Yamaha YDS-150 Teardown and Bell repair/tightening Fix
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- Опубликовано: 14 янв 2025
- A quick mini "teardown" of the YDS-150 by Yamaha. A few thoughts on the past couple months of gigging with it. Fixing the loose bell and a look inside at the inner electronics. This channel is mostly Boss RC 600 live looping content but I use a Yamaha YDS 150 in my show and it has already started to give me some headache. I was afraid to tear it apart but proceeded anyway!
Thank you for this useful video ! My bell came loose and you encouraged me to open the instrument. I ended up taking the bell off completely, it is easy. And the bell is only decoration, without it the YDS 150 makes a better and more compact travel companion. To take off the bell you open the instrument like shown in the video. Then you unscrew the four screws that can be seen when looking into the bell with a long and slim screwdriver. Then you can take the bell off, saving size and weight. The instrument is so lightweight that balance is not a problem.
Great idea! I like the decorative aspect of the bell because I play with it on stage. But if you're using it mostly as a practice tool it makes way more sense to remove the bell.
Combined with a trumpet stand, the bell makes a very convenient way to stand it up -- K&M 15213 5-leg In-Bell Trumpet Stand, collapses down and I can store it in the bell in the original YDS 150 case. So when I play uBass, and need to cover some of the sax frills I can reach down, grab the YDS, and then put it back down and resume playing bass (Kala uBass, also tiny)
Would love to see you do a "rig rundown" of all the pedals and gear you use to do a show.
Noted!
Matt , thanks for this breakdown . When did you learn to play it? I love your gear reviews as I would like to try learning a horn . Do you have to know how to play a regular sax first? I sometimes just try to teach myself things.🤣
Thanks. It was very informative. I bought my YDS150 about a month back. It was working very well till a few hours back when it stopped working and would not turn on. I cannot do anything because it is dead without any lights.
I've had to open it up and fix it at leat 5 times. It's not the most road worthy instrument. But mine still works, knock on wood.
The instrument started playing after about 4/5 hrs. As if it had gone to sleep.😃
I’m not a horn player, but I watched anyway.. lol . I just enjoy anything music related.. and yes, more gear info/review vids! Would love to see you take a song from one of your live performances, and break it down for us.. like a director of a movie might do a commentary over a scene of his movie… talk about how you put a song together, gear and settings and all that fun stuff .. 👍🏻
When I have some downtime in the next week or so I'll do a commentary video possibly. Stay tuned
Had exactly the same issue with the bell which is a serious design fault. Great video and fixed now. Thanks. Otherwise it’s a great instrument.
Great! I highly recommend buying these to tighten the screws. amzn.to/3XBftsd. One of the screws you can’t get to and I had to drill through the plastic to reach it. However you can tighten the other two by opening it up. You need something to hold the nut on the bolt though. Terrible design, Yamaha. Good luck!
Thanks for this. Same thing has happened to mine and one of the little nuts has fallen off and no chance of finding it. I was going to do exactly what you have done, but was a bit worried that I might do some damage, so great to see that if you work carefully its quite easy to do. I like this instrument and use for silent practice. Main complaint would be the amount of pressure I have to use on the octave key.
amzn.to/40BVWsR you need these to grab the nut from the back. I did it without these the first time. Not a fan of the construction. Mine is falling apart. I gig with it.
Great video Matt, thank you for posting. I will likely dive in to mine also as I am hoping to find and move the bluetooth antenna as it interferes with my wireless audio transmitter. One thing to point out on your battery comments, you state that you are using four 1100mah rechargeable batteries, good for you. That should last longer than disposables, but keep in mind you are not running with 4x1100=4400 mah. You still have only 1100mah as each battery is making 1100mah at 1.5V which is in series to add up to the 5V that the YDS needs. A 5000mah 5V rechargeable external battery will last you much much longer.
Thanks! I do know this! I built a 12V solar system for my camper van. First with four 6v gel mat batteries tied together in series/parallel and then when they were no longer holding charge we switched to two 12v 100AH batteries in parallel for 200AH at 12v. Back to the saxophone, I did switch to a 5v battery bank. After a lot of testing. This one works the best. amzn.to/3wvGgNy
@@MattBoltonMusic That's good! I am experimenting with them also. Just decided against a 10k mAh battery due to size, even with the smallest I could find. Trying a 5K now about the size of a lipstick case.
Thanks for this. best I've found so far. I just disected mine in the same way, but found I can only tighten two of the three screws. Were you able to to third, or find a way to do the last one with out a full disection?
I used these amzn.to/3QpzYqW
Hi there, is it possible to take off the bell part altogether? Does it have any use?
Was thinking for ease of travel, compactness etc…
You can but you need a very long special needle nose pliers. It's not practical. I finally bit the bullet and purchased one to tighten the bolts way down in the bell. But it was too late one of the nuts already fell off and is gone forever. I did figure out how to tighten the bell a bit though with the needle nose pliers.
Great review + repair. Was the sax on your your first instrument? Any Coltrane? 👍👍
Piano then saxophone. I'm more of a fan of Cannonball Adderly and Charlie Parker than Coltrane but love Coltrane too. I'm an alto player.
Excuse me, do you think that once it's opened, the bell could be removed? or is it part of some electronic component that prevents it from being removed?
Maybe with the proper tool you could get the bell off. But unfortunately the screw nuts are way down deep in the bell and you'd need a specialty tool to hold them in place. It's very awkward trying to get the screws off. Bad design in my opinion. I just gave up on getting the bell tight. One of the nuts worked its way off the screw, so I'm now missing one of the screws. I ended up just duct taping the bell with some black duct tape. It's not great but the best I could do with the tools I had.
Hi, i have a Yds-120 which is basically the same as the 150 but without the bell, without Bluetooth and significantly cheaper. I'm wondering wether it would be advisable to clean the spit tube from time to time. Yamaha says not to do it, but mine gets a little smelly recently (although i regularly clean the mouthpiece as well as the inner side of the neck as suggested by yamaha). Has anyone tried to clean the tube, e.g. by putting alcohol through with a syringe or some other method?
How to solve a problem. I cant play G low and octaaf.
I think it only goes down to low A. Use the app on your phone to see the fingering charts.
@@MattBoltonMusicWhen I get mine I am going to see if I can use the low A key in conjunction with other keys to map a lower octave like most wind controllers do with that key. 9:18
Had the same trouble with the bell. Yamaha Canada sent me the tech manual and authorized me to fix and keep the warranty valid.
I'm having troubles with it again. I actually drilled a hole in the back of the plastic to find the "third screw" in the bell. It was too late though because the nut had worked its way off disappeared with the screw bouncing around internally. I opened it up and removed the screw. Getting the nut in the bell and replacing the screw through my new hole in the plastic seemed like an overwhelming difficulty. So I found the PERFECT fix for the wobbly bell. Duct Tape!! A thin strip of black duct tape around the connection of the bell and the plastic does the trick. Lame that Yamaha made such a wobbly poorly screwed on bell. So many times these companies lack in R&D and don't see these simple problems. I just don't get it. I used the YDS-150 for about ten gigs before it started causing problems. Unfortunately most of these products are designed and made for people that rarely use them IMO (the majority of the market). People that use them for gigs and travel with them are more rare than you'd think.
thanks for the video, I just found your video when I google yds150 key fix. Did you take a close look and check the condition of that "sensor pad" ? (The true sensor or switchs are beneath this rubber layer). It looks like there is a design flaw, because all these "+" shape keys will gradually punch through that rubber pad and break switch beneath it even under normal use.. Check this video ruclips.net/video/lTvmxiZajiQ/видео.html Some people used small rubber hat on that "+" to make them less sharp. You video is not very clear, but it looks like there are some + shape markings on your rubber pad already
Thank you for this information. Yes, there are definitely + shape markings. I've noticed a few design flaws in this instrument unfortunately. Didn't understand the japanese video but I got the gist of it. It's definitely an issue. Will do some more research on this!