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Tairaku wrote:
I would be very interested in a long wide bored shakuhachi made of synthetic materials and repeatable. The problem this far is that the alternatives all concentrate on the 1.8 model of thinking. Which is boring.
How about straight PVC? It doesn't look pretty, but Robert Rich has resorted to unpainted homemade PVC transverse flutes because he requires precise (and sometimes esoteric) tunings. So it goes to show that the audience, or at least his audience, doesn't care what the instruments look like.
Is the Yuu that much better sounding than a homemade straight PVC instrument? I'd hate to shell out the $100 plus dollars just to find out.
Last edited by radi0gnome (2007-03-19 21:41:46)
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I once read something somewhere that told a little about the yuu, but I can't find that information. It was some time ago. I've also figured out a few things by studying it and drawing on my own knowledge of molds and resins. I really couldn't say exactly how the Yuu was made, I just have ideas. The kinds of processes I'd use to make one would take a bit of manual labor, at least enough to ask around that price for. It's also not an instrument he's selling as often as people might think. It's entirely possible that the production is bigger than I know... after all, they ARE sold at Lark in the Morning, but I'm really not sure. Usually when someone is selling a lot of products, the price goes down or at least stays the same, but the manufacturer raised prices from around $86 or so to around $110 within about a week.
If undercuts are a problem, you could always have that be something you do by hand afterwards. I'd definately be interested in one if it met all my criteria. Or most.
-E
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radi0gnome wrote:
Tairaku wrote:
I would be very interested in a long wide bored shakuhachi made of synthetic materials and repeatable. The problem this far is that the alternatives all concentrate on the 1.8 model of thinking. Which is boring.
How about straight PVC? It doesn't look pretty, but Robert Rich has resorted to unpainted homemade PVC transverse flutes because he requires precise (and sometimes esoteric) tunings. So it goes to show that the audience, or at least his audience, doesn't care what the instruments look like.
Is the Yuu that much better sounding than a homemade straight PVC instrument? I'd hate to shell out the $100 plus dollars just to find out.
Transverse flutes are different because they don't have tapered bores like a shakuhachi. The Yuu is much better than a PVC flute because of this factor. PVC shakuhachi go flat in the top of the second register as a result of not being tapered.
I don't think $100 is a lot to spend for any usable musical instrument except a harmonica, jaw harp, kazoo or pennywhistle. It's not really fair to speculate that the Yuu isn't worth even $100 when so many people including myself have said it is. I don't exactly endorse it but I think it fills a niche. I'm wondering about something that would be better than a PVC flute and serve to introduce people to playing long flutes at a reasonable price. The Yuu is a good attempt in the form of 1.8 but I would be interested in something like 2.3, 2.4 or 2.7. That way a teacher could buy several and get the students started on long flutes that play in tune with one another.
Just out of curiosity how much would you forum members pay for a good long shakuhachi made from some kind of mass produced non-bamboo material? Opinions?
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Tairaku wrote:
Just out of curiosity how much would you forum members pay for a good long shakuhachi made from some kind of mass produced non-bamboo material? Opinions?
since we're dreaming... I'll take three:
one in jade, 3.3
one in marble, also 3.3
and a little 2.8 in thick-walled anodized aluminum
under USD$500 each
i can PayPal funds immediately
-Darren.
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Tairaku wrote:
Transverse flutes are different because they don't have tapered bores like a shakuhachi. The Yuu is much better than a PVC flute because of this factor. PVC shakuhachi go flat in the top of the second register as a result of not being tapered.
I forgot about that, thanks.
Tairaku wrote:
I don't think $100 is a lot to spend for any usable musical instrument except a harmonica, jaw harp, kazoo or pennywhistle. It's not really fair to speculate that the Yuu isn't worth even $100 when so many people including myself have said it is.
Well, $100 or even $200 isn't a lot to spend on almost any kind of instrument depending on the quality (what's with some of those Pakastani made Irish flutes, 5 pieces, cocuswood and only $70), but considering the plastic recorders that are very useable are even cheaper suggests that the price of the Yuu could be just what people are willing to pay. It could also be that, as someone else mentioned, there aren't enough sold for the maker to lower the price. I take it that the Yuu sounds more like a jiari than a jinashi with the smooth uniform bore. Even though you can find jinashi bamboo instruments cheap enough so that you might as well spend another $100 or so for the real thing, if you want that jiari sound maybe the Yuu is the only way to go without spending $500 or more.
Tairaku wrote:
Just out of curiosity how much would you forum members pay for a good long shakuhachi made from some kind of mass produced non-bamboo material? Opinions?
Since most of the longer instruments are jinashi, and longer jiari instruments are probably even more expensive than 1.8 jiari, I wouldn't necessarily go for it, but I'd think $300 or $400 wouldn't be unreasonable.
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definetely i wouldnt pay more than at the most 200 for a plastic even if its magic plastic so it will not be more or it would not be. i am looking for much more less, cause i want it to be accessable. and about the pakistani i will tell you sth. as i also sometimes forge knifes in my free time and wanted 2 damascus pieces i made tha mistake buyng from ebay 2 blanks from india. they send me not steel but tin cups smashed together.
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We should stop comparing any $100 instrument to a piece of plastic like recorders. Those things are cranked out by the thousands, and use horrible molds. Ugh.
The yuu is definately using a better method, I just don't know exactly what it is. Using a simillar production style, I'd say under around $200 would be good. It would depend on this and that, of course.
I like what Brian said about having these variations for teachers and students. Good idea.
-E
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kyoreiflutes wrote:
We should stop comparing any $100 instrument to a piece of plastic like recorders. Those things are cranked out by the thousands, and use horrible molds. Ugh.
I'm not sure it's all about the quality. I paid over $200 for a plastic Aulos baroque flute new and they still cost that much. The Aulos 209 e treble recorder only set me back about a dollar because I got it at a flea market, I can't find a US price for them but the British price is around 16 or 17 pounds. Von Huene has other Aulos recorders under $20 so I guess that's around what the British price translates to. The quality, no seams, 3 pieces that fit very well, the way they look and play, is beautiful on both. So it looks to me that the same labor and quality and producton style yielded one instrument that sells for 10 times more than the other instrument. Either the issue is how many are sold or it's what the market will bear or both.
As for the Yuu's quality, Costa said the pieces on his didn't fit all that well with a 1 mm overhang and there was another thread on this forum where an individual mentioned that there was a seam visible in the utaguchi. That sounds closer to the quality of the Yamaha one piece soprano recorders that sell for under $10.
kyoreiflutes wrote:
The yuu is definately using a better method, I just don't know exactly what it is. Using a simillar production style, I'd say under around $200 would be good. It would depend on this and that, of course.
I'm not convinced yet about the quality or production style of the Yuu, but it would be understandable that a larger, less in demand (most teachers will still prefer 1.8, right?) plastic instrument will, can, and should cost more than the smaller instrument.
kyoreiflutes wrote:
I like what Brian said about having these variations for teachers and students. Good idea.
I'm not exactly sure what he had in mind here. Was it loaning the student the instrument during the lesson or distributing them? Either is an OK idea. As it is, one of the services a teacher of any instrument should be able to help with is where to get the instrument, and often the teacher is in the best position to find a suitable instrument for an individual. I think the only obstacle would be selling the idea that plastic isn't necessarily bad. But then the teacher is probably in the best position to do that too. Teaching the lessons on those instruments might be a help.
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Tairaku wrote:
I don't think $100 is a lot to spend for any usable musical instrument except a harmonica, jaw harp, kazoo or pennywhistle.
And a hundred bucks is getting smaller and smaller about how much musical instrument it will buy.
To get a good mass produced 10-hole diatonic harmonica now costs bout $30. Hand-tuned, it'll cost almost $100. If you want a titanium comb -- for that BIG sound -- it'll set you back almost 3 bills. A new 16-hole chromatic tremolo harmonica lists for $999.00. (Suzuki SCT-128: http://www.harphouse.com/shop/category.asp?catid=32)
A hand tuned jaw harp (once called "Jew's harp" buy the English because they were played by Middle-Eastern immigrants many centuries ago) can cost $25 - $75. Here's one for $34 http://elderly.com/new_instruments/items/SJH2.htm
Cheap "penny"whistles are $12.00. Most serious amateurs have at least one concert quality whistle that can cost anywhere from $100 to $400. http://www.elderly.com/new_instruments/cats/170N.html
Even a solid sterling silver kazoo: $149.95 at http://www.kazoos.com (Although I still prefer an old 50-cent 5-inch black plastic Ace men's hair comb and a 4-inch square of Cutrite wax paper).
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hi Costa,
I wish luck with new project, keep experimenting man.
It will be great if you can make your shakuhachi 2.4. The cheaper the better:-)
Ciao
G
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hi, i dont wish to speculate for now as i wait to pass the approval from the family council :-) but i dont see a reason why this will not happen soon. the truth is that i have to do a little research abot the material and about the technology to make this. for luck in my country of origin/bulgaria/ there are very knowing people and the prices are alot cheaper than here in spain. as we postponed my trip to india for after the summer i will have much more time to go deeper into this. what i really want to make good is that it would not sound like plastic so the material should have relatively the same hardness like the bamboo. will please those of you who has 2.4 tell me the weight of your shakuhachi? especually if they are a bit wide bore and fatter?
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Tairaku wrote:
... I would be interested in something like 2.3, 2.4 or 2.7. That way a teacher could buy several and get the students started on long flutes that play in tune with one another.
Just out of curiosity how much would you forum members pay for a good long shakuhachi made from some kind of mass produced non-bamboo material? Opinions?
A wide-bore 2.2 or 2.3 in A out of resin/bamboo dust. I'd like to see it come in about 300. I don't think you could get much quality control for under that, and even that might be dreaming. Bore wide enough to give people access to strong, 'real' tone and reachable meri. Enough bore engineering to achieve the upper kan in tune.
I think it would only help promote more interest and sales in longer shakuhachi.
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thats my idea, A. i have one i have made my self from a near root and has perfect bore,thin walled and blows my head with a warm sound or breathy . i just try to imagine this from 100y bamboo little bit wide bore as you say.
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costademaria wrote:
what i really want to make good is that it would not sound like plastic so the material should have relatively the same hardness like the bamboo. will please those of you who has 2.4 tell me the weight of your shakuhachi? especually if they are a bit wide bore and fatter?
Uh-oh, it's not just the weight and hardness that affects the sound (for now I'm satisfied with assuming that wieght and hardness is a contributing factor although that subject in itself is controversial). I haven't tried one of these plastic shakuhachi yet for comparison, but as far as sounding "plastic", I'd say my jiari comes close. It was one of the things I was so awed by when I first tried it, I personally like it. I think it comes from the smooth bore. If that's the case, if you're going to go for the non-plastic jinashi sound you're going to have to do something to the bore to make it less smooth, maybe some simulated nodes and some of the other imperfections you find in a jinashi bore.
This isn't an easy task. When I was reading all I could about didjeridu on the internet there were people trying to put bends and twists and graduations in the plastic to get rid of the plastic sound. Nothing worked. The best idea I think someone came up with was to glue sand inside the bore, I don't remember seeing his report on the result, so maybe he didn't complete the experiment. However, I thought it was interesting that Brian said on this forum that one of the best improvised didj's he used was a cardboard tube. You have lots going on inside a bore like that, maybe a bit more uniform, but still similar to what the termites do to eucalyptus.
As far as the wieght of the shakuhachi, the 4 American made instruments I've had (I still have all but one) are relatively light as compared to the 2 Japanese instruments (I'm not going to count the one that I'm pretty certain is a decoration and not an instrument). Of course, the jiari is heavy, but I think even without the cement inside it is still a heavy chunk of bamboo. The jinashi is also heavier chunk of bamboo than each of the American instruments. What's important to note is that even though the Japanese jinashi is made of heavier bamboo than the American made instruments, they all sound more bamboo-like than the jiari.
So I think two important questions that haven't been answered are:
1) Does the Yuu sound like "plastic" or close to a jiari instrument?
2) Is this yet to be designed plastic 2.whateverlength shakuhachi supposed to sound like a jinashi or a jiari?
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Oh, I never thought of bamboo dust and resin. Good idea. I can always research materials, if need be, but whomever you have make these is probably going to be your best bet. I believe I can find the name of the mix they probably use for the Yuu, or something close, and then your people could play with mixing that and bamboo dust, possibly. If you get the mix just right, it'd be really close to being bamboo and still stay together like plastic. That's the catch, really, finding that balance point.
-E
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i have done now a little research so i understand that wood and plastic need more complex mold/more expensive/. as some people stated here at the forums the yuu has a bit of plastic sound. when i changed the utaguchi angle and laquered the bore for me it doesnt sound plastic. after all the people asume it sounds plastic because they hold plastic. if this was an old bamboo with this sound everybody would say-ahh,what a beautiful sound. at the navaching site and other places can be seen from comp.generated diagrams and analysis that the plastic has the same timbre as bamboo. i think that this problem would not be a problem if the shakuhachi is a bit wide bore and instead of the perfect computer generated ideal bore we find a realy good big shakuhachi with a plastic like density and a distinctive voice.you know what i mean?
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and believe it or not my friends still find my first inox shakuhachi the most "spiritual" sonding. i think this due to the fact that the metal eats some frequences as i have seen in diagrams so the sound is somehow more longing
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The problem is to produce an injection mold startup costs are huge. So you'd have to be willing and able to manufacture 100,000 of them. Now there are approx. 500 people on this forum. How many will buy this 2.4 in A? Let's say 50. Well that's cool, but then we have to sell another 99,950 to people who don't even care enough about the subject to join the forum. That's a tall order. We (the administrators) have had lengthy discussions about it and agree that this would be a good way of getting people into long flutes, but at the moment it's still cheaper for the maker and the buyer to get bamboo. The technology is there but unlike recorders, fifes and other injection molded woodwinds the market is not big enough to sustain production. The Yuu is successful because they've tapped into the 1.8 market in Japan and a little bit in the west, but that's a very conventional thing. The further the idea falls from that particular tree the more problematic the situation becomes. And unless the machinery is very accurate some hand work will have to be done with undercutting the holes, tuning, etc. and then you may as well use bamboo.
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you are definetely right. i dont expect selling the first monts more than 100. / and at a special price for the forumities :-) and i also see it that the holes should be drilled after. but this doesnt neccesseraly mean that in my life i will not sell 10 000, cause little by little ... but as i have work and do this just for fun and meditational purpuses may be i will not care so much. well everything depends from the price they will tell me. allready send to about 10 companies in china and some in usa which accept small quantities production and will wait these days for an offer. to know at least if at all will have the possibility. then will wait to see what my friends will tell me from my country
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but what i know very clear - if i succeed it would be a step for all of us even for the shakuhachi makers because anybody starting on a plastic qould buy after that bamboo!
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your last point I agree with. Having a plastic alternative (and one bigger than 1.8) would be a very good thing. Good luck to you.
Are you from Bulgaria? I have been learning the language a little. Cyrillic alphabet can be scary.
Matt
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As a guy fairly knowledgable about molds, I can tell you that doing this via a manufacturer is probably NOT the way to go. I'd actually be a little surprised if the Yuu is made in a real factory. It's the kind of thing that could very easily be done by one person, maybe two. There's some stuff you have to do manually, but that's the price you pay to be able to make it correctly. Someone said that thier Yuu had a seam in it; they usually don't, so that tells me that someone hand-finished the utaguchi. When I hand-finished some other parts that had seams and such, I noticed the texture of the plastic changed from course and fiber-like to smooth, like the face of the Utaguchi.
What this all tells me is that this is a two-part mold, done manually, pouring whatever resin they're using into each side. There are also two "spots" on the front and back of the flute that support this theory. Now, I can't tell you right this minute exactly how they're molding this, but if you give a a week or so, I'll check with another forum I'm on, and they will be able to tell me how this was done for sure. These guys are resin/mold PROs, and I trust them entirely. I have some theories, but the bore puzzles me just a bit. Once these guys tell me how it's done, I'm sure it'll click. It's definately not injection molding, as far as I can tell.
I also wouldn't trust a factory due to the fact that they probably wouldn't have the same quality control as you'd have on your own. You'd probably still have to do a lot of finishing work.
As far as resin goes, playing around with different mixes is the way to go. I think I could figure out an excellent mix.
Let me know what you think.
-E
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Based on the ones I've seen, the Yuu is most likely injection-molded.
You can't make something like that one at a time and sell it for 80-100 bucks.
Get real.
eB
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from the 20 requests that i send i receive answers that less than 20000 nobody is interested. this is not interesting to me. so if you are on some other forum please we have to find the do it at home how to. and as to what edosan sais this is not true for me. how much work goes even in 60$ non rootend? much more than the 60$ can pay. i value what i do but i dont expect to make more than 5-6$ for an full hour work.this is my hobby man. i have a katana also and as i told i am into knife and blademaking sometimes. so you should know that even the 3000$ katana has much more work in it than the money and even the most prestigious makers make no more than 6$ for an hour.can you believe it?
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costademaria wrote:
i value what i do but i dont expect to make more than 5-6$ for an full hour work.this is my hobby man. i have a katana also and as i told i am into knife and blademaking sometimes. so you should know that even the 3000$ katana has much more work in it than the money and even the most prestigious makers make no more than 6$ for an hour.can you believe it?
I have had the pleasure of associating with Ken LaCosse and Perry Yung and working on flutes with them in their workshops. Seeing the amount of time and energy they put into the flutes makes me appreciate their dedication to the craft and art of shakuhachi making. The people who buy their flutes and those of other fine makers should realize that they are really getting a bargain in terms of man hours and sweat. These guys definitely have a low hourly wage, but they stick with it because they love bamboo. Hopefully people will consider that the next time they are thinking, "but it's just a piece of bamboo, why does it cost so much?"
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