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Re: What to expect from a new clarinet

Author: donald
Date: 2017-12-15 01:01

Kia ora,
Yamaha clarinets have a well deserved reputation for quality and consistency (as Tony F writes, "they play out of the box"). I recently played two CSGs (in a store in Auckland) that hadn't been set up or even touched by a repair tech, and while I found a couple of small adjustments that I'd personally prefer, overall I could have just taken either instrument and played a concert that afternoon...

The problem with Yamaha in New Zealand is that only one company is licensed to import new instruments- and that company has NO woodwind specialists (unless you count a jazz saxophone player who is a very nice fellow and that's about all I can say) and a pretty pathetic repair shop. When they are overloaded with repairs they contract their repairs to the OTHER big chain, which actually has a good repair team, but there is no way of knowing WHEN this will be the case.
There is also a shop in East Auckland that imports used Yamaha instruments from Japan (they were forced to remove the claim that they were "Yamaha approved" from their advertising). This shop is a good source of used instruments, but the "overhaul" they boast about is little more than cleaning the instrument to make it look shiny.
So this is not good news for Yamaha in NZ, although the importers DO do a good job of providing Yamaha student instruments at a reasonable price. As a teacher, I find the students playing these instruments seldom have equiptment related problems and we can get down to learning the clarinet!

NZDee- as Clarnibass points out it's not that unusual for a screw to work its way out (one of the reasons I carry a screw driver around with me when teaching). I have nothing to add to the advice given, but feel free to email me for suggestions for repair techs (there are several good people, in addition to the person Clarnibass mentions- who did excellent work on my bass clarinet earlier this year).
dn

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