New Yamaha Custom series - opinions wanted

[Balders]

I'm very tempted to purchase one of the new Yamaha customs (875ex or 82Z) although I can get hold of an old stock 855 for a very reasonable price.

Playing each is unfortunately not an option as would have to be special order.

Would be very interested in personal opinions on any of the above, although money may have to dictate my choice :roll:

Thanks in advance

[Mark Pinner]

I have tried four each of the 875 and 82Z tenor and altos and done a couple of set ups. All the horns mechanically excellent although some needed some tweaking. The 82Z is the slightly lighter of the two and blows quite bright. The alto especially honks a bit down low, the tenor is not so bad but a bit on the high side in the low register. These charateristics were common over all the horns I tried. I did some tweaking work for one shop on an alto and tenor and found the action on the left hand a little lower than optimal and on the right hand too high. A little adjustment made a lot of difference. The 875's were put together a little better and did not need tweaking. The sound of the 875 is much rounder and a little darker. For mine the 875 is the better of the two horns and able to take a lot more air. The bottom register holds together well and as always the keywork is superb. All horns tried were gold lacquer straight out of the plastic. On the alto I tested with a Meyer 6M, Beechler M7S and Selmer C*, the tenor Berg Larsen Bullet 115/1, Otto Link 6* and Meyer 6M. The mouthpieces that come with the horns were the custom ebonite 5CM's in all horns. Yamaha have made considerable progress with their mouthpieces.

[Bob G.]

As most everyone knows, this forum had a catastrophic loss of data 2 days ago. Before all the threads were lost, there was a lot of discussion regarding Yamaha's new saxophones. Hopefully, these threads will be restored soon. Harri has said that there was a backup and some of the data may get reposted. I hope so. Otherwise, Mark's previous post is a good start (over again :cry: ).

BTW Balders, you might want to check the old forum archives, there was quite a bit of discussion on the Z models there also.

[Tears June]

Mark Pinner

I'm surprise the following test report said YAS-82Z sounds very close to Mark VI, both are very rich & dark.

Does Mark VI sound very smilar to YAS-82Z? I wonder Mark VI is dark?

http://www.saxophones.co.uk/alto_sax_tests.htm


:cry:

[saxboy]

Hi Balders,

I would grab the 855 if the price is real good. You could always dump it later on and get your money back out of it if it was a great deal.
What are you playing now? Do you play other saxes? Sop/Tenor? Who makes them? There are a couple of things that can figure in to that decision.

The 82Z is cheaper than the 875EX and then there are used 875’s.
They are all great saxes, really can’t go too far wrong…

SAXBOY

My reviews on Yamaha are at www.gregvail.com/sys-tmpl/yamaha and www.gregvail.com/sys-tmpl/yamahareviews

[Balders]

I'm not sure if another post of mine has been removed or something, but I did actually post a follow up saying to ignore my original request for help, as shortly after, I purchased a lovely Yanagisawa A991B (for black)

So far it's worked out absolutely lovely, and is a huge improvement over my YAS25 (which is only to be expected I guess).

I use a V16 A5 Medium mouthpiece and Eddie Daniels lig, with Plasticover reeds.

Spent some time playing with a selmer Mk6 owner last night and he thought the Yanni had a lovely tone. :)