Me & My Guitar: Yvette Young
The underrated Ibanez Talman is currently discontinued, but multiinstrumentalist Yvette’s otherworldly playing is helping to bring it back to the spotlight
1
I was at the NAMM Show and I was supposed to do a demo but the guitar I had… I think I didn’t feel confident playing it. It was a six-string Strandberg that I’d never played before. I’m used to more traditional scale-length and neck width. I ended up going up to Ibanez, “I need to borrow a guitar”, so they handed me this sunburst Talman. I had a Talman at the time that was a Tele pickup configuration that they made for me. So I did the demo with it and I really loved that guitar. I remember playing it and everything just felt so smooth to me. The neck was a really nice, unfinished maple and I think my Tele had a little bit of gloss to it. It was a really inspiring guitar, so Mike [Orrigo, Artist Relations Manager] at Ibanez just gave it to me afterwards. I ended up writing a lot on it, and I ended up playing the Strat configuration more which had a whammy bar too. This ended up becoming the guitar I based all my sparkly models off of.”
2
I think the offset body shape is cool – it’s unique. What really sold me on the Talman model was Ibanez makes really amazing necks for small hands. I remember picking up a Talman and thinking, this feels exactly as I want. And bonus, it sounds like a Fender because it’s modelled after a Strat.”
3
It has a Seymour Duncan FiveTwo Strat set and those pickups just work so well with the Vox AC10 I have in my house. I was super inspired because I was able to write clean stuff if I laid back, but if I dig in it’s more of a driven sound. That’s the exact tone I like to get. I’ve been playing with more pedals recently, but a lot of what I play is really clean. I don’t use a pick ever so it’s really important that if I dig in with my fingers, it moves with me. I feel like the guitar needs to be an extension of my hands.
“I feel single coil pickups are way more dynamic. I tend to use the neck and middle pickups with the in between positions too, but with some pedals I prefer the sound of the bridge. I have some weird, more experimental noise pedals and on the neck setting that can be shrill, but on the bridge setting it’s more subdued.”
4
People say, “Woah I used to hate Talmans until I saw yours!”, and a lot of people complained they didn’t like the Talman because aesthetically they only had a limited range of finishes. It’s just interesting how much people care about aesthetics. Because I’ll play anything at the end of the day, but I just asked for the sparkle [on my newer models] because I thought it would look great onstage with all the lights and it’s twinkly, kind of like the music I play.”