Bill Alston

The SA-RR Custom




A catalogue extract does anyone read Japanese?


This guitar with a passing resemblance to a Rickenbacker was made in Japan from October 1989 to 1991. It features in the Japanese catalogues and appears to have been produced for the Japanese market only. and launched at 100,000 yen.

Some details

Produced in only two colours black and vintage cherry the body is semi hollow and built of mahogany. The set neck is also mahogany with a 22 fret rosewood fretboard. 628mm scale length chrome fittings and a flat adjustable bridge see photographs. The electronics are a bit unusual the pickups are said to be active and look like one humbucker and one single coil, it has the addition of a piezo pickup. The controls are 1 volume 1 tone which has a push push feature for switching the piezo on and off. There is a toggle switch for coil tap and a three way pickup selector switch. The treble and base balance on the piezo is controlled by trim pots located in the battery compartment. It has a 43.5 mm nut and weighs just over 3kgs. I can't find that there are any other SA-RR models other than the custom but if anyone knows of any please let me know.

Update November 2016

I have had an Email from George Elston who is NYGeorge on the Yamaha forum, he tells me that his SARR also has the additional toggleswitch me ntioned below. This is apparently a kill switch, a feature much loved by some metal guitarists and others. It seems therefore that this is probably a factory option or a slight variation in some model or year.

Some pictures

 
 
Above the black one below a vintage cherry model which appears to have an additional toggle switch added presumably aftermarket.
 

Finally a look at some of the electronics and a serial number which as so often doesn't appear to conform to known number systems although if the first two characters are letters not numbers it could indicate August 1990.
 


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