While he was studying as a furniture maker, James Yarde (the ‘e’ is silent), found it was necessary to learn 3D CAD (Computer Aided Design). “With a great technical team around me, I learnt how to harmonise modern CAM [Computer Aided Manufacturing] processes and traditional techniques to produce accurate products with character,” he tells us. It’s not the traditional lutherie route, granted, but one that informs James’s thoroughly modern guitar craft.
“I was initially inspired by the pillars of the industry, but I wanted to do something a bit different. This is when I focused on the headless/multi-scale electric guitar.” And after some years of prototyping, the Tamar is the result.
Yes, it’s a bolt-on and uses proper bolts (not screws), but the Tamar is a multi-scale instrument, moving from classic Fender at the top E and extending to 673mm (26.5 inches) at the low E, creating the fanned-fret spread of the perfectly installed stainless-steel frets. The neck is African wenge with a perfectly inlaid zebrano fingerboard – another illustration of James’s mastery of modern machining – and the quite full-depth neck has a pretty classic deep C profile and feels a lot more conventional than the style might suggest.
The detail of the body’s machining is almost sculptural and is quite complex, from the deep cutout under the base-placed tuners, to the gently curved top face (from treble to bass side), the light chamfering in the cutaways, a lightly chamfered he.