Yamaha’s SA-15D: A Lightweight Guitar for a Butterfingers

Football is certainly a game of attrition. The team started out with around 60 players, and now that number ranges from 40 to 50, depending on the week and amount of injuries sustained. I think I passed along some of my caveman sensibilities to the boy, but thankfully my wife passed on her smarts, so he’s not a total meathead like me. However, the arrival of football season has got me thinking about breaking things (I’m really good at accidentally damaging stuff) and how I feel about guitars.

I’ve mentioned many times before how I avoid guitars that are mint, for fear of finish damage, and guitars that have overly complex features that I might accidentally destroy. There’s also a third category I try to avoid: fragile guitars. So for this column, I’m going to examine a guitar I truly thought I would crush: the Yamaha SA-15D.