Electone not yet dead, at least in Asia!

[David Hilliard]

I noticed on another forum that Yamaha are about to launch a new Electone, the ELS-02 on April 10th. There will be 3 models, Standard @ £3750, Custom @ £5650 and Professional @ £9150.(according to the online currency converter) I guess as with the Stagea if we want one we will have to import ourselves!

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fjp.yamaha.com%2Fnews_release%2F2014%2F14012201.html

[Peter Slack]

Can't understand why Yamaha can't send a few hundred of these over here, I'm sure they would be snapped up.
.

[Ian and Bev Harrison]

The Professional one looks very interesting.   One wonders just how much customs duty, freight and other extras like speaker cabinets might cost.   The price appears to be much lower than the HX1 or AR100 were new.
Cheers
Ian

[Simon Fuller]

Hi all,
Not sure how much it would cost to ship to Australia but to the UK it would be very expensive. When I bought my d deck it was shipped over on air freight in five separate boxes. Due to the light weight the shipping cost was reasonable. To ship the full size ELS 01C it would have had to go in a container and be shipped from port to port. This would have been about £4000 on a £6000 organ weighing approx. 105kg. Once in the UK you then have to pay the customs and excise duty including vat on the total cost of getting it here i.e. the £10000. This will add about another £3000 to the total cost of importing, then there is getting it delivered from customs to your home. So the real actual cost of the ELS 01C in the UK would be about £13000. This is why I went for the d deck, the spec is almost identical to the ELS01C (main difference was the VA voice section versus a second lead section) but the cost of getting it here was less than half that of importing the ELS 01C. It will be interesting to see if Yamaha make a d deck 2 since they are also releasing a special expander module for the ELS 01 to give it the same spec as the new ELS 02, so that existing owners do not necessarily have the full expense of changing their organ for the new one.

Regards,
Simon

[Ian and Bev Harrison]

Hi All,
Simon makes a very good point and extensive review of what the ELS01-c and ELS01-X have on them reduces their appeal.  Yamaha have taken away the important feature of split keyboards, at least on the 01 models and unless this is a feature of the 02 models to be available in April then the ELS02 c or X would not have enough extra going for them to warrant their expense for us. 
Freight on the X model from Japan to our nearest port, Brisbane, would be Y135000 or at todays exchange rate about A$1600.  No doubt the C model would be slightly less but then one has to add Customs and the problem of collecting it in Brisbane. 
Then our exchange rate has dropped dramatically this year making all imported stuff dearer than it would have been last year.  We are told this is great for our manufacturing industries (we don't have any - everything is made in China), our rural industries and our mining so I guess we just have to grin and bear the rising costs.
Lastly I wonder just why Yamaha feel that a 25 note pedal board and two extra octaves of keys (one upper & one lower) are worth $6650 when the X model has no extra sounds or other features over the C model. 
We will be staying with our 18yr old AR at that rate.
Cheers
Ian

[Alan Lees]

It's such a shame we don't get new electones over here isn't it. For about a year now I've been taking organ lessons at my local music school. There are lots of children learning to play on electone EL90's and when you think that anyone under their early 20's wasn't even born when these instruments were sold it seems silly.

I was looking at the buzz surrounding the launch of the Tyros 5 and the price of it, I can't see why Yamaha wouldn't have a market.

Wishful thinking eh! Back to having those "its a floppy disk drive, they used to be used on computers" conversations!

[Ian and Bev Harrison]

Hi All,
We are very gratified to hear that youngsters are still being taught how to play organs in the UK.  This gives us some hope that organ playing will not be completely lost when all us older folk disappear.
In Australia I don't think there are any schools still teaching organ, and only a very few teaching piano.  Music is taught in most schools using orchestral or band instruments (particularly band) and kids learn the rudiments of reading one line so as to play a trumpet, trombone,  flugelhorn, or perhaps a violin in order for them to play in the school band.   Most of these bands do not get enough practice time and sound pretty ordinary and once the kid leaves school, and hands back the instrument, the vast majority never pick up an instrument again.  Guitar is popular, but as teachers are scarce, most kids teach themselves and as someone once said "the guitar is the easiest instrument to play and the hardest instrument to play well."
So, despite the age of the instruments being used, the UK is keeping the organ tradition alive and that is a good thing.
Cheers
Ian

[Andrew Gilbert]

As I'm new to this forum, I'm picking up on threads as I explore.

I discussed this with the high and mighty at Yamaha some years ago. The reason Yamaha won't export to Europe is simple. The 'home' version of the ELS Stageas and the D-Deck, for that matter, do not meet EU electrical requirements. Yamaha would need to set up a new production line for the EU models, as well as modifying them as required. And D-Deck, at least in its original form, was not voiced in a way that would suit European tastes, so that one would have had to be revoiced as well as modified.The number of organs that would be sold would not justify the costs involved, so despite the fact that Yamaha wanted them over here, it wasn't going to happen.

Tartorade in Australia is the company to go to in these circumstances, as I think they're the people who have arranged most, if not all UK imports of Stagea. Private imports can get around EU regulations. Of course there's no official support from Yamaha in Europe. I don't know if there's any unofficial support though.

The same situation exists with Kawai's Dreamatone DT series. Roland are the only Japanese maker to export to Europe and the USA but there are always rumours about them stopping production of the Ateliers. It's not happened yet!

[Simon Fuller]

Hi Andrew,

Welcome to the group. It is a shame that Yamaha thought they would not sell enough organs to justify the investment in producing for Europe.
 Something I have noticed is that in my D Deck manual it shows the distributors in each of the locations it is to be sold, which is pretty much the rest of the world bar the U.S. and Europe!
However, in the new ELS -02 manual it specifically shows Yamaha-Kemble as the distributor for the UK in the distributor list (which is absent from my D Deck manual). Could this be that they are preparing to export to europe? There isn't a CE mark (relates to certificate of conformity within Europe) in the manual but then there wasn't in the AR manual. Here's hoping for an organ revival.

Regards,
Simon

[Andrew Gilbert]

As always, if they can make money on a product line, they will! The demand is numerically tiny but it is there, as Tarotrade's business proves.

An organ revival? Well, it's already there in the cheap/free used market, where people can buy an organ that cost thousands when new for almost nothing now. So they're prepared to take a chance on it. And who knows, with Ringway/Orla offering some increasingly good products at keen prices maybe there will be just enough of an upturn to make Yamaha, and Kawai for that matter, think again.

We can only hope!