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YAMAHA SERIAL NUMBERS & CUSTOMER SERVICE

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4.2K views 7 replies 6 participants last post by  Uwe Steinmetz  
#1 ·
Dear all, for a student of mine I was looking for used YAMAHA 62 altos,
and one consistently grabbed my attention,
FULL ENGRAVED YAMAHA YAS 62 ALTO SAXOPHONE: VERY RARE!/RARO SASSOFONO CONTRALTO | eBay

I thought with an additional (partial) overhaul this would still be quite a good deal and a nice extra with the engraving performed on it etc.

BUT the serial number is so difficult to pinpoint to a year I followed the good advice on this forum to write to YAMAHA directly.
It took several weeks, but here is the reply:
Hi Uwe,



Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Unfortunately, the serial number pictured does not follow the standard Yamaha serial number format. Therefore, this instrument appears to be inauthentic.

Please refer to our official consumer alert regarding unauthorized sellers: Yamaha - United States

If you are interested in purchasing a Yamaha instrument, please use our dealer locator linked below to ensure that you are purchasing from an authorized dealer.

Dealer Locator

Best,

Sabrina

Yamaha Corporation of America
 
#2 ·
So i am super happy, I did this as it is clear to me that something strange at least was going on with that instrument and buying used instruments without having a chance to play them is of course a hit-and-miss, but for me at least, seldomly on a YAMAHA - but htis one is suspicious.

I am just reporting this to praise the customer service and overall manufacturing organization of YAMAHA - here´s the email:
BandAndOrchestra@yamaha.com
 
#7 · (Edited)
Uwe Steinmetz said:
Unfortunately, the serial number pictured does not follow the standard Yamaha serial number format. Therefore, this instrument appears to be inauthentic.
Click to expand...
Just FYI ... you can also tell by looking at the pictures that it isn't a Yamaha 62 (it's copied after a Yanagisawa I'd say) . I'll just list the first two things that jumped out at me --- there are plenty more:
The bell to body brace is wrong
The shape is wrong on the Eb/Bb spatuas
The way the low low C# is linked to the low B is wrong
Surprisingly the front F is sort of the right shape so they did put that much effort into looking like Yamaha but it's way too far away from the pearl it should be like this:
Image
 
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