Yairi - GYM72CE

In the small town of Kani, nestled in the hills north of Nagoya, Japan, lies the renowned K. Yairi guitar factory. They have been crafting guitars here for over 80 years.

Alvarez and Yairi have enjoyed an uninterrupted 55-year partnership in producing exquisite guitars, made by hand, from naturally seasoned woods with an unwavering commitment to quality and design. Every neck is spoke shaved by hand, braces are carved, and tops are tuned to perfection. The attention to detail and quality of the build are impeccable.

Kazuo Yairi and his loyal team of luthiers created an incredibly efficient and innovative workshop. Being able to work with such a lineage of master builders is very rare. Some of the luthiers have been at Yairi for over 50 years. Their skills and experience are shared with younger luthiers to form a multi-generational team who have chosen guitar building as their livelihood and dedicated their working lives to the craft. Our guitars are the result of the close collaboration between Alvarez & Yairi—a sharing of knowledge and an obsessional approach to excellence.

2024 is an exciting year as we introduce a new voicing and tonal response in our Honduran and Masterworks Series. This voicing is designed to widen the tonal palette, and to bring a more robust, clear bass response and a compelling openness to the guitar.

We call our new bracing system FST6. It is similar in shape and placement to our previous FST2 system, but the braces are lighter in weight. In the quest to strike the perfect balance between strength and vibration, FST6 delivers with a heightened richness we found impossible not to embrace.