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Clarinet

Yamaha YCL-72CS

Name: Yamaha YCL-72CS
Brand: Yamaha

Yamaha · YCL-72CS Bb Clarinet

Price: 750 EUR – 750 EUR

Availability: 0/10 (Very rare)

The Yamaha YCL-72CS is a grenadilla-wood professional Bb clarinet from Yamaha's original Custom line, built with integral tone holes and a thicker-walled bell designed to answer the Buffet R13 with easier blowing and a richer, more concentrated tone.

Where available? Go to the best price – 750 EUR About this instrument

About the Yamaha YCL-72CS

The YCL-72CS belongs to Yamaha's original "Custom" clarinet line, produced in grenadilla wood with a 14.65mm bore and silver-plated keywork. Rather than inserting separate tone-hole rings, the toneholes are integral to the wood body and cut small, with a larger undercut and a slight overcut - a combination meant to let the instrument speak easily and project well while keeping the tone concentrated and clear rather than diffuse. The Custom line's bell uses thicker walls than Yamaha's standard models, paired with a slightly curved barrel, together aimed at a noticeably richer, deeper overall tone. The whole design was conceived as a direct answer to the Buffet R13, the long-standing reference point in professional clarinets.

Where to buy

Reverb 750 EUR Best price View details

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Source: https://reverb.com/item/97254996-yamaha-ycl-72-cs-una-joya-musical

Sound character of the Yamaha YCL-72CS

Small, heavily undercut integral tone holes combined with a thick-walled bell and slightly curved barrel give the YCL-72CS a concentrated, clear core to the tone with noticeably added depth and richness compared to Yamaha's standard-line clarinets - the deliberate aim of the original Custom design.

Warm Resonant Full-bodied Smooth

What owners of the Yamaha YCL-72CS say

Discussion of the closely related YCL-72 model settles on a clear verdict: a genuinely solid professional horn, with intonation good enough to trust on stage and a blowing feel that comes across as more even than the Buffet R13 it was built to rival. Direct, full-text player accounts specific to the Custom-line YCL-72CS are hard to come by, since the relevant specialist forum threads sit behind a paywall, but the pattern that does surface lines up with the general reputation of Yamaha's early Custom clarinets: a tone that reads as deeper and more concentrated than Yamaha's standard-line instruments, at the cost of a touch more resistance that most players moving up a level consider a fair trade.

Playability & handling of the Yamaha YCL-72CS

The closely related YCL-72 (the non-Custom sibling from the same era) earns consistent praise in player discussions as a genuinely solid professional-quality horn, with acceptable intonation and a blowing resistance that comes across as more balanced than the Buffet R13 it was designed to compete with. On the Custom-line YCL-72CS specifically, the small, heavily undercut tone holes are built to deliver easy response and strong projection without the tone spreading thin, which is the usual trade-off with an overly free-blowing design. The thicker bell walls and slightly curved barrel add a touch more resistance in exchange for a fuller, richer low register - a deliberate trade most players moving up from a standard-line clarinet find worthwhile.

Recommended accessories & strings for the Yamaha YCL-72CS

As with any grenadilla-wood clarinet, regular bore oiling helps guard against cracking, and a new or long-unplayed instrument benefits from being broken in gradually rather than played for long stretches right away. Cork grease keeps the joints sealing properly, and reed choice matters more than usual here - a reed on the stiffer, higher-quality side tends to suit the concentrated, focused tone this mouthpiece-and-bore combination is built for.

Technical data for the Yamaha YCL-72CS

Body	Grenadilla wood
Bore	14.65mm
Tone holes	Integral (cut directly into the wood), small with larger undercut
Keys	Silver-plated
Bell	Thicker walls than standard-line Yamaha clarinets
Barrel	Slightly curved (Custom-line design)
Line	Yamaha Custom (CS), developed as an answer to the Buffet R13

The history of the Yamaha YCL-72CS

Part of Yamaha's CS series of professional clarinets, the 72CS continues the tonal design lineage of the respected YCL-72 into a current-production instrument.

About Yamaha as a manufacturer

Yamaha entered the wind instrument business relatively late compared to its century-old keyboard-instrument history, launching its first brass instrument, the YTR-1 trumpet, in 1966, followed by its first saxophones (the YAS-1 and YTS-1) in 1967. The company opened a dedicated factory in Toyooka in 1970 to anchor wind instrument manufacturing, and its first Custom-line clarinets, the YCL-81 and YCL-85, arrived in 1974 - the lineage the YCL-72CS continues. That era also established a pattern Yamaha has kept since: working directly with professional players during development, as it famously did with saxophonist Eugene Rousseau on the YAS-62/YSS-62 in 1978, to make sure instruments held up to real performance demands rather than just technical specs.