Tsuneyki "Tony" Yamamoto is one of "those guys." He is so much a luthier in the traditional sense considering that a luthier is like an airplane designer as they both work within the confines of their individual item but they are constantly looking for ways of making a better sound or to cut through the air better.

Tony is not the kind of luthier to mindlessly search for something different just to make hay with his uncanny ability to extrapolate a new design component. He thinks holistically and the instrument is suspended in his mind like a surgeon operates knowing the whole human system.

His dream, as a teenager in Japan, was to build guitars so he hung around music shops playing and thinking that he'd never be able to own any of these guitars. Finally he did purchase a guitar made by a local Japanese craftsman and to this day he recollects the information he got from this man and still owns the guitar and uses it as a comparison. It must be a magnificent guitar!

From Harry Fleishman, Tony learned a neck and top alignment based on three precise points. Tony uses a special double-graphite rod for stability and with these two items a guitar can be adjusted easily even after the guitar has been played hard for years.

The Yamamoto also uses a Mortis and Tenon neck joint, adopted from William Cumpiano's hardware, which is basically a bolt-on joint. Also used by Taylor, although their system is different, it has been a reliable neck joint and easily adjusted unlike the dovetail or Spanish foot.

The Yamamoto bracing system varies but the usual brace is a double-X. Most cogent is that Tony has developed a prototyping system where he can remove the back of a guitar in process and substitute a different bracing system to compare.

Yamamoto uses a healthy headstock angle for tension and a zero fret. There is also, what Gibson called, a volute behind the weakest part of the guitar, the neck, to protect the guitar from accidental falls.

The Yamamoto guitar is a cross between a scientific approach and the approach of a fine listener. Many guitars that are approached from a scientific standpoint, most particularly the Kasha system, leave out the second quality that I place on Tony's approach; an ear. In theory the Kasha system should be the guitar of perfection but in reality it sounds like a very big man with a cold.

Tony's guitars are remarkable for their openness and volume. I've played almost a dozen, ones on the walls of his exclusive dealer, Fine Fretted Friends in Livermore, California, and have been in the store when Tony walks in with an experimental instrument such as the braceless top he borrowed from Paul Robinson a classical guitar builder. I've played customer owned guitar, one with a sitka top and cocobolo back and sides that made me realize the cogency of that wood combination. I am thinking of ordering that very guitar from Yamamoto.

I have also seen several Yamamotos that are over a year old and they were both remarkable in their openness. These guitars do open radically if played. Particularly of note was the sitka/Indian. Some luthiers say there ate two kinds of rosewood, Indian and everything else. This means that Brazilian, Bolivian, Madagascar, Indonesian and others sound the same and Indian has a distinctive sound. The above-mentioned guitar evidenced this, which, to me, was the best sounding steel string guitar for jazz I've ever heard.

Yamamoto Guitars come in two flavors: The OM-Y and the Talus. The OM-Y is similar to an orchestra guitar but deeper like an auditorium. The sound is much more full and colorful than an orchestra but the OM-Y is just a loud. The Talus has a new and pleasing shape but in sound is similar to the OM-Y.

The Yamamoto is the best and most affordable handmade steel string guitar I've seen. As a classical guitarist I have a different approach to fingerstyle guitar and the Yamamoto has the same characteristics of a classical guitar; wide color palette, even range and balanced, easy to bring voices out of an arpeggio, loud and forceful while being sweet and demure.

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