YAMAHA COMPACT SILENT CELLO HONORED FOR DESIGN
–IDSA and Business Week Select Innovative Instrument From Among 1,000+ Entries–

GRAND RAPIDS, MI–The Yamaha Compact Silent Electric Cello, already praised by artists and industry experts for its innovative marriage of design and function, has been honored with a Bronze Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA), co-sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and Business Week.

More than a thousand entries in nine categories competed for the prestigious recognition. As a winner, Yamaha will be honored at an awards dinner in New Orleans in September, and the Compact Silent Electric Cello will be featured in the Fall 2000 issue of Innovation: Yearbook of Design Excellence.

"It’s extremely gratifying for the leaders in industrial design to recognize our work," says Michael Bennett, vice president/general manager, Band & Orchestral Division, Yamaha Corporation of America. "We pride ourselves on creating superior products and services to satisfy the diverse needs of musicians worldwide, and we’re confident the public will continue to receive our products with as much enthusiasm as the designers at IDSA."

The introduction of the new Compact Silent Electric Cello follows on the success of the company’s Silent Electric Cello, Silent Electric Violin, and Silent Brass products in recent years, which together represent a growing Silent Series of Yamaha instruments.

Whereas the original Silent Electric Cello was designed to reflect the classic look and form of an acoustic cello, the Compact Silent Electric Cello has retractable sides that allow for easy transport. Although it plays just like a full-size acoustic cello, only those portions of the instrument that a player would touch are represented. This gives the instrument a very striking appearance, but requires little adjustment for players who are accustomed to playing an acoustic cello. Just like the successful Silent Electric Cello, this instrument allows musicians to put on a pair of headphones and enjoy the sonic richness and tone of a concert quality cello, while creating very little external sound. Alternatively, they can connect the instrument to an amplifier to reach entirely new levels of public performance.

Yamaha achieved the technological feat of creating a Silent Cello by redesigning the traditional cello without an internal resonating chamber. Instead, a studio-quality audio pickup located below the bridge is connected to an internal effects processor (powered by two AA batteries or AC power) that places the sound in a selected virtual acoustic space, such as a concert hall or practice room.

For more information, write Yamaha Corporation of America, Band & Orchestral Division, 3445 East Paris Ave. S.E., Grand Rapids, MI 49512; telephone (616) 940-4900; e-mail info@yamaha.com; or visit the web site at http://www.yamaha.com/band.

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