Yamaha AE18

I got the guitar off of ebay from a person in Japan. Someone had sanded the finish and done a very poor job on the top. I hope at some point to refinish with nitrous cellous clear coat. Pick ups are black humbuckers. Body is a big fat jazz box natural finish. Yuners are faded warn yamaha's that I like. Neck is a flamed maple with an ebony fretboard. Frets have a considerable amount of wear. The top appears to me to be spruce. Back and sides are maple. I suppose the entire guitar is laminated.

I like the woody creamy sound of the guitar. It is a jazz box.I have used a Peavey 410. I also have a soldano that I will try at some point. You can get a country sound with the 2 pickups. I prefer the single neck pickup with the tone turned down.

The guitar was made in 1974. It's 32 years old. No cracks but the gold finish is pretty much gone on the tail piece and tuners.It's a heavy well constructed guitar.

32 years old and kicking.

I have tried to find the guitar with the warmth that this guitar has. I owned a carved spruce top Heritage solid maple back, a gretch Duane Eddy and a samick H560. I bought a fullerton L5 copy probably made by Samick that I like alot. That guitar and the Yamaha filla nitch in my collection. The Yamaha is similar to a German arch top. I don't mind. The fret board is ebony and I think that makes a difference in the sound of guitars.I have no intentions of parting with the AE18 since it is exactly what I wanted.

This guitar was made in Japan sometime between 1972 and 1978. The top seems to be one piece of spruce witha maple veneer which gives a sound much closer to a solid spruce than a laminate, but witha little more top end. all the electrics are top quality, the wiring looks like gibson- all braided wire. I bought this guitar second hand and both volume pots were pretty crackly so I've replaced them with push-push pots to give me coil taps and a phase switch. The original bridge was a yamaha tuneamatic type with plastic saddles. This had collapsed so I've replaced it with a solid rosewood one which sounds much better. The frets were very worn and I've had it refretted with Dunlop jumbo frets. It's fantastic now. Everything about it says quality. Yamaha were clearly trying to demonstrate that they could make a guitar as good as a Gibsob L5CES. It's not quite there but not far off. It came with the original Yamaha case which isn't particularly substantial

I'm mostly using it for jazz through a Sessionette 75 and it does everything you would expect a L5CES to do on the neck pickup. The bridge pickup gets close to Gretsch territory for those occasional Setzer moments. The coil taps and phase make it even more versatile and can give a thin cutting fenderish sound for funk rhythm work.

It's extremely well finished, When I bought it it clearly hadn't been looked after for some time but apart from a few little dings it cleaned up beautifully. I think the original bridge was a bad piece of design, but Gibson were doing some similar things at the time. The tailpiece angle wasn't quite right but that's been easily rectified with a little rosewood veneer shim.

This guitar has lasted well for 30 years and I'm sure will be good for at least the same again. I've used it on a lot of gigs and it's never let me down. The strap button on the heel is badly positioned but I hardly ever play it standing up

When I got it I wrote to Yamaha to ask them what they knew about it. It took them 6 months to reply but in the end they were very helpful. Luthiers who have looked at it tell me it has been designed to be easy to work on.

I've been playing for over 30 years, my other main guitars are a hot-rod telecaster, an old 1970s Ovation and a prewar Gibson archtop. I used to run a guitar shop and have handled thousands of guitars. All my guitars have magical properties, This Yamaha is no exception. I'd consider replacing it with something a little less bulky but it would need to be at least as good and guitars this good are hard to find.

- Japanese built full-bodied 17" wide archtop
- Built in the early '70's
- Laminated spruce top
- Laminated clear maple rims and back
- Standard passive 2 humbucker pup/2 vol/2 tone/3 way switch
- Yamaha pups are from JUST before they completely copied Gibson - the adjustment screws are Philips head, not slot head
- blonde finish, although I've also seen sunburst on the net
- tune-O-matic style bridge top on a rosewood trapeze base
- quality cast Japanese Yamaha-branded tuners - like old American Grover Rotomatics
- 25 1/2" scale

the guitar is functionally a Japanese version of the Gibson ES-350 (w/humbuckers) or Tal Farlow, or an old Guild X-500/X-550, and visually an equivalent to a Gibson L-5CES or an old Guild X-500/X-550.

It has gold-plated parts. There was also apparently an AE-12, the same guitar but with chrome-pated parts and simpler inlays.

The guitar is not like the lawsuit-era Ibanez L-5/Johnny Smith style guitars - it refers to the Gibson copy without overtly copying it. The f-holes are distinctly Yamaha as is the tailpiece and the knobs. I believe that Yamaha moved more closely to a Gibson vibe with the AE-1200/1500/2000 series that superceded this model series.

This is a pure jazz box. It is built fairly heavy, which makes it very feedback resistant. The body size allows for plenty of resonance, so getting a "classic" jazz sound is easy. I have set up the instrument with .13 - .56 flatwounds and it works extremely well.

I have played it through very clean amps - Polytone 104, Fender Twin, Ampeg VT-22 for straight-ahead jazz. The sound can only be described as rich and full. It's not a bright or sparkly guitar in its current setup.

The guitar is dead quiet and uses very high quality pots - they feel smooth, almost oil-damped. Interior wiring is all metal-braided. The 3-way switch does not shake or rattle.

The weight and size make it suitable to be played very loud with no feedback and for it to have the jazz tones that it does. Being a deep 17" archtop, it has a full bass range.

I purchased the instrument used. It had light electric roundwound strings on it. I set it up myself with heavy strings. No truss rod adjustment was necessary - it's very stable.

It has no issues whatsoever regarding build quality other than a mild bridge rattle from the saddle retaining wire. This rattle disappeared when I changed strings.

I've heard that the gold plating may wear quickly. This guitar was clearly not played much, and the plating is all intact. I'll have to wait and see how it wears.

I poked around inside and couldn't help but notice some interesting attention to detail. the pickup mounts don't simply screw into the top with little wood screws, like Gibson, but are screwed through the top with longer screws, into little wood blocks glued to the underside of the top. Very clever.

The instrument feels very durable and reliable, and I have used it on live gigs at this point, which is why I'm posting this review. No backup is required.

Not relevant to this guitar, as Yamaha is not currently making instruments like this.
It took me awhile to find information about the guitar, but I did eventually get to an extremely useful resource:

http://www.yamaha.co.jp/product/guitar/eg/database/

Wow. Especially if one understands Japanese.

I have been playing for over 25 years and own or have owned a wide variety of jazz guitars and amps. I had heard of these guitars but had never played one, and was pleasantly surprised by how good it is in all regards.

I think these guitars are relatively hard to find, but they are remarkably inexpensive and offer huge bang-per-buck compared to anything else I've played. I'd strongly recommend searching out one for any players interested in 17" laminated CES-style jazz boxes. I was seriously considering getting a used Gibson Historic Reissue Tal or ES-5 until I found this guitar, and it's every bit as good.

As far as criticisms go, some players might be turned off by its weight, although all of the guitars like this are heavy, this one is a bit heavier than an equivalent Guild or a Gibson, just like the lawsuit-era Ibanez or Aria L-5CES copies. I'm pretty sure the finish is poly, not nitro-cellulose lacquer - although it is excellently applied, this might make finish touch-ups a bit harder. From a construction point of view, the kerfing on the inside is not as pretty as on later Yamahas or on Gibson archtops.

The guitar has a pronounced arch to the top and back, but it is in the German style, which is also fine by me. However, the tone knobs are mounted right on the slope of the arch, and are on differently angled planes fron the volume knobs. this is strange-looking and idiosyncratic, but I find it charming, and it doesn't affect functionality in any way.

This arch-top jazz model was apparently made in Japan between 1972 and 76. Made from maple it has a 20 fret ebony fingerboard with a nut width of 43mm and a scale length of 641mm. Weighing 3.4kg it is fitted with 2 hum-buckers that are switchable and managed via 2 volume and 2 tone controls. This example (serial number 28482) was purchased second-hand in New Zealand in 1993.

The sound is very warm and clean and very quiet thus suiting its intended use as a jazz instrument superbly well. It records directly to the desk with minimum fuss giving excellent results.

While there are some cosmetic flaws in the "gold plated" parts of the instrument - the body and fingerboard is in flawless condition (it was previously owned by a collector who played it only infrequently). It has an excellent action and intonation and performs really well with D'Addario Chromes Flat Wounds 11-50.

This is a much used professional level instrument and it has never given any problems.

I have had no experience of this.

I play professionally and while I own a Martin, a Les Paul Standard plus a hand made classical amongst others - this guitar is used frequently in the jazz environment where it really comes into its own. Coming from a period in Yamaha's history where they were pushing the quality concept (their classical guitars from the early to mid 1970's were also very good) - this is a fine instrument that I'm certainly not intending to part with!