Guitaripedia

Every guitar has a story.

Alvarez

Yairi

Steve Earle traded a pre-war Martin for one, because the Martin wouldn't stay in tune.

The name on the headstock belongs to a music company in St. Louis. The guitar comes from a shop in Kani, Japan, where some of the people at the benches have been there longer than most guitarists have been alive.

Introduced
1970
Type
Acoustic
Class
Production
Read the story · 3 min

All guitarsMore Alvarez

Have a photograph of this guitar? Send a picture

The short version

  1. 1965

    The Alvarez name

    St. Louis Music puts it on Spanish guitars. In Kani, the Yairi family shop gets a new name.

  2. 1970

    The first ones land

    Or 1968, or 1966, depending who you ask. Steve Earle has one in a U.S. shop this year.

  3. 1974

    Earle goes to Nashville

    He'd played his Yairi until then.

  4. 1986

    The bridge

    Kazuo's direct-coupled bridge is filed in Japan. The U.S. patent follows in 1989.

  5. 1991

    Bob Weir's prototype

    The guitar that becomes the WY1, with Weir deeply involved.

  6. 2014

    Kazuo Yairi dies

    In March, at 81. The shop keeps building.

  7. 2018

    The Honduran pile

    Mahogany Kazuo had bought in the mid-1970s turns into a line of guitars.

Side A

A1

The Martin wouldn't hold

  1. Steve Earle has restaurant gigs and a pre-war Martin D-18, which sounds like the start of a very good story until you put a capo on it. The Martin won't stay in tune.

So he trades it. For an Alvarez Yairi.

Earle had a set to play. He kept the Yairi until he went to Nashville in 1974, and then he bought a '57 Gibson J-45 from George Gruhn for $250. Nobody wrote down which Yairi model it was. What matters is that it played in tune when the night needed it to.

A2

A shop that still worked by hand

St. Louis Music had been putting the Alvarez name on Spanish guitars since 1965. Gene Kornblum wanted steel-strings to go under the same name, and he wanted them from a shop that still built by hand. He found one in Kani, in Gifu, north of Nagoya: Kazuo Yairi's.

Kazuo was born in 1932. His father, Gi'ichi, had trained at the Suzuki violin factory and then built violins and classical guitars under the family name. Kazuo took over in 1965, or became president in 1970, depending who you read. One telling has him studying steel-string making in the United States; another says the family wasn't building steel-strings at all when Kornblum came calling, and that this partnership was the first time Yairi made anything but a classical. Those two stories don't have to agree, and they don't.

When the first ones reached America is a three-way argument: 1966, 1968, or 1970. Earle had one in 1970. That much is settled.

A3

Same shop, other badges

Most Alvarez guitars are made in China. The ones with Yairi on the label are not. A Yairi label means Kani. In Europe the same guitars went out as K. Yairi, which is the shop's own badge. S. Yairi is someone else entirely, with no real relationship to these.

The shop is small. Alvarez counts 24 luthiers, four of them masters, with benches held for up to 55 years. Chris Meikle of Alvarez said in 2025 it was 24 or 25, and that two of them had been at one bench for 60. Either way, the person who fits your neck may have been at it since about the time the first ones crossed the Pacific.

For many years they built a solid top over laminated back and sides, on purpose: outer plies of the same wood, the middle ply running the other way. Today's WY1 sheet names East Indian rosewood for the back and doesn't say solid. Some current Yairis say solid. Check the paperwork on the one you're holding.

A Yairi label means Kani.

Flip the record · By the numbers

  • 3

    Launch years on record, 1966, 1968, and 1970. Nobody has a catalog to settle it.

  • 24

    Luthiers in the Kani shop. Ask the man who runs it and he'll say 24 or 25.

  • 55

    Years one luthier has spent at the same bench. Another count says two of them at 60.

  • ~50

    Years the Honduran mahogany seasoned on Kazuo's land before anyone built with it.

Side B

B1

Pins below the saddle

The thing people notice on a Yairi bridge came later. In the 1980s Kazuo set the bridge pins lower than the saddle, so the strings bear down on it harder. Alvarez calls it direct-coupled. It was filed in Japan in November 1986 and granted a U.S. patent in 1989, with St. Louis Music on the paperwork.

So a 1970s Yairi, like Earle's, doesn't have it. That's not a flaw, just a date.

In 1991 Bob Weir was deeply involved in a prototype for a new Yairi, a body size the shop hadn't used before. It became the WY1, and the W is him. Ani DiFranco wrote a lot of songs on a WY1 and built her whole percussive right hand on one. She'd "always played Alvarez," she said. In 2013 Joe Bonamassa's tech had four WY1s on the road, with the electronics they came with.

B2

Kazuo's woodpile

Some of the wood has been waiting almost as long as the luthiers. While spec'ing a guitar for Jack Pearson, the shop turned up a stash of Honduran mahogany billets on land Kazuo owned. The wood dated to the mid-1970s. It had been seasoning for around 50 years. The cache came to light in 2017 and the guitars came in 2018.

Kazuo didn't see that. He died in March 2014, at 81, in Kani or a hospital in Tajimi, depending who you read. The brand had moved owners more than once by then. The benches hadn't moved.

B3

Still taking orders

You can still order a WY1 from Kani. This fall the natural one was backordered. Two dozen people building by hand don't hurry.

Collectors wince at Earle's trade. But he wasn't buying a collectible. He was buying a guitar that would stay in tune under a capo in a restaurant, and it took him all the way to Nashville. The people who build that kind of guitar are still in Kani, some of them at the same bench.

The cast

The people, and the specific guitars, that made the legend.

  • 1970

    Steve Earle

    An Alvarez Yairi, model unpublished

    Traded a pre-war Martin D-18 for it because the Martin wouldn't stay in tune under a capo. Played it until Nashville in 1974.

  • Bob Weir

    The 1991 prototype that became the WY1

    The W in the model name. The guitar was "originally designed for, and with" him, in a body size Yairi hadn't used before.

  • Ani DiFranco

    A pair of WY1 Bob Weir signatures

    Said she'd "always played Alvarez." Wrote a lot of songs on a WY1 and built her percussive right hand on it.

  • Joe Bonamassa

    Four WY1s, 2013

    Carried four on tour with the electronics they came with. Two new WY1-JBs joined him for a 2020 tour.

  • Steve Hackett

    Nylon-string Alvarez by Kazuo Yairi

    A classical, not a WY1. Dated to the 1970s in one telling and 1987 in another. Used on the quieter parts of his Foxtrot replay.

Liner notes

Specs, construction, rarity, value, and every source we used.

Kazuo Yairi’s hand-built acoustics from Kani, badged Alvarez for St. Louis Music — not the import line that shares the name.

Body
Folk/OM. Solid AA Western red cedar top; East Indian rosewood back and sides (the factory sheet does not print “solid” on the back). 400 mm wide, 100 mm at the heel, 125 mm at the base — the same block the DY70CE dreadnought page prints. No inches on that block.
Neck
One-piece mahogany, 50/50 semi-gloss, extended dovetail, 14th-fret join
Fingerboard
Rosewood, 20 frets, 12th-fret abalone inlay
Scale
635 mm / 25" (factory pair). A dealer sheet prints 25.5". Mix flagged. Do not average.
Pickups
LR Baggs Element undersaddle on this Stage guitar. A Yairi with no pickup is a different SKU.
Hardware
Rosewood direct-coupled bridge, ebony pins, Gotoh gold tuners, ivoroid binding, paua purfling
Electronics
LR Baggs StagePro EQ
Finish
Natural satin on this sheet. Sunburst is another current cart.
Nut
Bone, 44 mm / 1 23/32" (factory pair). One dealer sheet prints 1.718". Mix flagged. Do not average.
Open the full research fileConstruction details, the complete player record, production numbers, dated value estimates, and sources

Representative current production = Yairi Stage WY1 (Alvarez factory page). Alvarez calls it a benchmark designed with Bob Weir. Not every Alvarez Yairi. DY is the dreadnought prefix. DYMR70 is a current 12-fret round-shoulder Masterworks dread; Sweetwater’s list has no pickup and says solid aged East Indian rosewood. Artist, Regent, and the Masterworks series announced in 2014 are other factories. K. Yairi is this shop’s own badge. S. Yairi is not this shop. Scale and nut mix factory millimetres with inches — flagged, not averaged. The 400 / 100 / 125 mm block is not converted. The DY70CE’s scale is 648 mm / 25 1/2". Different model.

Construction

The job was a steel-string St. Louis could sell under a name it already owned. Alvarez had been on the company’s Spanish guitars since 1965 (Andertons; Wikipedia). Gene Kornblum wanted the next ones from a shop that still worked by hand: Kazuo Yairi’s, in Kani, Gifu, north of Nagoya.

Kazuo was born in 1932. Vintage Guitar and MMR: his father, Gi’ichi, trained at the Suzuki violin factory, then built violins and classicals as Yairi Musical Instruments. Japanese Wikipedia: a 1962 trip to the United States to study acoustic making; the company renamed Yairi Guitar Co. in 1965; Kazuo president in 1970. Vintage Guitar: he took the business over in 1965, studied steel-string making in the U.S., formed the Yairi Guitar Factory, and began exporting. Andertons, after speaking with Chris Meikle, says the family was not building steel-strings when Kornblum met them. guitarguitar calls the partnership the first time Yairi made anything but a classical. The study trip and the “first steel-string” claim stay separate.

The launch year is three dates. Blue Book: first imported to the U.S. in 1966, produced since 1966. FundingUniverse: 1968, “Alvarez-Yairi acoustic guitars are introduced,” the year Kornblum met Yairi through a Japanese trading partner. Andertons: years of design, then the first Alvarez Yairi guitars in the USA in 1970. guitarguitar: the steel-string range “born” in 1970. Earle had one in a U.S. shop that year. This plate starts in 1970. No catalog scan was in hand. A 2026 page’s “55-year partnership” and “over 80 years” in Kani, and the January 2025 60th (Masterworks OMs, 60 each), are the family shop and the brand’s 1965 birthday. Not a Yairi census.

Alvarez’s “Why Alvarez” page: 24 luthiers, four masters, benches up to 55 years. Meikle told The Acoustic Shoppe in 2025 it was 24 or 25, two of them 60 years at one bench. Wikipedia: the same guitars also shipped as K. Yairi in Europe. Same shop, other badge. Artist and Regent are the volume lines. Laureate is a separate range on that same Andertons list, not this shop’s badge. Premier Guitar, 8 January 2014, is when Alvarez announced Masterworks as its own series. Andertons keeps those ranges apart and says most Alvarez guitars are made in China. A Yairi label is Kani. A plain Alvarez label is not. The Twelfth Fret: S. Yairi, another Sadao, has “no real relationship” to these guitars. That shop licensed the Lowden (lowden-o-25).

The table is today’s Stage WY1, not a 1970 box. Dealers call it a cutaway. The factory key features say Folk/OM and do not print the word. The back splits by era. J. Hayes, Yairi brand manager, told Tarpley Music in 2023 that for many years the shop built a solid top over laminate back and sides on purpose — outer plies the same wood, center ply the other way. Blue Book’s early-1980s DY47 is laminated mahogany. The WY1 sheet names East Indian rosewood and does not say solid. Sweetwater’s DYMR70 does.

The bridge people notice is late. In the 1980s Kazuo set the pins lower than the saddle so the strings bear down harder (Alvarez). U.S. patent 4,807,508, Kazuo Yairi of Kani; Japanese priority 25 November 1986; U.S. filing 17 November 1987; granted 28 February 1989; assignee St. Louis Music Supply. A 1970s Yairi does not have it. Blue Book’s mid-1970s DY sheets still say ebony bridge. This WY1’s bracing is FST2, forward-shifted, asymmetric tone bars. FST6 shows up in 2024 on the Honduran and Masterworks series (2026 Yairi page). A Walmart listing prints FST6 on a WY1. Retailer line, not this factory sheet.

Honduran on the later guitars is a pile Kazuo had already bought. The DYM60HD page: billets on land he owned, seasoning around 50 years, turned up while the shop was spec’ing a guitar for Jack Pearson. Wikipedia, citing Alvarez’s 1 April 2018 note: cache in 2017, the line in 2018, wood from the mid-1970s. No board-foot count.

LOUD Technologies bought St. Louis Music in 2005. The guitar shop stayed in St. Louis; headquarters talk moved to Woodinville (Blue Book; Wikipedia). Mark Ragin brought management and distribution back in 2009. Meikle’s revival starts in 2011 (Andertons). Vintage Guitar, 2014: the Kani company was the primary manufacturer of Alvarez and Alvarez-Yairi, “which are now owned by St. Louis Music.” The brands, not the benches. Kazuo died 5 March 2014. Vintage Guitar and MMR say Kani. Japanese Wikipedia says a Tajimi hospital, 8:14 a.m., multiple organ failure. NAMM’s page prints 3 March 2014.

Players

Bob Weir. The current WY1 page calls it a benchmark “originally designed for, and with Bob Weir” — the W — and a body size Yairi had not used when it launched. Harmony Central, 30 January 2006: the WY1BW replicates the 1991 prototype he was “deeply involved” in. Due April 2006, MSRP $2,799: cutaway folk, figured coral rosewood, solid hand-scalloped cedar, ebony board, 12th-fret lightning-bolt inlay, direct-coupled bridge, a piezo-plus-condenser crossover in place of his rack. Musician’s Friend’s later page prints Sitka spruce on that same replica. Cedar in 2006, spruce later. No Grateful Dead song is pinned on it.

Ani DiFranco. Premier Guitar, 9 June 2017: two Alvarez-Yairi WY1 Bob Weir signatures with System 500 preamps. She had “always played Alvarez,” wrote a lot of songs on a WY1, and built the percussive right hand there. The 4 January 2012 list adds an Alvarez-Yairi DY62C with a System 600. Harmony Central, 24 January 2005: her ADY1G, direct-coupled bridge, System 600T Mk II, list $2,799, shipping that February, after years on the WY1. Mark Kemp: Alvarez on stage from the early ’90s. Acoustic Guitar, 17 November 2024: Gibsons, an Alvarez MSD1, and a one-off YBM7C baritone. The MSD1 is not called a Yairi on the Premier Guitar lists.

Joe Bonamassa. Premier Guitar, 5 June 2013, tech Mike Hickey in Rockford: four Alvarez WY1s “with his preferred electronics that came stock,” and a Gibson Songwriter as backup. The Songwriter is not this plate. Facebook, 12 February 2020: two new WY1-JBs “for the tour.” Different guitars from the 2013 four.

Steve Earle. Vintage Guitar: in 1970 he traded a pre-war Martin D-18 for an Alvarez Yairi. The Martin would not stay in tune under a capo, and he had restaurant gigs. He played the Yairi until Nashville in 1974, then a ’57 Gibson J-45 from George Gruhn for $250. Model unpublished.

Steve Hackett. Premier Guitar, 13 December 2023. The lede says a nylon-string Alvarez “built by master luthier Kazuo Yairi in the 1970s.” The gear block says a 1987 Alvarez CY127 CE: solid cedar, rosewood back and sides, 12-fret mahogany neck, ebony board, 19 frets, individual saddles, used on the calmer parts of the Foxtrot replay. Both dates stay. A classical, not a WY1.

FundingUniverse names Roy Clark and Waylon Jennings as early endorsements. No instruments, no records. Also known to play stops there. Jerry Garcia, Paul McCartney, Johnny Cash, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Thom Yorke, and Carlos Santana are on lists that never name a Yairi. Ani’s MSD1, a China Artist, and an S. Yairi stay off.

Rarity

You can still order a new one from Kani. Sweetwater’s WY1 natural was backordered this pass, estimated November 2026. The sunburst WY1 and the DYMR70 were live carts the same week. The shop did not stop in 2014.

Alvarez has not published a Yairi unit total. None invented. The official date finder says Yairi serials are a 4- or 5-digit number and that the database is still being filled in from the archives. Jedistar, quoting D. Hughes of the old Alvarez-Yairi group: the heel-block stamp on K. Yairi and early Alvarez Yairi is an emperor-year code, messy after 1999, when some guitars carry both that code and a Western year. Those stamps date a guitar. They do not count a year.

What is actually thinner: the 1991 Weir prototype against a later WY1; the 2002 Alvarez Yairi WY80, which Harmony Central capped at 80 guitars, Brazilian back and sides, list $2,999, a closed run based on the WY1 and not the WY1 itself. The Honduran billets are a finite pile. Alvarez did not say how many guitars they will make.

Value

Informal estimate, 8 October 2026. Not an appraisal.

Ask vs sold labeled. Period lists are old money. No invented median. Celebrity guitars were not isolated as auction comps.

New street. Stage WY1 natural: Sweetwater $2,299, backordered, estimated November 2026. Musician’s Friend natural $2,299 on backorder; sunburst $2,499, available date 27 October 2026. Sweetwater’s sunburst reviews page printed $2,599; its Gear Exchange advisor printed new $2,499. The sunburst asks are not averaged. An Alvarez WY1 URL headed “2024 Model” printed MSRP $3,249 — factory list, not that week’s cart. A different current Yairi, the DYMR70 sunburst, was $2,999 at Sweetwater, estimated 20 October 2026. Not a WY1.

Used modern. Sweetwater Gear Exchange, WY1 sunburst: suggested $1,624–$1,924, recommended $1,749; the same page also prints $1,299–$1,924. Musician’s Friend: one used natural in Good condition, $944.99, and that listing’s preamp is a System 600T, not StagePro. One unit. Not a median.

Vintage / collectible. No clean Reverb Price Guide band this pass. Thin sold-comp access. Historical list, not a 2026 hammer: WY1BW MSRP $2,799 (2006); ADY1G list $2,799 (2005); WY80 list $2,999 (2002, eighty guitars). Earle’s 1970 Yairi has no model and no price. Weir’s 1991 prototype is one object, not a comp for a 1970s DY.

See also

  • lowden-o-25 — Japan years were S. Yairi near Nagoya; not this Kani shop
  • yamaha-fg180 — the other Japanese folk guitar of the same era; Hamamatsu, not K. Yairi
  • martin-d-18 — the American mahogany dread a player might have traded in; not a Yairi

Sources

Guitars this one gets compared to, confused with, or descended from.