Ish was a bust. As I walked through the doors, I immediately felt fulfilled by that familiar, warm, and calming feeling that you get from the smell of freshly roasted coffee, right before the caffeine kicks in (If you find yourself in town, the only cup of coffee you’ll need is from Recess).

Their inventory was plentiful, and as a result my brain needed my body to pace around the store a few times in order to take it all in. After I settled down, I landed back where I started, with a wall full of acoustics by my side. Bobby, one of the three brothers came around at just the right moment to let me know that I could grab anything down that I wanted to play and if there was anything I was looking for to let him know. To which I replied the following…

Hey, thanks! Do you have any Yairi Alvarez’s by chance?
Brad: WE DO! It’s right over here on the wall, it’s from 1979 and sounds great.

cue the excitement…

My fingers danced with death as I tried to find it on the wall. When I finally took it down and strummed the first few chords on it I knew that I had stumbled onto special. The sound in my head was exactly what I was hearing in my ears. A warm, yet deep tone as every note hits in uniform, while filling out the many oscillating vibrations of dead wood, resonating beyond thin coats of vintage lacquer. Bobby then gave me all the details and history of the previous owner, which was very helpful because I had never seen or heard of this particular model before. That’s part in due to the fact that there are only 900 of these in existence, this one being number 167 of the batch.

What’s the story with this guitar?

The year is 1979, and it was the 50th anniversary for a particular guitar factory nestled up in the hills of northern Japan, in the town of Nagoya. The late Kazuo Yairi was one of the finest and most successful luthiers of his time as he spent half a century designing and building Alvarez-Yairi guitars. As it goes, the only way to celebrate such a milestone is to build something unique and special for the few that are privileged enough to experience them.

The result was a Limited Edition DY-50 dreadnought, handmade with a solid cedar top and burled mahogany back and sides. The only cedar top guitars that I had played previously to this one were Seagulls. I remember them sounding great for the money but I could never get past the peg-head design. That WY-1 model made for Bob Weir is also made up of a cedar top and mahogany back and sides, so I was getting closer to that sound with this DY-50. The other options down the road at Ish were made of all solid sitka spruce on top with rosewood back and sides.

My approach to buying:

Some of the main factors for me when deciding on a new guitar are as follows:

1. Do I want to put it down and grab something else immediately?
2. Do I find myself going back to it multiple times when trying to avoid it?
3. How many minutes or hours have I spent playing this guitar?
4. Did any new ideas, progressions, or songs come out of it?

If all of those check off then it’s time to pay up and figure out what needs to happen in order to keep things easily managed in life. I brought a guitar with me that I was willing to trade in. It was an early 2000’s Carvin DC-400 that was custom ordered, directly from the catalog by two loving parents of a young shredder obsessed with Dream Theater. Luckily for me that phase didn’t really stick and I quickly started playing more reasonable guitar with less switches and cleaner pickups.

The brothers were stoked on the Carvin which made me feel better considering it was conceived during an awkward phase during my musical journey. They’re incredible guitars, all handmade with impressive wood grains that were selected for the fastest hands on the west coast. But before I was going to commit to anything, I needed to stop by Ish and play the other guitar that I was interested in. I knew that if I hadn’t done so that the doubt would have wandered around in front of my mind for far too long, and that’s no good for anybody.

Boutique vs. Vintage?

I hopped in the truck and headed down the road to my appointment with the guitar doctor. I was a little early, but I figured someone was probably there. I hit the buzzer and after waiting for a few moments I was let into the showroom floor. I was ushered in by who I assumed was the owner, sporting some big bluetooth headphones and a shiny new watch. He reminded himself of the Carvin trade-in that we discussed over email, but forgetting what it was for exactly. They appear to be very busy over there, which is always good sign for business. But there was no smell of freshly roasted coffee that I could sense, and therefore that calming vibe I previously had down the road was gone.

He showed me to the wrong guitar at first, which was an Alvarez-Yairi master-built version of the same model. After he grabbed the b-stock standard in the back I immediately knew that this guitar was not for me, even before the first note was played. It felt to new and when I did finally strum it the neck was way to thin for my liking. The guitar was setup like you’d expect a new guitar to play; stiff as a dead dog but to factory specifications nonetheless. I responded to his lower off for a trade with a pleasant decline as their guitar was just not meant to be. He did offer to set it up to my “playing style” which was nice of him until he began the upsell phase of his routine, probably late to realize that my carhartt pockets were not deep enough as I was making my way out the door.

I went back to where I felt comfortable doing business and the trade was a done deal. When you’re looking for that new guitar in your life you can’t be inpatient and buy what you think you might need all the time. It takes moments of deeper understanding and trusting in your instincts, but most importantly it helps to play all different styles, letting yourself decipher the good from bad.

I am certain that this Yairi DY-50 will live the rest of its days in the comfort of my home for my father and I both to learn from. And when I am his age, I will look back fondly at this steel string stinger, observing its many signs of wear and tear, as my eyes are reflecting to me in a glare. I’ll think back on all of the good times spent gathered around a melody, with an old stare still glistening from the memories of a cherished past, and for the finish that is yet to be endured.

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1979 Alvarez Yairi Limited Edition DY-50 Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar Specifications:

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Album Reviews

sources:

• alvarez guitars – https://alvarezguitars.com/yairi/
• gorham brothers music – https://www.gorhambrothersmusic.com
• older dy-50 reverb listing – https://reverb.com/item/4856990-1979-alvarez-yairi-limited-edition-dy-50-dreadnought-acoustic-guitar-with-case
• ish guitars – https://ish.guitars/collections/acoustic-1/products/alvarez-yairi-fy70ce-standard-folk-cutaway-natural-b-stock
• ben chasny interviews, premier guitar – https://www.premierguitar.com/artists/guitarists/ben-chasny /// https://www.premierguitar.com/artists/ben-chasny-six-of-everything
• “the amazing story of Yairi guitars” by j.p. cormier – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALoNv55QHAc