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A Yamaha 2 valve sop? In 1984?


84BDsop

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The player is Jim Dearing, at the time in tech school in the USAF and performing in his off time with the Keesler AFB Blue Knights...the student drum corps (which I would join after 84 DCI).

Jim claims his sop is a Yamaha....but I don't remember Yamaha ever making a 2 valver. He says it was marked Yamaha and the case was marked Yamaha....if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, etc.

It's definitely not an Olds Ultratone II (the corps had those when I was there)...I'm thinking it was an American Heritage or a Dynasty...I don't remember any Kings in the line.

Anyone with more knowledge than I???

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The player is Jim Dearing, at the time in tech school in the USAF and performing in his off time with the Keesler AFB Blue Knights...the student drum corps (which I would join after 84 DCI).

Jim claims his sop is a Yamaha....but I don't remember Yamaha ever making a 2 valver. He says it was marked Yamaha and the case was marked Yamaha....if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, etc.

It's definitely not an Olds Ultratone II (the corps had those when I was there)...I'm thinking it was an American Heritage or a Dynasty...I don't remember any Kings in the line.

Anyone with more knowledge than I???

This is fascinating. Would love some more pics, if possible. The instrument could have been a homemade hybrid. Personally, I haven't encountered any Yamaha two-piston G bugles and haven't seen documentation suggesting Yamaha released any. It looks similar to a Dynasty design.

Thanks for posting, Sam!

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Check this Facebook pic

The player is Jim Dearing, at the time in tech school in the USAF and performing in his off time with the Keesler AFB Blue Knights...the student drum corps (which I would join after 84 DCI).

Jim claims his sop is a Yamaha....but I don't remember Yamaha ever making a 2 valver. He says it was marked Yamaha and the case was marked Yamaha....if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, etc.

It's definitely not an Olds Ultratone II (the corps had those when I was there)...I'm thinking it was an American Heritage or a Dynasty...I don't remember any Kings in the line.

Anyone with more knowledge than I???

:ph34r:

Hey Sam !

Unless as Scooter suggested, it's "hybrid" or it's a Getzen(and maybe not DEG).. I don't remember DEG having the Amado Water Keys until later, but it sure looks like that horn has those. I also don't remember Yamaha making G horns..

The shape looks a bit like the Benge or King..but the water keys lead me to DEG or Getzen when there were 2 companies. :blink:

Pat

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I don't know if Dearing has any more pics...but here are some links to other Keesler alums from the same period that show other horns (what's scary is I kinda remember some of these guys). Prior to my year there were still a lot of valve rotor horns.

http://www.keeslerblueknights.net/mayer.html

http://www.keeslerblueknights.net/kirchner.html

http://www.keeslerblueknights.net/sam85.html (my own page....I was skinny then!) I'm almost positive my sop was an Old Ultratone II from the tubing curving around my left hand (I seem to have been wrong in that tubing placement originally...I thought it was near the back of the horn).

http://www.keeslerblueknights.net/84bugles_1920x1080.jpg

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Looks like the Heritage standard bore.They had two types of sops using Benge parts.Their power bore is similar to the Olds.

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Looks like the Heritage standard bore.They had two types of sops using Benge parts.Their power bore is similar to the Olds.

Which seems to lend more credence to the idea that it was a hybrid. Jeff Dearing reports that the horn was about a year old when it was issued to him...but it could've suffered some damage prior to that and the repair shop could've slapped a Yamaha bell assembly on.

A lot of the horns prior to Jeff's arrival at Keesler were old valve/rotors...maybe someone got issued a new 2 valver and dropped it.

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Yamaha did dabble with the 2 valve G Horn. This was at the same time when Yamaha was introducing their marching percussion to the market. I remember USC's drumline sporting the prototype set. I do recall the tenor cutaway design was different than the final distributed product.

Anyway about the bugles, there was a prototype set of Yamaha sops and baritones made for the LA Chinese (or maybe it was the LA japanese) drum corps in 82-84 time frame. I knew their horn guy (a former BD'r or Freelancer) who had the connection with Nippon Gakkin Co, the parent company of Yahama. They were brass finish and not very sturdy. They were small bore 2 valves but still in R&D stage with large bore on the horizon. Design was based off their student trumpets and baritones made horizontal with valves reconfigured. Development was put on hold because of legitimate talk of DCI heading for 3 valve horns and decision to focus in that direction.

Kaboom!

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Yamaha did dabble with the 2 valve G Horn. This was at the same time when Yamaha was introducing their marching percussion to the market. I remember USC's drumline sporting the prototype set. I do recall the tenor cutaway design was different than the final distributed product.

Anyway about the bugles, there was a prototype set of Yamaha sops and baritones made for the LA Chinese (or maybe it was the LA japanese) drum corps in 82-84 time frame. I knew their horn guy (a former BD'r or Freelancer) who had the connection with Nippon Gakkin Co, the parent company of Yahama. They were brass finish and not very sturdy. They were small bore 2 valves but still in R&D stage with large bore on the horizon. Design was based off their student trumpets and baritones made horizontal with valves reconfigured. Development was put on hold because of legitimate talk of DCI heading for 3 valve horns and decision to focus in that direction.

Kaboom!

Interesting...but I can't see the military buying anything still in the prototype stage.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Looks like the Heritage standard bore.They had two types of sops using Benge parts.

There were three:

the Premier Edition, .460 bore

the Power Bore, .468 bore

and the rare AmericanA, .470 bore. I have one, and know of two more that could be for sale.

They are not wrapped like the Olds Ultratone II, they are underslung like the DEGs and the USMC 2P Kanstuls.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yamaha did dabble with the 2 valve G Horn. This was at the same time when Yamaha was introducing their marching percussion to the market. I remember USC's drumline sporting the prototype set. I do recall the tenor cutaway design was different than the final distributed product.

Anyway about the bugles, there was a prototype set of Yamaha sops and baritones made for the LA Chinese (or maybe it was the LA japanese) drum corps in 82-84 time frame. I knew their horn guy (a former BD'r or Freelancer) who had the connection with Nippon Gakkin Co, the parent company of Yahama. They were brass finish and not very sturdy. They were small bore 2 valves but still in R&D stage with large bore on the horizon. Design was based off their student trumpets and baritones made horizontal with valves reconfigured. Development was put on hold because of legitimate talk of DCI heading for 3 valve horns and decision to focus in that direction.

Kaboom!

L.A. Chinese was long gone by this point. And of course, Yamaha being Japanese, a Japanese corp would make more sense.

In 1981, I was once solicited to join a corp called "Third Generation" which was based in SoCal and of Japanese origin. They had designs of fielding a corps in local competition but this never happened and I never heard of them performing anywhere. That does not mean they did not have horns though. If I recall correctly, they were attempting to expand from a drum line to a full corps. So it very well could have been some sort of donation of prototype horns which had spurred on such ambitions.

I remember Yamaha being considered one of the worst trumpets on the market back at that time.

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