“There's so much baggage that comes with a Strat”: Why Chris Buck ditched his Fender Strat in favor of this underrated Yamaha model

The tonal fingerprints of Chris Buck’s Yamaha Revstar are all over his band Cardinal Black’s repertoire. After being a Fender player for so many years – even serving as Fender’s demo guy in 2019 for the company's Vintera series – Buck has set his Fenders aside and gone full throttle with his affinity for the elusive Revstar.

“I walked into a guitar shop in Cardiff and the Revstar had just been released. This would have been like late 2015, maybe,” he recalls in an upcoming Guitar World interview on YouTube.

“I saw a selection of them on the wall and was immediately intrigued... There were always Yamaha acoustics around the house as well, so Yamaha was always a brand that I was kind of cool with.

“I just loved the idea of the Revstar being a new guitar. It wasn't an S type, it wasn't a T type, it wasn't a Les Paul, it was its own thing, and just such a simple, ergonomically kind of attractive guitar – three-way switch, master volume, master tone, two pickups... boom, you're away.”

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However, another reason why Buck went for a more off-kilter model is, as he puts it, “part of me was getting a little bit miffed or kind of just annoyed with the idea that playing a Strat – as I had done for a very long time until that point – there's so much baggage that comes with a Strat, arguably more so than any other guitar, because it's such a distinctive sounding guitar.

“The moment you're maybe on the neck pickup with an amp that's kind of pumping, and you're kind of playing quite aggressively, well, it's Stevie Ray [Vaughan],” he argues.

“If you're kind of on the bridge pickup, and you've got a load of gain or you run into a Marshall, then you're Ritchie Blackmore. If you're in the in-between positions... you're John Mayer. If you start using the tremolo bar, you know, you'll have the older generation coming out going, ‘Hank Marvin.’”

Conversely, with the Revstar, Buck feels more comfortable experimenting and trying to find his own distinct identity – without the added pressure of being compared to the guitar world's heavyweights.

“There's no baggage attached with that,” he says matter-of-factly. “I can kind of feel like I'm stepping out of their shadows just by virtue of picking up a different guitar.”