Review: Yamaha RGX A2 Solidbody Electric Guitar

By Jon Chappell

The Yamaha RGX A2 is a two-humbucker, lightweight solidbody electric guitar that features a really cool little touch on an instrument that is otherwise fairly subtle in its aesthetics: its volume knob lights up with a red LED when the neck pickup is active, and a blue LED when the bridge pickup is active. (Both LEDs light when the switch is in the middle position.) You never have to actually stare directly at the selector switch, because you (and the audience!) can see the status of the lights well within your peripheral vision. My choice would have been to have the red LED glow for the bridge position—for my, ahem, red-hot lead playing—and the blue one for rhythm, but that’s okay.

But in any case, the pickup selector and pickups work perfectly without the LEDs (and the battery that powers them), because the pickups are standard passive humbuckers. So the battery and attendant circuitry are there only to light the LEDs. A little frivolous, perhaps, because the LEDs, battery power supply and housing, and body routing all add to the manufacturing cost, but it’s a design flair that I appreciate and end up using on stage (and the battery lasts a long time).

The RGX A2 features a lightweight body construction called Alternative Internal Resonance, with a bolt-on maple neck and rosewood fingerboard. (Click To Enlarge)

Other features of the RGX A2 include low-gear tuners with small, knurled, cylindrical tuning keys, which give the headstock a very modern, unobtrusive look (see Fig. 1). Because the gear ratio is low and the knobs are small, you have reduced leverage and so have to apply a bit more hand strength to tune up. While this slows down gross movement, like tuning up completely slack strings during a string change, I found it to be an advantage for fine-tuning, as the resistance allows you to make small adjustments in the rotation, preventing you from overturning in one direction or the other. This is especially helpful in drop tunings, where the strings are harder to tune precisely at lower pitches. The only downside of the cylindrical tuners is that you can’t use a standard string winder.