YFB-621 serial number

[tclements]

As far as I know, Yamaha does not publish a document that lists which instruments were manufactured in what year. I suppose if you were to have contact with an insider, he/she could get you the info.

[tubapete]

My 621 is about 14 years old and has a serial number within 30 of yours. Hope this helps.

Pete

[Rick Denney]

Yamaha restarts their series for each instrument, so this is the 1007th YFB-621 they have made. Definitely not one of the early hand-made ones. I don't even think mine is that early, and mine is number 72.

Rick "who bought his in 1991" Denney

[Z-Tuba Dude]

I have a YCB-621 with a serial number of 100008, which I acquired between 1989-1990, from the Tuba Exchange.
I was led to believe (by someone on this list) that the "1" is erroneous, indicating that it may well be the 8th YCB-621 produced. Someone else indicated that time frame was very late for such a low serial number, but perhaps it sat around their store for a couple of years, I don't know.

[Dan Schultz]

I've never been able to make sense of Yamaha serial numbers. The only date/serial number correlation that I know of was in 1988 when the threads on the top and bottom caps of euphoniums and tubas change from fine threads to course threads. Horns before 1988 had serial numbers under 100,000 and those produced starting in 1988 had numbers 100,001 and up. This is also when Yamaha started using plastic piston guides.

[Rick Denney]

Dan is right. I did not report the leading "1" on mine, because it is often ignored when determining the sequence order of that particular instrument. Mine is 1000072 (I think I got the right number of zeroes in there). It has the coarse threads and the plastic valve tacquets (which they replaced for me because the material they used at first wore out in a short while). I believe all YFB-621's are so equipped. The YCB-621 (at least, maybe the YBB as well) had been in production for several years at least before that time--as used and promoted by Daellenbach. I touched my first YCB in 1984 when I started playing tuba again after a few years of not doing so.

I bought mine as a demonstrator off the Yamaha booth at TMEA, I think in February, 1991, but it may have been 1990. If that's the case, it would have been a demo in their booth the entire previous year and was probably made in 1988 or 1989. TMEA is the last show in the exhibit season, which is the only reason I was able to buy it. Lee Hipp owned one before I did, and I played his for a few minutes at a rehearsal of a double tuba quartet that we had put together for a Christmas thing a couple of months before I bought mine. He had bought it when he won the San Antonio gig. Playing it really opened my eyes--I had been playing a four-valve Musica F tuba before that.

I don't know how early mine might have been, other than the "72" on the serial number. Mine has no engraving (like they have used more recently) and no stenciled label (like they used in those days). Nothing on it says it's a Yamaha, but I have no idea if that means anything. I do know that it plays very well.

Rick "who doubts his is hand-made" Denney

[Bob Kolada]

Wade, have you thought about a small Conn/King/York/... bell if they will fit?

[Rick Denney]

Unlike many others who own this tuba, I have very little trouble with projection, my issues with it being that the low Bb is weak. I can burn down the hall with it if I have to.

The only way I get get it to punch through a high ambient noise level is by using a shallow mouthpiece and going trombone-like. The B&S can be heard as a distinctive tuba voice in the band, but still a tuba voice. But if I'm willing to go trombone-like, I know it can get loud.

The 621 really is a blending machine. When I played in the TubaMeisters, we were often complimented that we could pass the melody from instrument to instrument seamlessly. During those days, the TubaMeisters players used a Miraphone rotary baryton (straight bell and large), a Miraphone compensating euphonium, my 621, and a Miraphone 186 C (an old one). The skill of the players varied widely, too, with me usually struggling to keep up with the others. That's quite a range of sounds, yet they still blended without any one instrument standing out as an outlier.

Rick "not a guy who can make a little tuba sound big" Denney