Re: Yamaha silver plating and bad experience


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Posted by Joe S. on July 30, 1999 at 00:24:34:

In Reply to: Yamaha silver plating and bad experience posted by DE VULPUS on July 29, 1999 at 07:57:34:

This could be one that did NOT get a thin layer of "copper strike" (copper plating) underneath the silver plating. Silver plating bonds "OK" to brass (the part of your instrument that has NOT yet shown signs of trouble), but not always superbly. Conn, for instance, used to make most all of its factory silver plated instruments out of a higher copper content metal than regular yellow brass, rather than using the "copper strike" technique. (Have you ever looked at an old Elkhart Conn instrument that was originally silver plated but had its silver stripped off, and noticed the reddish color of the base metal?) Copper is the universal "glue" for plating: It sticks GREAT to everything and everything sticks GREAT to it. Nickel-silver, by contrast, doesn't grab plating very well at all (not a good bond), and if you don't copper plate on top of nickel-silver and under the silver plating, there is a pretty good chance that the silver will flake off of the nickel-silver after a while. (Nickel-silver is usually a copper-nickel-zinc alloy, and the nickel part of it is the main thing, I think, that screws up plating's bond to it. PURE nickel, as an example of this, is virtually impossible to get a good bond to, and manufacturers that have tried to short-cut the hand-polishing steps on brass mouthpieces, woodwind mechanisms, etc., by nickel plating them UNDERNEATH the silver plating JUST TO MAKE THEM SMOOTH AND SHINY WITHOUT HAVING TO DO IT BY HAND, have ended up with disasterous results...[of the past: Holton brass mouthpieces, Puchner bassoon keys]...but I digress.)

If you are the first owner of the Yama-thing and can demonstrate that the instrument was not copper-striken underneath the silver, you could possibly raise a warranty issue (even though plated finishes are not covered under most warranties) under the issues of "materials and workmanship". I have been in Anderson Silver Plating and seen them plate some new Yamastuff, but I have no idea what Yamaha does or has done on a regular basis over the years regarding plating. I have always known Anderson to copper strike. Maybe the tubas get/got plated back in Japan. (???)


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