I'm going to file this under "examples of Yamaha doing the right thing" (Steinberg is owned by Yamaha)
previous examples:
* Yamaha saved Korg by buying it when it was in financial trouble and giving it a cash injection, only to then sell it back to its previous owners once they had enough cash[1].
* Yamaha in the 80's had acquired Sequential (for those not familiar: Sequential Circuits is one of the most admired synthesizer makers). Many years later, Sequential's founder Dave Smith established a new company under a different name and in 2015 Yamaha decided to return the rights to use the Sequential brand to Smith, as a gesture of goodwill, on Sequential's 40th anniversary (this was also thanks to Roland's founder Ikutaro Kakehashi who convinced Yamaha that it would be the right thing to do) [1][2][3]
[1] https://www.soundonsound.com/music-business/history-korg-par...
[2] https://www.gearnews.com/american-giants-the-history-of-sequ...
Yamaha is an old company found on very different ethos compared to others. Their history is interesting, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6t5F3cb810
It's worth a watch.
On another note, it's very telling that companies that protect their "hey! we do this interesting thing, gonna buy?" character survives for much longer compared to companies which say "we can earn a ton of money if we do this".
The companies in the second lot does a lot of harm to their ecosystems to be able to continue existing.
I've had some impressive customer service from Yamaha concerning decades old saxophones that they have zero prospect of generating revenue from in the future, for an unrelated (musical) data point.
Japanese companies don't give you a good service because of future revenue prospects.
They give a good service because they respect the thing they built and the person who cares for it. They want their products to live and bring joy to people who guards and cares for them.
This is a completely different and much deeper philosophy.
This is not limited to Japanese companies though. A Lamy representative told me that the factory in Germany restored an out of production fountain pen to mint condition, for free.
Want a bit for your early 80s Mercedes? Your local dealer probably has it, or knows where to get it.
Want a bit for your early 50s Mercedes? Your local dealer knows a guy in Stuttgart who will send it over.
Want a bit for your early 30s Mercedes? Your local dealer knows a guy in Stuttgart who knows a guy who will *just go and make you one*, albeit it will be priced accordingly.
In the early 80s, a friend restored a 1936 Mercedes-Benz 170V Saloon that he found in pieces in the attic of an old downtown Seattle body shop. It took five pickup truck loads to get the entire car to his shop and about three years to completely restore it to original condition. He had almost every part except for the steel wheel that was for the spare tire, the instrument dial backgrounds, and the rubber window surround moldings.
Despite combing the Earth for that fifth wheel for the spare, he was never able to find one but, since the spare tire was kept underneath a trimmed cover on the back of the car, it wasn't missed. The instrument dials he faked by carefully photographing, and printing on photographic paper, a set of dial faces.
Those rubber window moldings?
He was able to have a well-connected German friend contact Mercedes in Germany where they responded by breaking out the original molds and producing two complete sets for the car.
The year after the car was complete, it won a local Mercedes-Benz of America concours show by 4/100ths of one point over a Gullwing that had just gone through a $200,000 restoration.
I think both them and BMW have all the tools to make any part they used on production models. Not sure exactly how far back either catalog goes, but from what I've heard it is total for even 60s & 70s and maybe 50s models. Of course the way out of date stuff will cost but they could make something for you if your really want it.
Dealing with BMW is hilarious because you will end up speaking to some guy either looks about 14 or like God's older brother, and he will say either "Ja so this part, I will show you how you take the beer can and you cut a piece like this, oder so, and it will fit over this and it is ready, ja? Ausgezeichnett, ja?" or he will say "Ja so this part, it is a special order from Munich and it will be four thousand euros but we will have it tomorrow" and the customer being German will just pay it and pick the car up after work tomorrow, and that's it, end of the story, done.
Or the customer will be Austrian and there is nothing for it but assassinating archdukes and bloody warfare over a 1.50EUR gasket.
BMW’s online catalogue indeed reaches back to the 60s: https://www.bmwgroup-classic.com/en/services/spare-parts/bmw...
It is not true for all Japanese companies, unfortunately. Some would sell their grandmother. Growth quarter after quarter is what matters
Both Yamaha and Roland keep a long back catalogue of reasonably priced parts for at least their mid-range pianos and up as well. I should check Korg too I guess.
Yamaha still document their products properly and provide very long driver support. I currently have a Yamaha product with USB from 1999 and there is still a maintained driver for it 26 years later, for Windows 11 and modern macOS versions.
I wouldn't depend on them to do this for all their products esp software. I can think of two of the top of my head that they dropped support.
i’ll add a third anecdote i to the ether to say that i steinburg ur mark ii from a million years ago still works as well as it ever did, including regular driver updates. in no means meant to discredit your experience, ymmv as always.
customer: hello, I want to buy a piano please
yamaha: sure, here you go
customer: great, thanks! lol, I also need a motorcycle. Do you know where I can buy a good one?
yamaha: you're not gonna believe this...
Completely separate companies, both called Yamaha. One was spun off from the other, but I don't think there was ever a time when the same company sold both. (Basically, the musical instrument company was redirected to making war materiel during WWII. After the war, they didn't want to just throw away all of their new industrial capacity so they spun off a company to make use of all their new equipment and expertise and then went back to making instruments.)
Although the Yamaha that makes music and audio products is the same Yamaha that makes golf clubs (https://global.golf.yamaha.com/en/) and industrial equipment (https://www.yamahafinetech.co.jp/en/).
The OG Yamaha produced a motorcycle in 1954, the YA-1. That success then led to the spin off.
(fun fact: the motorcycle Triumph and the undergarment Triumph are two entirely different companies that just happen to share the same name)
A motorcycle named Norton Commander also exists, and Nokia* sold winter bicycle tires with studs on them so they would grip better on ice and snow.
Not sure about the meaning of your asterisk, but the Nokian Tyres corporation is not related to Nokia the telecoms co, other than being founded in the same town.
Nokia did manufacture rubber boots though, before they spun off the footwear division in 1990 and went all in on electronics.
The company's history page says they were part of the merger in 1967 that created "Big Nokia": https://company.nokiantyres.com/about-us/history/#:~:text=19...
This changed in 1988 with the formation of an LLC, in 1995 they went public and in 2003 shares still held by the parent company were sold off to Bridgestone.
Nokian studded tires for bicycles are (were?) the best! Rode many-many kilometers at winter with them!
Triumph is also a garment brand? Never heard of it.
I had no idea you've never heard of it. Thanks for keeping us informed.
>I had no idea you've never heard of it. Thanks for keeping us informed.
I see.
In that case, you'll appreciate the fact that the Three Musketeers chocolate bar bears no relationship to Alexander Dumas, the author of the famed book series featuring D'Artagnan and three musketeers.
You might also be interested to learn that Zenit launch vehicles are not made by the organization that produces Zenit optics and cameras.
Most crucially, Lucky grocery store chain in California turns out to be completely different from the Korean Lucky chemical products and electronics conglomerate (known as "Lucky GoldStar" after merging its chem and electronics wings, and, currently, "LG").
The more you know!
It’s also a Wonder Dog, a Canadian power trio not featuring Neal Peart, and a moment when we shouldn’t evacuate the Death Star.
> Wonder Dog
I think you meant Insult Comic Dog.
I guess we were too good at Triumphing…
I didn't realize when I was a kid that the Yamaha music company came first.
I remember being confused when looking at high end saxophones that one was made by an old French company (that made sense, France makes many fine luxury goods including instruments) and the other was (in my mind) made by a motorcycle company. How could a motorcycle company possibly have compiled the expertise to make high end musical instruments when most musical instrument companies were chasing the low end of the market at the time?
But Yamaha music (1887) was started only 2 years after Selmer (1885). They got their start making reed organs. Reed organs (1) are technical, (2) make sound with reeds, and (3) are luxury items. So their expertise in sax (a reed instrument) and synthesizers (technical keyboard instruments) makes a ton of sense.
Day Start proekror proom
Same company
They may have “different legal entities” but it’s the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_Corporation
Yeah, that's one of them. Here's the other:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_Motor_Company
It even says in your link "The former motorcycle division was established in 1955 as Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., which started as an affiliated company but has been spun-off as its own independent company. "
I love Yamaha Motor using the tuning forks as their logo. It's a proper beautiful old-timey logo (well, from 1967, apparently, but anyway) and it's just so weird seeing them on a motorcycle.
https://www.yamaha.com/en/about/history/logo/
Just pretend it is the thing that hold the front wheel.
Coincidentally also called a fork/forks :)
Apparently they also make network switches. I guess it is in support of their computerized audio equipment. but I was a bit surprised when they showed up in a search result.
https://usa.yamaha.com/products/proaudio/network_switches/in...
They have the technical capability to design one, but on the surface it is enough outside their core product line that I wonder if it is a oem rebadge.
They claim that they're developing routers since 1995 and they're used widely in domestic Japan (SME and SOHO).
Looks like switches came in 2011 and there's some secret sauce which makes them autoconfigure each-other to reduce networking setup.
It might not be a standard OEM stuff.
Citing the page:
> Yamaha entered the router business in 1995, and has grown to hold a significant share of Japan’s small to medium enterprise and SOHO network market. Yamaha gigabit L2 switches that could be linked to Yamaha routers/firewalls were introduced in 2011, with features that significantly reduced the network setup, maintenance, and management workload.
Huh, thanks for sharing. Funny to see the switches in the same color scheme as some of their receivers.
They make Dante licenced products.
I don't think Yamaha Motor is producing any large trucks. They do a lot of things but mostly motorcycles, atv, boat engine, even car engines but not the whole car.
Also, you should note that Yamaha Corporation, the musical instrument maker and Yamaha Motor are now 2 distinct independent companies, even if were originally part of the same group.
They are independent yes, but originally the motor company was an affiliate spin-off. They do have an agreement and share the same logo, and Yamaha Corporation has some shares in the Motor one tho.
a former keiretsu?
Former, current, reformed keiretsu?
> but not the whole car
They actually made at least one model, of which only 3 prototypes were built before the project was cancelled due to the economic situation at the time: the Yamaha OX99-11 supercar was using a detuned version of their formula one v12 engine when they switched to v10. I guess they had built to many of them?
See also Hitachi ;-)
Customer: "So, I need some huge IGBTs for an electric train motor, I need a 44-tonne excavator to lift the train, I need a new stereo to listen to while I fix it, and I need an, uhm, 'personal massager' to relax afterwards"
Sales guy: "Here's our catalogue, page 40, page 32, page 108, and page 7. Let me know what colours you want."
Wait till you find out about Mitsubishi.
I remember being bewildered their diversity as a teenager, and then even more so when I found out that MUFG actually backed my bank at the time.
"We build things that make noise."
Had no idea it was bought by Yamaha.
Still they're a separate legal entity and their HQ, development, support, etc. are still located in Hamburg like they used to be since the early-mid 1980s when they released their MIDI sequencing software for Atari ST (Steinberg Twenty 4 I believe it was called?). I guess you could do worse than being bought by Yamaha, but I think this decision isn't related to it.
interesting stuff. I love Yamaha for audio stuff for sure, didn't know they owned Steinberg though.
Their speakers i think are lovely examples of their engineering quality. Great and honest sound, some of the best out there, and they are not super over-priced. Also ,they are super repairable. Had some really bad experiences with other brands which were, more expensive for a more biassed sound, had 'black gunk' over the PCBs as some kind of anti-repair mechanism. (overheats the boards too! ew!) and other crappy issues.
Cool to hear there's such a story behind the quality. Makes sense!
Another thing they do right is build cheap instruments that are actually decent and have high build quality. It is quite remarkable how high quality their "beginner" and "intermediate" line saxophones are.
They are really well respected in professional music circles. I don't like their tenor saxes, but man they made some great altos and sopranos, including the mid tier ones.
Strangely enough Yamaha has never released a software version of any of their synths. (there's S-YXG50 and the Montage one but I wouldn't really count those)
Great recap!
What really kills me about companies and maybe Yamaha is a little different, or rather drastically, is any time CEO's shift, or original founding CEO is swapped, the company culture changes too drastically. There's companies whose original culture I admired, and then the CEO shifts and its just meh, or worse.