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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000004.txt from 2003/03

From: ContraReed@-----.com
Subj: Re: [DR-L] Yamaha Bassoons
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 15:20:17 -0500

In a message dated 3/1/03 10:56:26 AM Eastern Standard Time, slayden@-----.edu
writes:

<< Considering the amount of popularity the Yamaha oboe has gained in recent
years, I was just wondering if anyone has had any positive/negative
experiences with the Yamaha bassoons. >>

I've had the opportunity to try a large handful of Yamaha bassoons over the
last several years, but haven't been really pleased with any of them. IMHO,
although Yamaha makes superior saxes, fantastic flutes, terrific trumpets and
tubas, dag-burned-good drums, & stupendous student instruments, I've never
been super impressed with most of their wooden instruments (clarinets,
recorders, & bassoons). It seems to me that they have developed ways of
dealing with non-organic materials, but they haven't learned how to select
and process wood. Every once in a while, I'll meet someone who has a really
nice Yamaha clarinet, and when pressed, they admit they had to try lots of
them before they found the one they ended up with. With recorders, there are
some wonderful examples of their "professional" models, but most of them seem
to be rather mediocre. A possible reason behind this is perhaps that the
best Yamaha instruments are kept for distibution in Japan, and the others are
sent to other countries (I know this doesn't make good economic sense, but
the thought has occured to me).

Several years ago, the principal clarinetist of the military band I was in
happened to find a really good Yamaha clarinet. He immediately wanted the
rest of the section (11 players) to switch from their Buffet's to Yamahas.
Since they weren't paying for them (and it was the military), they seemed to
at least being receptive to the idea -- until if came time for them to try
and select instruments. Only a couple were able to find instruments they
would be happy playing. The rest announced they felt they would be
compromising their ability and musicianship to have to play on instruments
which they felt were not acceptable. Fortunately for them, the idea of
switching brands was then dropped.