Side by Side Comparison of: Suzuki Music vs Yamaha vs Alfred vs Alfred Music

Loved it! Well packaged and great quality! Can't wait to start my lessons!

Just what my kid needs for his school's music class. it is plastic but pretty duration as he has already dropped it quite a few times. He likes it too. Of course, the price was good.

After leaving some bad reviews on other products I wanted to be fair and give a good review to a deserving product. I purchased four Suzuki recorders. They all work very well and are lots of fun. The kids love them and so do the adults. My grandson got two for his birthday along with toy cars and various action figures but to everybody's surprise he just loved his recorder and wouldn’t put it down for hours. Easy to learn and fun to play. Great product at a great price!

Bought this for my son who wanted to have a portable instrument he could play with when he wasn't in proximity of a piano. It's got a better build quality than expected and feels sturdy. Definitely would recommend.

My daughter loves it. It plays well. Her music teacher discouraged the students from buying their own for class stating that all the ones you get for cheap online were junk. But I took my chances. It came with a great, good quality sleeve to store it in and a cute cardboard music stand and her teacher approved! He was pleasantly surprised.

This has been such a great help to my Autistic Grandson in his speech therapy. He has been unable to talk and they were trying to teach him to blow on something to help his speech. They tried to get him to blow on a harmonica without success. The recorder is working for him. He is having a ball blowing on the recorder. It is the first time he has been able to blow on anything. We like the quality of the Suzuki recorder and the items that came with it to help keep it cleaned out. Thanks for offering this product through your website.Sincerely,Anna Garcia

I decided to learn to play music and bought this, and its awesome! It's only around 7 dollars and it sounds amazing! I can play all sorts of songs and it has a really cool pouch that I keep it in. I can't recommend this enough! It's awesome! Feels really well made. The only con I have is that one of the holes is off a bit which seems odd, I don't know if recorders are supposed to have that but it's a little weird, but besides that it's awesome and great for anyone to learn to play songs and annoy your neighbors!

Works great, my toddler is a bit scared of it because it's very loud. Of course he's only 3 so his breath control isn't great. That's just because he's a bit too young for it now. It's be very well made and solid feeling.. It'll last a long time so maybe when he's in school if they still have mandatory recorder learning by then.

These are very nice, very noisy, but nice!! My two boys (ages 12, 11) love these. I had to make them go outside after the first couple of minutes, but they are very happy with them. I am going to try to look up some music online so that maybe they can actually learn to play something instead of just making noise. ;)

We needed to get this for elementary school. It seems to be just like the one I learned to play in grade school, only its so much prettier!! My daughter loves it and is leaning how to play songs in school. It came with a clear vinyl case to keep it clean and from getting scratched up in her backpack.

Perfect model for children to learn with. This Yamaha is well made and tuned properly

Pros:* Multiple joints that slide well, easy to tune and adjust pinky holes* Sounds just like I remember from 20 years ago* I learned how to play the Harry Potter song and I can reliably get 70-80% of the notes correctCons:* My roommates have it made it clear that they don't think learning recorder is something a grown man should be doing

This would be 5 stars if it could reach the higher notes a little more easily. It does reach those notes but not as clearly as the Yamaha 5xx series. I do admit I could have received an abnormal one. Everything else is just as I had hoped.

My son loved this product, nice, sleek and sounds good

Just what I was looking for!

My son uses this in his music class and it works great. The teacher had all of the children buy the same recorder so that they would all be using the same one. Everyone seems to be happy with it. It comes with a nice bag to carry it in too.

Seems to work fine as a recorder. Hard to tell as all recorders are generally being played by grade schoolers and sound like a small pet is being murdered. One thing to note, the black one is not black, it's brown so if you really want black, as my child did, you may be a bit disappointed.

I purchased this recorder to replace a school-issue that was lost. I wanted black so it would match the other students' but the one that came was ivory colored. As for sound, it is fine. It sounds...well...like a recorder. It came with a neck strap which is fun.

I don't know what was more satisfying; When I played a harmonizing solo, or when I "accidentally" sat on it.

This sounds very good. Got this for our daughter. We were a bit disappointed that it didn't come with it's own cleaning stick.

Good product for basic school recorders. I bought extras for our school for the kids who could not afford one for themselves so the music teacher was very happy to receive them. No bells and whistles which is fine. I will buy again.

This was required for my daughter's music class. I bought it against my better judgement. It works great but I recommend also buying ear plugs or noise canceling headphones.

Granddaughter likes it; her parents don't :-) Not sure if she actually uses it much or not but I'd say it's good quality at a good price. I'd recommend it.

We bought this for our almost 5 year-old daughter, she has been asking for one for a while. I wanted to get her an actual instrument and not a toy recorder. I am going to have to find out how to make music with it to teach her. I am happy with the sound it makes and it seems durable. It recommends wiping it out after every use but does not come with an appropriate cloth to do this with. This is why I would give it only 4 stars...I would have been willing to pay a few dollars extra for it to have come with something that could be used to wipe it out with (I am thinking that an appropriate tool exists, but now I'll probably have to buy it from a music store or something).

These are what I expected, plastic recorders. I ordered 3, and kept 2 of the 3 for my kids (the other was a gift. My complaint is that, for one of them, the pieces don't fit tightly together and the bottom piece slips off. I bought another brand soprano recorder at a local music store and didn't have that problem.

Cool

This is not black, it is brown.

The finger holes were too far apart, and my fingers could not reach them properly.

F# sounds weird. besides that no problem

It's an ok product for the begginer... not for professional use. It's harder to sustain notes with this recorder as opposed to other nice recorders i've worked with in the past.

good product for the price, is very sensible, any way is really cheaper and good for the price

nice and smooth. i wish the holes could be more easily felt by the fingers. perhaps it is my fault, i'm a beginner, but i'm having difficulty keeping the holes totally covered.

Perhaps it's just me, but I don't recall my recorder in high school being as screechy.

It's only $6 so it's not exactly a huge loss but I just don't remember recorders being so low quality in tone and feel. This requires extremely soft air flow to play notes properly otherwise it just squeals like crazy. Might be good for your kid learning in school but don't get this if you plan on doing anything serious with it.

Not as good as I would have liked, it leaked air and tones are not consistent.

It clearly stated a blue, as seen in picture recorder. We recieved a bright turquoise recorder for my son to take to school. Wouldnt have purchased if knew the color would be different. The reason we purchased this one was to have a blue recorder. Disappointed in the description of the product and what we actually recieved

Its aight, its kinda whistley and you get what you pay for

My son orders this for school and it doesn't sound good at all. No matter how lightly he blows into it the sound gets high pitched as if he was blowing too hard.

Prefer any other recorder like the clear blue one from Yamaha or the Yes 302B model which is the best on the planet

I should have paid more money

I ordered a three pieces recorder and got a one piece recorder which I didn't like and it's not worth it to go through all the hassle of returning it, so I'm disappointed.

They have combined listings and reviews for all Suzuki Recorder products.This review is only for the Mini Recorder Whistle!----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sadly, I did not notice most of the holes are fake, just decoration, so only one hole is functional.So it's not a Recorder Whistle, it's a Whistle made to look like a Recorder.

It's not in perfect tune, unfortunately. It works for kids, but not if you want to play for real.

I had to buy a cleaning rod at a music store, and it cost nearly as much as the recorder. I would not buy this again.

Slightly but noticeably out of tune despite all adjustments. My expectations were not particularly high for an $8 plastic instrument, but Yamaha usually makes pretty decent cheap instruments across the board. This seems to be an exception, though.

The Yamaha YRS-23Y Soprano Recorder uses German fingering, and this may not be what you want.I recommend the Yamaha YRS-24B Soprano Recorder that uses the standard Baroque fingering (also called English fingering).The Yamaha YRS-23Y and the YRS-24B are almost identical. The main difference is that the third hole from the bottom on the Yamaha YRS-23Y (German fingering) is slightly smaller than the one on the YRS-24B (Baroque fingering). This changes the fingering so that the F and F# notes are slightly easier to play using German fingering. A small chart showing the difference in fingering comes with either recorder.The German system originated in Germany in 1930 and was developed for beginners. Recorders with German fingering are slightly easier to play, but some of the notes play out of tune.Many manufacturers offer soprano recorders with German fingering, and I think this is because there is a big market for young children learning to play recorder. I personally think that it's a bad idea to give a child a recorder that plays out of tune.All alto, tenor, and bass recorders use Baroque fingering. So if you learn German fingering, it makes it difficult to unlearn German fingering and learn Baroque fingering when you want to switch to alto or tenor recorder.From Wikipedia:In the early part of the 20th century, Peter Harlan developed a recorder that allowed for apparently simpler fingering, called German fingering. A recorder designed for German fingering has a hole five that is smaller than hole four-whereas baroque and neo-baroque recorders have a hole four that is smaller than hole five. The immediate difference in fingering is for F and B♭, which on a neo-baroque instrument must be fingered 0 123 4-67. With German fingering, this becomes a simpler 0 123 4 - - -. Unfortunately, this caused many other chromatic notes to become so out of tune that they were considered unusable. German fingering became popular in Europe, especially Germany, in the 1930s, but rapidly became obsolete in the 1950s as the recorder began to be treated more seriously and the limitations of German fingering became more widely appreciated. Recorders with German fingering are manufactured exclusively for educational purposes.Use your browser to search on "recorder musical instrument wikipedia".Scroll down to the "Contents" box.Click "German fingering" (under the "3 Structure" heading).Additional Note: Use your browser to search on “michala petri” and listen to her play Bach and Vivaldi on YouTube. Michala Petri is sometimes referred to as the “Queen of the Recorder”.

Sound is a little off. Not sure why as I had the nontransparent version in the past and no such issue.

The recorders arrived on time, but 9 out of 10 had torn/ripped cases. I was not pleased with this as I had bought them for my students, and I had to buy alternate cases in order to give them out to the kids.

Didn't receive the cleaning rod. Yes the bag and the recorder. Missing a piece.I am not happy. I won't recommend

Cheap piece of crap that notes dont change tunes rip off

I ordered this expecting a solid black recorder. Nowhere in the description did it say it would come partially black. The picture of the item is very deceptive. It looks ridiculous and my son will probably be teased because of it. Had I known, I would definitely not have purchased this.

Won't play the highest notes after several weeks and I checked in to retuning it only to find I had missed the deadline by....yeah, ! day. Sucks for me.

I could never get the lowest note to play! I have many recorders, and have never had that problem before. I tried everything I could think of, and I never got a sound out of that lowest note! The rest of the notes play fairly well.

Not made very well - flimsy. Recommend spending a bit more for better quality. I have only used it once.

F is a little off tune. Sounds like F#

It sounds great and durable. However, it has a BIG problem. Its F is almost Fsharp. I also bought a blue one and found it had the same problem.

Will not play low notes. yes I know how you are supposed to use it.

We would love to suggest using a hemp plastic is toxic and we have cut enough trees down on this planet!

came in wrong key?

I should have read the reviews. It's only one recorder, not three. Otherwise, it's a very good product and if it says Yamaha, then you know it's good.