Thanks, Helen. A question regarding your bari experience: did you play B-6 models or something newer? The reason I ask is because my experience with Yani has been with three Vito B-6 baris -- different places and times, of course -- but I thought all were terrible.
As far as comments vs. views, I don't mind. I've also been doing some commentary at SOTW and I've gotten a couple of e-mails, so I know there's a lot of interest. I've also mentioned, above, that I've kinda fallen in love with the Yani curved sopranos.
The thing I found the most odd about Yanagisawas is that people don't know how to tell one model from another. That's not from just your casual eBay'er (i.e., "I found this in the attic and I think it's a saxafone. I'm listing this at $2.3 million. No reserve.") but also respected dealers, thus my comment about people calling a horn an "Elimona" (which is essentially the engraving style) or a "800/880" (which is just giving up on trying to find out what model it is). In a way, it's not necessarily bad: it makes a potential buyer have to go and try the horn to see if he likes it, which is what you should do. Also, if you're unaware that the 500 is supposed to be an "intermediate" horn, you might pick it up, play it and call it as good as your high-dollar pro horn. Which is also something you probably should do. Hey, there's nothing that says that your pro model horn has to be better than my intermediate one.
Even before I started any research, I've mentioned that I'd really like to try one of the "Silver-Sonic" Yani baris sometime. Now that I've spent some time looking at how Yani horns are constructed, I really want to try a "Silver-Sonic" bari.
The other nice thing I've seen so far with Yani is that, except for their first model, they've evolved their horns, rather than scrap all their previous ideas and start over from scratch. Of course, you can argue that all they're doing is copying Selmer ....