Nice pic Andy
Yamaha cutting sig snare production was a shock to me.
With regards to flat based hardware, Yamaha is very firm about what they feel should be made and they don't deviate. If they think something is inferior they won't touch it. That could be part of it.
More likely, they didn't think they'd get enough of the market share on a flat base series of stands to justify the cost.
Nothing inferior at all with the quality of my DW flat base stands at all. They are very sturdy, and don't need a delicate hand (if they were not A+, I wouldn't use them anyway).
But, having to need a straight, a boom, a snare, and hat stand for a whole line gets into some serious R&D time, tooling, testing....$$$
I mean,
I really dig my flat base stuff, but how many people have it in their mind it might not hold up, or worse might topple over?
MOST people probably do--or at the least they'd rather just FEEL safer with nothing less than double braced, or
maybe a single braced stand.
Can't blame someone who wouldn't wanna take a chance on seeing their $3-400 ride take a trip the other way (I don't use a FB boom either)!
Yamaha's single braced stuff has always been fantastic, and it's not that heavy anyway, so I don't blame them for not investing in basically what amounts to the "vintage" look, or a stand that ends up only being a pound or 2 less weight than a single braced stand.