YAMAHA

Yamaha Corporation (ヤマハ株式会社) was founded on 12 October 1887 in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, by Torakusu Yamaha (山葉寅楠, 1851-1916), originally as a reed-organ repair shop. Ten years later to the day, on 12 October 1897, the company was incorporated as Nippon Gakki Seizo K.K. (日本楽器製造株式会社, “Japan Musical Instrument Manufacturing Company”). In 1955 its motorcycle business - grown out of the success of the YA-1 model - was spun off as Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., and the two firms have since operated as separate legal entities. In 1987, exactly a century after Torakusu Yamaha had built his first reed organ, Nippon Gakki was renamed Yamaha Corporation. The head office sits in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka; the corporate mark of three interlocking tuning forks (音叉) is a direct reference to the company’s musical-instrument roots.

Yamaha moved into consumer audio in the early 1970s as an extension of its instrument business, and the resulting line acquired the in-house name Natural Sound (ナチュラルサウンド), built on the idea of reproducing the source without colouration. The 1974 NS-1000M reference monitor used pure-beryllium domes in both midrange (the JA-0801 driver) and treble (the JA-0513 tweeter), and is cited as one of the earliest commercial uses of beryllium diaphragms in consumer loudspeakers. At the same time the B-1 power amplifier ran V-FET output transistors (Static Induction Transistors), a vertical field-effect topology developed jointly by Sony, Yamaha and Tohoku University to extend the bandwidth and dynamic behaviour of the output stage. The 1978 NS-10M studio monitor went on to be claimed as the world standard for near-field monitoring in recording studios, holding that position until production ended in 2001. In 1981 Yamaha brought out the PASSAGE (パッセージ) line - a range of pre-packaged audio systems from the small PASSAGE-CORE up to the flagship PASSAGE-A9000, marketed as a self-contained domestic listening environment.

Yamaha’s hi-fi catalogue ran on a tight set of single-letter codes by product type. B for power amplifiers: the mono BX-1 flagship at ¥330,000, the stereo B-5 at ¥250,000, B-6 at ¥190,000 and B-70 at ¥138,000, with the FET-based B-3 at ¥200,000. C for preamplifiers: the C-1 flagship at ¥400,000, the C-2a at ¥170,000, C-6 at ¥98,000 and C-70 at ¥70,000. A for integrated amplifiers: A-9 at ¥245,000, A-8, A-7 at ¥89,000, A-6a and A-5D. T for FM/AM tuners using the in-house DC-NFB-PLL-MPX circuit set, headed by the T-2 at ¥130,000 and T-9 at ¥98,000. K for cassette decks with the proprietary Bias Cal Servo auto-bias calibration, with the K-1d and K-9 flagships including dbx compatibility. P and PX for turntables with the ARS (Anti-Resonance Straight) tonearm and an FG-servo speed control. The supporting components: HA-series MC head amps (HA-1, HA-2), the EC-1 electronic crossover, the NS speaker family (the NS-1000M flagship, the NS-10M studio monitor, the NS-690 home speaker) and the FX series. The 1981 PASSAGE line capped the catalogue as a complete-system option for buyers who wanted to pick their hi-fi as one unit.