65Strad

I went to Yamaha's 53rd and 5th ave location last Monday to have Wayne Tanabe align two of my Strad cornets. They had the prototype Artist Series Bb there so I blew in to it. The horn had lots of body and core to the sound. More so than I recall from any other Yamaha. It was immediately comfortable/easy to play and very flexible.

It reminded me much of my 1972 43 bell Strads sound. Dave Lotozo called it a NY horn, not sure what that means, but he and Wayne indicated that Yamaha incorporated some of Bach's older but beneficial design features. The bell seam is in the side, where the bracing is. My old Strad conets, especially the raw brass clearly show the seam on the side from the bell flare all the way around the crook where it goes in to the valve case. Wayne told me that many of hours of painstaking workmanship were done in vain because the location of the seam had caused many Bach bells to fail at the crook. Of course this was years ago.

Incidentally, both of these horns benefitted greatly from the alignments, as did my '72 43 ML Strad that Reeves did in Sept.

Never been a big Yammie fan but it was very nice. I suppose for $3,500 + it should be. I would have to give my old Strads the nod for tone quality though.

Tom

'72 Bach 43 #70503

New '65 Bach Cornet 37 #30836

'71 Bach Cornet 37 #58831