New Yamaha Virtual Tour

[saxboy]

I just found a link on the Yamaha page that gives a 20 minute Virtual Tour of the Yamaha Sax Plant in Japan. It is hosted by George Shelby and is pretty cool. I think it is new and just wanted to let the SOTW family know about it.
Check it out and let me know what you think.

The page address is
www.yamaha.com/band
The tour link is on the Yamaha band page listed above and is found on the bottom of the page - right corner.
I have not found it linked on the Sax Pages yet.
I have high speed connect and it worked great in the Real Player and AOL Media players. Have not tried it on dial up.
The tunes are all from Shelby's latest CD and sound pretty good.


SAXBOY
www.gregvail.com
www.gregvail.com/sys-tmpl/yamaha/

[SaxyAcoustician]

What a great video. Thanks for the heads up, saxboy. It's amazing how much goes into making a saxophone, especially a good one.

[averageschmoe]

thanks for the link. i knew there was a reason i bought my tenor...

[Hurling Frootmig]

A very cool video. Made me want to go buy one of their horns!

[BobD]

That was a great video. I was impressed with the amount of handwork done on these horns. After reading all the talk on this forum about how Yamaha and Yanagisawa are such "production" horns, you would think they were stamped out of a machine fully assembled. I was also impressed with how all the work stations were very neat and clean and all the workers had white gloves on. Very typical of the Japanese manufacturing environment. Clean, orderly with everthing in it's place. It's no wonder why these horns are so consistant. Oh, and who is George Shelby?

[saxboy]

George is a local LA guy. Seen him with smooth jazz guys and pop settings thru the years.
He sounds good when he plays that new 82Z !
He is also a really cool guy. Did a nice job on the Tour!
SAXBOY

[SaxyAcoustician]

Oh, and who is George Shelby?

Here's a clip from his website:

"You've heard him. Whether you realize it or not, you've heard him. In his feature commercial for Entertainment Tonight. Or with William Shatner on those Priceline.com ads. Or on all those ABC promos. Or on the Academy Awards, Judging Amy, Late Night with David Letterman, Real Sex, Malcom in the Middle, the Enquirer TV show, Bill Curtis Reports, Maria Shriver presents, and a host of others."

So I guess I may not have heard of him but like they say, I've heard him!

[saxboy]

SaxyAcoustician,
I love guys that don't wear their bio on their sleeve. George is pretty damn cool!
SAXBOY

[sessionsax]

Huh, I get page not found.

[saxboy]

hi session,
just checked it and it came up. maybe was busy or if you have dial up it might have timed out.
try again later?
SAXBOY

[sessionsax]

I am behind a corporate firewall, so it may be a firewall issue. I still get page can't be displayed. I will check it out from home later.

[saxboy]

hi session,
Ever get to check it out?
SAXBOY

[Gordon (NZ)]

My computer 'had a problem opening' that file. It is a "ram" file. What is that, something more modern than my 3 year old computer?

[saxboy]

I'm not sure. I just use Real Player and it works pretty good. It is a free down load. Not sure why a RAM file would not load.
SAXBOY

[sessionsax]

Saxboy,

No, I haven't been able to access the page. I always get 404 page not found.

[Gandar]

I couldnt get sound with my Realplayer + the pic wasnt smooth. Though I use ISDN...

[M Exner]

What a great video! I watched it three times. Every sax player should see this for it makes you appreciate all the details involved in making a saxophone.

I can't see how they can even make a profit for selling these as low as they are. I'm convinced Yamaha does it right!

Thanks for bringing our attention to it. - Mike

[Gandalfe]

This is a must see video. Thanks for the pointer and keep 'em comin'!

[saxboy]

I did email a friend over there and he wrote back that he was checking into the problem with some being able to view the video. I watched it again yesterday without a problem, but it does seem to be a server issue and maybe a less busy time makes a difference. I was emailed from a friend that he just forwarded past the first minute and it played fine from there? Try and figrue...
I did hear that they are working on some footage of the Yamaha Sax Night NAMM Concert from January. I will post when it gets online. Any of the guys out that night will be a treat to see online when it is available.

Later all,

SAXBOY

[Keith]

gandar

I had problems watching the video at first. After I disabled the turbo play function on my real one player, the thing plays fine. you might want to try that.

Keith

[Gandar]

Voice works now, but I cant find where to disable that function. Could you tell me how to do it?

[Gordon (NZ)]

I have tried a number of times, but cann never get in to the factory tour. The (immediate) message is:

"There was a problem running the file specified when running the Accessibility Wizard"

[Stencilman]

Gordon, I had a similar problem until I reinstalled RealOne Player from www.real.com. You may have already tried that. They almost try to hide the link to the free version at the top right corner of the page. During installation, they also suggest that you get the upgrade for a fee. Sneaky.

[Keith]

Gordon

To disable turbo play. Open up your realone player. Click on tools. go to preferences. Click on connection. Uncheck the enable turbo play function. I hope it works for you.

Keith

[Gordon (NZ)]

Thanks Stencilman. I did not even have RealOne - just a couple of other media players. Perhaps they needed updating.

I've installed that very elusive freebie, and it works fine.

Keith, I have no idea what 'turboplay' means. Can you elaborate?

[saxboy]

I saw a copy on VHS which might be something a dealer might have. I watched it on VHS and really liked seeing a hard copy!
The link at Yamaha went away for a while but is back with other new 'News articles' and the full video to view.

Don't know if anything was changed to make it easier to get for you guys that had a problem... let me know.

SAXBOY

www.gregvail.com/sys-tmpl/yamahareviews/

[M Exner]

I didn't want this virtual tour to roll off the thread so I picked it up before it archived. If you haven't seen this, take the time and watch it. It will enlighten you on saxophone manufacturing in general. Mike

[pknight]

M Exner,

Is the video still on the site? I could not find it where it used to be, and had no luck with their search function.

[saxboy]

I have seen it. They are using a page layout that has 3 featured pics with links to articles / pics / or video files.


YAMAHA.COM/BAND
>Product Home> Band & Orchestral Instruments> Wind Instruments

The page link was:
http://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/CDA/Catalog/Catalog_GSMOCX/0,6366,CTID%253D240100%2526CNTYP%253D%2526VNM%253D LIVE%2526AFLG%253DY,00.html

They move those topics back to more specific Sax Pages with time, and the search function seems seems pretty lame.

I got a VHS copy from a dealer. Just another idea.

SAXBOY

[BP487]

Thanks for that link, loved the video 8). It appears that Yamaha didn't actually create the video, so did anyone find it in another location with possible higher quality video? I wouldn't love see some of the shots in there more clearly.

[JackThe7th]

doesnt seem to be on the site anymore, anyone got a link?

[xuanvu]

It've been almost 3 years already... :)

[aircap]

Just found it here near the bottom of the scroll list at the bottom of the page
its a video podcast so you need i-tunes
http://www.yamaha.com/podcasts/index.htm

[aircap]

also here slightly lower quality but faster and easy

http://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/CDA/ContentDetail/WrappedTextDetail/0%2C6383%2CCNTID%25253D32071%252526CTID%25253D%2C0 0.html

[Jbroad572]

I really enjoyed watching that... thanks

[saxboy]

Many of the new Yamaha video stuff has moved to Podcasts. They seem to have embrassed this newer tech thing and have something coming in at iTunes about every month.

The Phil Woods Podcasts are pretty interesting too.

[Face Ache Mike]

Very cool video! Thanks for finding it saxboy!

Mr Yamaha, if you`re out there, please put a dvd of this with every new sax you make!