Rich Lasner on the Yamaha Weddington

Rich Lasner, the man behind the Yamaha Pacifica and Weddington series guitars was kind enough to answer some questions related to his involvement with designing guitars for Yamaha in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.  This is the second of two entries, focusing on the Weddington series.

Q:  You also were the lead designer on the Weddington series?
A: Yes. We named it after the street the Yamaha Guitar Shop was on in North Hollywood.
Q:  The Weddington is, to me at least, a fantastic update of a rock & roll icon, the Les Paul.  The shape may be similar, but it’s better in so many ways, from the pickup switching to the neck joint.  The Weddington is quite a departure from the Ibanez and Pacificas you designed.  How did you come to design this instrument, can you give us a bit of the history?

A: As I mentioned above, we were tasked with quickly designing and building a pair of guitars patterned after classics. I had always wondered why Les Pauls continued to have really clunky neck joints and no comfort cuts after decades of development. I also found the standard pickup selection choices limited by the switches available in the early 1950s. Add in to that that we thought the guitars wouldn’t be produced so I threw everything into it I thought would work.
Q:  Between the materials used, construction techniques and attention to detail, the Weddingtons appear to be an all-out assault on high- end guitar making.  Was Yamaha trying to compete with Gibson and PRS?
A; Paul (Reed Smith) was around at the time and starting to do well. Gibson’s quality was truly suspect and they were making some uninspiring guitars. Yamaha had some earlier success with the SG2000 guitars and felt they had a place in the upper end of the set-neck world. The Weddington Custom (I have an early one still) was really the key model for that, though I like all three of the models in the line.
Q:  With a five-piece laminated neck and no heel joint to speak of, the Weddington is nearly unique among modern production guitars.  Some basses, of course, use laminated necks for strength.  Was that your goal, or to blend the sonic qualities of maple and mahogany?
A: On the Custom, I was looking for an elegant solution to necks twisting and needing too much adjustment over time. I also ran the neck all the way into the body to right in between the two pickups. To ensure that the extremely long neck could handle the stress, the top model has the mahogany/maple laminations. The other two models have all proven they can hang together without the laminations. It looks nice too.
Q:  How did you come up with the neck/body joint?
A: I decided that the guitar should have a traditional look from the front (my apologies to Aria- I always loved their unbroken line running through the neck joint on their single cutaway set-necks), but allow the neck shape to be consistent all the way to the end of the fingerboard. I started drawing arcs across the back of the body shape at the end of the fingerboard, then figured out the elevation of the cutout in the back from there. It is one of the trickiest, but strongest set-neck joints around. The factory hated it because it has so many exposed seams.
Q:  I’m always surprised how many manufacturers still use more traditional neck/body joints when this seems to work so much better.  Any idea why it wasn’t more widely adopted?

  A: Number one is the accuracy of the joint compared to a standard mortise and tenon joint as on a Les Paul- The Weddington joint leaves a lot of the joint lines exposed. The slightest misalignment or over-application of glue kills it and you have to either paint the guitar a solid color or throw it away.
Q:  Truth or fiction:  you individually selected the maple tops for the Weddington Customs?
A: True. Japan requested that Ken Dapron and I travel to Oregon to hand-select the boards for the guitars. At first, we simply initialed the boards at the wood vendor who would then ship to the factory, but the suppliers would pull some of the boards we picked and replace them with lesser-grade wood. After we heard from the factory that they weren’t happy about the wood quality, we started to make the vendors deliver the wood we’d chosen down to us in LA to inspect before we personally shipped it to the factory. This stopped the wood vendors from swapping our selections for inferior wood.
Q.  Weddingtons are starting to appreciate on the used market, or should I say that guitar players are finally realizing how great these instruments are.  How does it feel to have designed another “cult classic”?

A: The Weddington Custom is one of my favorite designs. I think it stood the test of time well and proved it has all the attributes of a solid instrument. I’m really happy to see that a small group of players have run across them and really enjoy the guitars.
Many thanks to Rich for taking the time to talk to me about these great guitars!  For more information on Rich’s other designs, check out his comments about the Ibanez guitars he designed and the video interviews with Vettaville.nl (parts 1/2, 3/4, 5/6). 

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