Vintage Bach Club

Are these instruments made in Venevuvuzela?

This is copied from a post on TrumpetHerald by user kristiner:

Friends, jazz legend Bobby Bradford has lost his home in the LA wildfires. There's a GoFundMe link below if you're inclined and able to help:

Bobby Bradford is one of the most vital and iconic voices in creative music, a trumpeter, cornetist, bandleader, and composer whose career spans the better part of a century. At 90 years old, Bobby helped to innovative free jazz with Ornette Coleman, changed the landscape of West Coast music in his collaborations with John Carter, and has worked with a staggering cast of artists that spans the likes of Nels Cline, Andrew Cyrille, Johnny Dyani, Vinny Golia, David Murray, William Parker, John Stevens, and countless others.

Sadly, Bobby lost his Altadena home in the 2025 greater Los Angeles wildfires. He and his wife, Lisa, escaped with only the clothes on their backs. Bobby lost his instruments and countless other items of personal and historical significance. This emergency fundraiser fulfills the desperate need to secure this invaluable artist some sense of normalcy in the aftermath of a devastating event.

https://gofund.me/ca058e3d

Karl is a friend of Bobby's, and this fundraiser is legit. Bobby has been a father figure to so many in the LA jazz community. I'm on the board of the California Alliance for Jazz, and we are just about to honor him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for jazz education at the CASMEC conference next week.

So many LA musicians and people in the arts community have had their lives completely turned upside down in the past few days. Please share and support if you can.

I listened to this piece a lot in college. It's fantastic in every way!

To address the original post, prices are always relative - even for new horns. In the case of a Martin Committee we have several things contributing to the current high price:

limited quantity of playable instruments
high demand based on the supposed magical properties.

Now, magic IS something that CAN happen between a player and his instrument but that is the catch. The player AND the horn need complementary magic to make this investment worthwhile.

I am convinced that any number of manufacturers could recreate the Committee for a lot less money. There is no magic in the brass or skills required to make one. The issue is, that too few people would buy it because they mostly want the myth first and the story behind having one is created later.

Wow, what a tough decision you have to make.

I had the choice between getting stuck in snow or chilling on a beach in Mexico. As you can imagine, I agonized over that decision for months.

Which reminds me....Maynard had some kind of frankenhorn with both a slide and valves. Anybody remember what this thing was called?

Time for a soprano trombone?

@Anthony-Lenzo I want to be very clear that I am not assuming that your technician made a mistake or was not good! Sometimes there is dirt and damage that the technician can only compensate for. I make a huge difference between repair or restore. Restoration is usually far more costly in terms of time and effort.

Generally, only really serious dents (tube almost mashed together) will affect the intonation.
That being said, a technician that knows enough to tell you if removing the dent can cause a tear or hole, should be able to judge if it is intonation critical. If after a repair, a patch was applied, this will also not have any serious effect on intonation - especially if we are not talking about a professional player and her/his favorite horn!

One recommendation that I would offer to Anthony: please post pictures when you ask questions like this. Maybe we could offer advice BEFORE you make an uninformed decision. Some of us have been doing this for a VERY LONG TIME!

I have never had a dent tear because my tech annealed the dents before doing anything. Annealing is a process to soften the grain structure of metal to reduce stress. It is used when originally forming the tuning slide and slide bows as well as when hammering the bell.