Best posts made by OldSchoolEuph

There is a lot going on out there in the industry and the art, but no one seems to want to talk about it here. I am really surprised that no one has been posting about several topics:

Example #1: BAC integration of Kanstul tooling and design

• The first phase of shop expansion is now up and running
• Kanstul sold off a lot of tooling and never kept great production documentation, forcing BAC to fill in a lot of gaps and ultimately apply bits and pieces to their own new work.
• The train cars arrived from California in August and already new models are hitting the market
• 3 new models, and prototypes refining a fourth are being shown, and some sold
  o Paseo Z72 – a lightweight 72 inspired BAC rework of the Kanstul 1503
  o Plaza – a “legit”, more mainstream all-around professional trumpet
  o Martin Committee – the fourth generation. A new Committee designed with leading edge tech and extensive dimensional and material research into all prior Committees from my 1937 original to the couple of Kanstul 1603s that were built. Designed to manifest the concept “Martin Committee” with the classic sound, broad projection, and same enabling of the player to perform at peak
  o The Benge project – ongoing project to continue the life’s work of Benge and Autrey to perfect the original French sound. Prototypes are being shown
• How the wild-man image of Mike Corrigan is going to mesh with the top tier horns BAC is now developing and selling and the serious professionals they are made for.

Example #2: Tedd Waggoner retired from Bach last July

• With his withdrawal from public contact, and Roy’s retirement from his volunteer role a few years back, who is left who knows the history, the culture, and the current capabilities to support the customer?
• He was part of most every significant design decision at Bach since the move to Elkhart – even admitted the confusing Bundy serials on Bach TR-300s was his doing. Who is steering the ship going forward (his email auto-responds with a sales guy as contact)
• How does one arrange for a custom Bach these days? Tedd always handled those customers, being able to mix the business side with technical understanding of the customer’s desires and ability to help translate that to specifics
• Paulsen was investing heavily in automation for those elements that consistency is desirable and allowing the labor to be focused where human skill is essential. Who will be managing that transition now? Who has that level of understanding as to which task falls into which category?

Example #3: Yamaha continues to move production out of Japan

• Is anyone noticing a change in “quality”?
• Any distinctive traits noted – new elements, missing details?
• Has anyone besides me noticed all of the trim parts on non-Japan-built Yamahas that appear on a myriad of cheaper horns?

Example #4: Voids left by the closure of Kanstul

• Where do DCI groups go for instruments these days? Who is left that specializes?
• What will the next generation of US Army Herald Trumpets be?
• Alternatives for American style low brass (there is the hand built Yamaha York recording bass, but that costs more than my car!)
• What are boutique makers doing
  o Will Flip resource the Wild Thing and Inspiration?
  o What does everyone think of Flip’s new off-shore line?
  o Will Lee Adams work something out with BAC, or go elsewhere. Is the market still there to justify the investment?
  o Anyone try the new Austin Winds horn?

Example #5: Shifting (shrinking) opportunities

• Anyone seeing a decline in church gigs?
• Seems like back-up horns are a thing of the past in the pop scene right now (yes/no?)
• Market for wedding & party bands vs DJ now that software lets almost anyone spin with some marginal competence
• Professional orchestra budget crisis in the wake of the change in tax structure discouraging charitable giving
• Does anyone soundtrack a TV commercial with studio musicians anymore, or has MIDI monopolized that?

Example #6: Repertoire availability

• More and more music is going out of print
• How many people have tried viewing charts over the web on their phone while performing? (what about those of us who can’t see that small screen?)

@flugelgirl said in Favorite Cornet:

The story I heard about Reynolds is that he was an employee at King and made horns after hours at the factory with his name on them. He got fired and had to produce them elsewhere. Maybe true, maybe not, but it explains the similarities for sure!

WOW. No.

Foster A Reynolds apprenticed at JW York in Grand Rapids under Pops. While not his declared area of expertise, he developed a solid understanding of valves while there. Around 1905, he was hired away by HN White, who was still operating out of a rented loft at the time. Reynolds learned more about brass design and business from White, but also shared what he had learned at York about valves - leading to the "Improved Model" series around 1911.

After 30 years there, Reynolds retired from HN White, and together with his brother Harper and Max Scherl (investor), he opened his own enterprise under the Reynolds name, and concurrently a student division named Ohio Band Instrument Co. He had expected tp be a figure-head, but his type-A personality kept him on the job 24/7. Among others, OBIC built the stencil Roth 300 trumpet. The Reynolds designs were indeed similar to what Reynolds had been doing at HN White (It wouldn't become King Musical Instruments until 1965), as designing a new lone was not what he had in mind as "backing off".

But Reynolds still wanted to retire. In 1946, as soon as the war was over and it was possible, Foster and Harper sold their interest in the company to Scherl & Roth. Most of what we see under the Reynolds name, made after 1946, is not related to FA Reynolds.

Shortly thereafter however Chicago Musical Instruments lured Reynolds out of retirement to help restructure FE Olds. There in 1949, with Harper making the required additional tooling on a lathe that still exists in the custody of a member of the extended FE Olds Corporate family's care, he launched the Ambassador line.

At Olds, Reynold took on an apprentice, Zigmant Kanstul - probably hoping to hand over the reigns one day and finally get some R&R. Zig was there when FA died of a massive heart attack in 1960 on the shop floor at Fullerton. It should come as no surprise that like the mentor he looked up to the rest of his days, Zig too died at his plant.

Wow, if remarkably benign, typical, and non-controversial threads need to be locked as a routine practice, that's a sad commentary on this forum.

OK, here are a few Conns from my collection:

Conn Solo Wonder (1880s)

A Couple Conn Perfected Wonders (originated 1906)

1908 Conn Conqueror

1909 Conn Wonderphone

1910 Conn symphony Trumpet

1918 Conn Military Trumpet

1920s Conn American Legion Bugle

1922 Conn 5B

1924 Conn 22B New York Symphony

1926 Con 26B

1928 Conn Cavalier

1928 Conn 24B Opera

1932 Conn 10B New Era

1937 Conn 2B New World Symphony

1937 Conn 48B Vocabell

1952 Conn 22B

1954 Conn 28B Connstellation

1957 Conn 38B Connstellation

1972 Conn severinsen

Though I am really more of a King and Holton collector

Doesn't have to be the whole horn, does it?

Today the term “student instrument” is often associated with trumpet shaped objects that have terrible playing characteristics, but more-over tend to fall apart in your hands and cannot be repaired – if not because of the complete lack of any parts, then because the labor costs more than the horn.

That is not what the term meant in the 20th century when the student market was first acknowledged with White’s “King Junior” and “Student Prince”, and around the same time with companies and lines such as York’s Grand Rapids Band Instrument Co., Holton’s Collegiate brand, Martin’s Indiana Band Instrument Co., etc. The first was the “King Junior”, and what the catalog said about the renaming of that particular lower cost, and at that time already 8-year-old model, was “This is a ‘Long Model’ Cornet especially built to fit the needs of beginners who want to learn on a high grade, quality instrument that is not too high in price. The Junior Cornet is identical in quality workmanship with every other ‘King’, the lower price is made possible by simplicity in the engraving and trimmings. The instrument is not elaborately designed with respect to ferrules, etc. It is neatly and plainly finished. Great attention has been given to the proportions, valve action, etc., so that the instrument is exceptionally easy playing. The intonation is the same as all other ‘King’ cornets. It is a fine sensible model that will allow the beginner to make rapid progress.”

Some of the claims are a stretch, such as the ferrules that were actually more elaborate and expensive to make than normal King ones so that they matched the aesthetic used by White’s mentor McMillin for his Crown brand (White obviously sold these to McMillin for stencil too), and in my opinion, the intonation is not as reliable as on a King Improved Long Model – but I will admit it may be better than that of a King Perfecto. Nonetheless, the concept of “Student Instrument” is clearly laid out in this first of its kind acknowledgement of the market.

The best example of the differing tiers of instruments can be found in Leblanc’s system for Holton after 1965:
T-100 series of models: Professional level. Excellent tone, response and projection, but requires some skill to control effectively.
T-200 series of models: Professional level, but adapted to the unique playing characteristics favored by an artist.
T-300 series of models: Advanced Intermediate level. More secure centering thus less ease of bending and matching, excellent projection, very responsive, less color to the tonal spectrum - often specializing in a particular sound or genre.
T-400 series of models: Intermediate level. More secure centering thus less ease of bending and matching, excellent projection, not as easy responding as higher levels, less breadth of color to the tonal spectrum.
T-500 series of models: Step-up student level. Secure centering, not as easy to project, higher resistance and inertia, mostly core tone – often artist-linked for promotion (but not played by).
T-600 series of models: Student/Beginner level. Secure centering, not as easy to project, higher resistance and inertia, mostly core tone and built like a tank to take abuse and still keep working.

Wow, just think what we might discover, or at least share, if that much typing were expended on topics related to the instrument itself, advances in design, fabrication or materials, new repertoire, innovative approaches to unique situations with students . . . . .

@administrator said in Vinzenz Schrottenbach:

@OldSchoolEuph said in Vinzenz Schrottenbach:

@Dale-Proctor Yes, but the US entry into the war, generally thought to have been heavily influenced by a political marketing campaign highlighting the Lusitania, was not until April 1917. The ship was struck near shore by a single torpedo intended to cripple it. The massive loss of life was a result of loose coal dust not being properly cleaned-up in the bunkers which after being thrown into the air by the shock wave, detonated. This was used by American hawks to cast the German/Austrian side in a very negative light - quite effectively as we see by the actions of 1917.

[TANGENT]
The Germans had declared unrestricted submarine warfare against the USA at that point in time. The modern narrative is to frame the nation's entry into the war as a political move, something with which I have come to disagree. There are lots of fantastic lectures about the subject available on YouTube.

It is a very complex matter - though I would contend that political actions (such as governance itself) are inherently political.

The US at that time was deeply divided on many fronts - Bach's own Austro-Hungarian Empire was not much different. The world was debating extremes of capitalist and socialist concepts, moderates often finding no room just as today, driven by the socio-cultural impact of the industrial revolution. Rural populations were migrating to urban centers, which were expanding rapidly in an uncontrolled manner and the "wholesome" way of life of past generations was beset with all of the chaos, crime, congestion, and new social dynamics of that transition. In the US, the Jeffersonian concept of America (agrarian-subsistence, village-based, pacifist and isolationist society) had collided head-on with industrial reality when the US defeated one of the Great Powers (Spain) by blowing one of the world's top 3 navies out of the water while only sustaining a single casualty to a heart attack on the US side in a matter of hours (Manila Bay) in 1898. That event shook not just Jeffersonian America, but all of Europe - which suddenly had a new threat to contend with. It is a major driver behind why Bach had to serve a second tour on his military service, which had not been typical since the Franco-Prussian war ended. (WWI was his 3rd tour of military service - just on a different side).

It is worth mentioning here that the transformation of the American self-image from a Jeffersonian one to a world power also factors significantly in the emergence of the uniquely American long cornet at this time. I have written about this before, so I'll just some it up as "a bigger more powerful horn (and star voice of popular music, thus embodiment of the national cultural image) for a bigger more powerful nation".

The clash between urban and rural, industrial and agrarian, globalist and Jeffersonian manifested not just in the emergence of labor unions that altered forever how instruments are made (and the standard of living of an entire socio-economic strata), but in a clash between imperialist hawks and a strong neo-Jeffersonian isolationist/pacifist movement. The demographics of this clash were weighted significantly (though far from exclusively) male on the hawk side and female on the isolationist. As women could not vote at that time, the true conflict of desires in the country was not always evident in its political realities. This disenfranchisement and disconnect gave fuel to so-called "women's issues" like suffrage, temperance and the disastrous prohibition experiment in the US, and following WWI (which had women been able to vote the US likely would never have entered), an even stronger pacifist/isolationist movement that hamstrung Roosevelt's efforts to aid Britain and prepare the US military for the inevitable.

Bach's experiences in the middle of this must have been remarkable - seeing the same social dynamics playing out on opposite sides of the conflict, coping with the ultimately inescapable nature of it for him personally, and so on. One must wonder what impact on his approach to life that "no escape" experience may have had - certainly it probably emboldened him to persevere against terrible business odds during the depression - and probably helped foster his "whatever it takes" attitudes.

[Super-tangent] Actually, the Germanic nations had declared unrestricted warfare against shipping servicing/supplying the allied powers. Any nation, not just the US, was targeted thusly if it continued to engage in commerce with those powers. That view of "against the USA" is just another reflection of the globalist (inherently self-important) view that arose in the US in urban opposition to Jeffersonian ideals.

OK, here's one of those content threads we have been talking about. Here are 4 company timelines. Expand, correct, add more companies. Let's add some core content.

Besson
1838: AG Besson builds his first Perinet valve cornet in France

1858: AG Besson loses a lawsuit and relocates to England. His wife restarts the firm, continuing the same serial numbers

1867: (or before) The French firm introduces a new concept of a pitch change slide at the last bend of the lead pipe

1880: (or possibly very shortly before) The French firm introduces the first modern wrap valve trumpet, pretty much what people call a Brevete model (though that is not a model name)

1890: The French firm changes names to Fontaine-Besson as a result of a marriage in the family

1894: The English firm is sold out of the Besson family

1914: Austrian deserter Vincent Bach lands a job as assistant principle trumpet in Boston using a Besson cornet. He is promptly provided Gustav Heim’s spare 1914 LP New Holton Trumpet demonstrator.

1930: Elden Benge begins building modified Bessons and then his own horns in the same style, he continues evolving this school of design with the help of Schilke, Autrey and Busch through the end of his life.

1931: Francois Millereau, a former Besson employee, sells his trumpet making business to Henri Selmer.

1932: Fontaine-Besson is acquired by Strasser Margaux & Lemaire

1948: Besson (the English firm) is acquired by Boosey & Hawkes

1957: An insolvent SML sells Fontaine-Besson to Couesnon

1969: An arson fire reduces the Couesnon plant to a pile of broken block and twisted steel. All Besson records and tooling there are lost. (This is the end of direct production of F.Besson horns)

1980: Donald Benge teams with Zig Kanstul and Byron Autrey to develop Benge style (French Besson style) trumpets for stencil under the Burbank name and also after 1981, the Kanstul name.

1981: Buffet is acquired by Boosey & Hawkes

1986: Boosey & Hawkes is acquired by Carl Fischer

2001: Carl Fischer’s extensive conglomerate of instrument makers shut down names including B&H. Besson continues.

2003: The Music Group, a venture capital entity, restructures the Carl Fischer companies. Besson designs and tooling were deliberately destroyed and the name moved to a new line of instruments built in India and other locations.

2006: The Music Group becomes insolvent. The Meinl family and Triumph Adler, which already owned B^S and other post-collective East block firms, acquires most of the brands including Buffet and Besson. The resultant Buffet-Crampon company controlled those plus Courtois and York. Besson production returned to Europe at Markneukirchen shortly thereafter.

2019: The tooling and records of the Kanstul company convey the Benge/F.Besson Legacy to BAC Musical Instruments. Autrey’s personal Benge and Kanstul horns, design notes, tools, etc. also transfer from his estate to BAC.

2020: BAC acquires the Benge trademark and begins building the culmination of the work of Besson, Benge, Schilke, Autrey and Kanstul with regard to classic Besson design. Modern Besson designs by Buffet continue, but with no design linkage to any prior Besson instruments

Distin-Keefer
1849: Henry Distin started making instruments in England while still part of his family ensemble that toured performing on Saxhorns.
1868: Distin workshop sold to music publisher Boosey & Co. which continued the serial numbers at the same address.
1876: After a couple years of blowing all his money on failed concert promotions and making a living playing and tending bar, Distin moved to the US to superintend at the "monster" Martin Pollman & Co. works in NYC. (This allowed partner JH Martin 2 years to go work at CG Conn and learn about modern instruments)
1878: Distin started making the same designs he had made in England in partnership with FW Busch in New York.
1880: Distin partnered with former Martin & Co. joint venture partner Moses Slater in New York.
1882: Distin moved to Pennsylvania and started Distin & Pincus, a publisher. Slater continued building the same horns under his own name without Distin.
1884: Henry Distin Manufacturing established in Philadelphia to make horns for JW Pepper.
1889: Distin Manufacturing moved to Williamsport
1890: Distin Manufacturing sold to shop superintendent, Brua C. Keefer.
1909: Name changed to Brua C. Keefer Company.
1960: A grass fire alongside the plant spread to the building. The company never reopened.

Frank Holton & Co.
1885: Sousa Band trombonist Frank Holton partnered with JW York, a former apprentice to Louis Hartman and Henry Esbach in the Keat/Graves/Wright tradition at Boston.
1887: York and Holton ceases operations, though was not closed out for many years.
1896: Holton starts a mail-order business selling his “Electric Oil” slide oil for trombones. It does not make money in its first 3 years
1898: Holton opens a small Chicago walk-up store selling instrumental supplies and used band instruments. A few cornets were assembled at the repair bench from a mix of purchased and fabricated parts.
1904: Holton relocated to an entire floor of 107 W. Madison in Chicago for more manufacturing space.
1906: The first half of the Holton factory on Gladys street was constructed. Virtuoso Earnst Couturier joins the firm as a promoter, road man, and possibly designer.
1911: The second half and adjacent shipping/receiving building opened. The New Holton Trumpet debuts as the first serious American orchestral trumpet.
1913: Couturier leaves Holton for a brief partnership with JW York to build the Wizard cornet.
1914: Gustav Heim handed his new assistant at Boston a 1914 New Holton Trumpet demonstrator, as the Austrian deserter had no trumpet of his own. This encouraged Vincent Bach to become a Holton artist.
1916: Couturier buys the William Seidel Band Instrument Company, renames it for himself, and starts building a line of pure conical bore instruments – even trombones. He moves it To LaPorte in 1918
1918: Over a weekend in October, all tooling was relocated to a new facility in Elkhorn Wisconsin, provided free of charge when the firm met a local payroll target – actually ahead of the deadline
1918-19: Holton built a neighborhood of houses to recruit key employees. His home anchored the end of the street, the other end of which ended at the door of the municipal building downtown.
1921: The Holton Revelation Trumpet, in production since December of 1919, was announced formally.
1923: Couturier loses his eyesight, and shortly thereafter his company to Lyon & Healy.
1924: 14 year old “child prodigy” Renold Schilke begins performing with the Holton-Elkhorn band, and apprenticing in brassmaking and gunsmithing at the factory.
1927: Schilke, his teacher Edward Llewellyn, and the Holton design team develop the Llewellyn model variant of the Holton Revelation. Elements of this design would influence the Martin Committee.
1928: Holton buys the defunct former Couturier shop for Lyon & Healy and establishes the Collegiate brand.
1929: The same team develops the first light-weight, very large bore, minimally braced, reversed construction trumpet with Kansas trumpeter and professor, Don Berry.
1932: After an unsuccessful rebranding as “Ideal”, Holton closes the LaPorte facility and moves production of Collegiate instruments to the Elkhorn plant.
1938: Frank Holton sells the company to long time employee Frank Kull.
1944: Frank Kull dies and is succeeded by his son Grover.
1957: Holton begins buying parts and complete built-to-spec horns from Courtois. French valves become commonplace on Holton horns – though not all models.
1965: Leblanc completes a 3-year acquisition of Holton – and promptly goes through 2 new model numbering schemes.
1971: Holton, as part of a wide range of artist-linked models, begins a line of 10 trumpets designed at an intermediate level for young fans of Maynard Fergusson. They become best-sellers.
1981: The Martin design team, by then another arm of Leblanc and charged with all R&D, copies an Elkhart Bach 37, selected at a local store, creating the specifications for the Holton T-101s
2004: Steinway Musical Instruments’ Conn-Selmer division acquires Leblanc
2007: Conn-Selmer halts production at Elkhorn, moving Holton French horns to Eastlake Ohio and merging the Holton brand with King and others on Eastlake low brass.

Vincent Bach Corporation
1914: While touring in Britain, cornet artist and Austrian Navy veteran Vincent Schrottenbach learns of the onset of World War One. A soldier behind enemy lines, he quickly books passage on a ship to the US under the name Vincent Bach to elude capture. There he performs with the Boston Symphony for a season, tours the West Coast in 1915, and settles in playing with the Met. He is drafted and becomes a bugle instructor for the US Army in 1918.
1918: Bach sets up a small mouthpiece making shop in the back of the New York Selmer store – probably the smartest move George Bundy made on behalf of his then employer.
1922: Bach incorporates.
1924: Bach begins experimenting in trumpet making, drawing on both the commonplace Besson of the time, and his Holtons.
1925: Bach makes his 45th horn for his new wife’s father, bandmaster Adam Staab (it was his second marriage)
1928: Bach moves out of a small storefront shop and into an actual factory building in the Bronx around serial number 1000.
1953: With an additional 10,000 serial numbers consumed, Bach relocates to a factory in Mt. Vernon New York.
1962: Bach sells the company to his one-time patron, the Selmer company, despite higher offers, and designs both a revised Stradivarius trumpet (the 180) and a new Bundy trumpet for them.
1963: In November, construction of 180s begins at Mt. Vernon while the former Buescher plant on Main Street in Elkhart is readied to relocate Bach to, as the rent charged by the Bach family on Mt. Vernon was considerable.
1965: Selmer moves Bach operations to Main Street in Elkhart.
1974: Selmer moves Bach operations, over time, to the facility on Industrial Drive in Elkhart. Two-piece casings and steel rim wires in 180s phase out over the next few years ending the “Early Elkhart” period.
2004: Steinway Musical Properties acquires Selmer, and with it Bach.
2010: The Bach “Artisan” 190 series trumpets are introduced, featuring a French bead and Early-Elkhart elements such as two piece casings. The non-Artisan “regular” 190s additionally feature steel rim wires.

It amazes me how much of this thread seems to equate energy required to produce a given dynamic with "takes more air". Seems like just another discussion of "resistance" in many respects.

When it come to actual fluid flow, there are two factors. For the equipment, the mouthpiece throat determines flow at a given pressure. The bore simply cannot be relevant because it is not the venturi. The other point at which flow can differ is the embouchure, with some folks needing more flow through to vibrate as greater energy into the horn is required to produce the desired result. At some point, these will come into conflict if the player is too inefficient in their part, and the pressure in the cup will exceed what the orifice at its base can flow, resulting in leaks around the edge.

But when a horn "takes more air", it is because we opt to increase the embouchure flow rate as a means of stepping up energy input to the horn, not because of some vacuum to fill with a 0.003" larger diameter tube. (Bach ML to L)

I just posted this excerpt from "A Timeline of Trumpets", pages 181-182 on TH in reply to a question about a Citation, and it occurred to me it was a good fit for this new section. (Before someone objects, I'm the author. When I republish it it doesn't count as plagiarism!)

Rudy’s father, J.R. Mück was an immigrant from a Moravian family that had been building brass instruments since 1875. Rudy himself had been born in Moravia in 1907, coming to the US with his family in 1911. Rudy played professionally in New York City as well as his work in the shop that opened sometime in the 1920s. The cushion-rim mouthpiece business launched around 1932, with the hand building of trumpets having already been underway as an extension of the instrument repair and customizing business. But when J.R Muck retired in 1936, Rudy set out to significantly expand as a maker.

With knowledge of the Bach design, as well as access to some of the craftsmen and all of the parts suppliers, Muck was well situated to build his “Citation” model trumpets as New York Bach clones. What is interesting is the variety of parts sources Muck employed. The valves of most appear to be from Blessing, as Bach also used on some of his horns, and the detailing of many of the casings is a stylized abstraction of the Bach appearance. Many horns feature the Bach stop rod on third with Bach posts, which to the present day are made in the Bach factory, suggesting that Bach actually supplied Muck parts at times. In the same location however, one can find distinctive Blessing posts or a third maker’s short ball posts, without any pattern other than the horns seemed to be built with what was available that day.

It appears that Muck assembled horns rather than making them. Blessing played a key role as a parts supplier throughout the time Rudy Muck owned the business. There are, however, also horns, particularly the “M” series models that have strong indications of being partially or completely assembled by Monke in Germany. While a few even have distinctive Monke valve casings, most still show the same stylized Bach turning. What is interesting is that Blessing valves, Blessing posts, two different styles of valve cap, and many other elements appear mixed-in randomly from horn to horn on these otherwise strongly Monke horns. It is possible that some were stencil and some were built in New York from parts – but equally plausible that Muck was shipping Blessing and Bach parts to Germany for their supplier to use, preserving both the look, and the random hand-built feel, of their product.

Muck serial numbers have baffled all who have tried to make sense of them. Muck instruments appear with no numbers, with 4-digit numbers, with 5-digit numbers and with two groupings of 6-digit serial numbers. However, the known sale dates of many of these horns all overlap. This is particularly true after Rudy Muck sold the business to Carl Fischer around 1950. Fischer already owned JW York in Grand Rapids Michigan, and that immediately added another parts supplier to the mix. While nothing can be proven conclusively, the 4-digit sequence seems to span the duration of the Muck Company under both owners and is likely the “core” serial number sequence. The 5-digit numbers align with Blessing part numbers during the period and may have come along with the valves, or perhaps, as can be seen in a handful of obvious Artists and Super-Artist stencils, with completed horns built under contract. The first block of 6-digit numbers aligns with York serials after the Fischer sale. The second block, appear to exist primarily on some of the “M” models, which also have 4-digit numbers routinely, and may be connected to Monke, though Monke does not seem to have had a rigid numbering system for their stencil work.

Thanks to the recollections of Niles Eldredge regarding his high school trumpet, a 4-digit 1959 Citation with the more elaborate but far rarer valve caps, we know that Fischer was procuring some Muck parts in the 50s from its York operation and Mario Marcone was assembling the finished product in New York at a Fischer facility. The York sourced valves are visually indistinguishable from Blessing sourced product, but York had a long history of making precise stencil product when contracted to do so.

@Dr-GO
This year will be mostly quartet - carols after the service, hymns during, and a rather ambitious piece beforehand that may be a bit much for this amateur group. Also some descant parts for me and solo stuff Christmas morning. It will be my 46th Christmas eve playing, all of them in Lutheran churches except for 1984 at what turned out to be the last Christmas Eve for a reconstruction-era "German Reformed" parish - I guess too many members defected to those new-fangled Lutherans...

I have played Christmas Eves left handed due to severe burns 6 hours before (caught a falling soldering iron and didn't let go till I put it back on the bench), so sick I could hardly keep from fainting, with a lip the size of a golf ball (don't ask), and in blinding pain barely able to ambulate on crutches (one time being in the balcony was not so great). So long as I can get through this year without a repeat of the devastating December 23rd 2018 back injury that left one leg rotated 90 degrees and with peripheral paralysis for a few weeks (I suppose any of the pain I wasn't feeling was a good thing, but still...), it will be a good year - even if the Pastor's teenage son, our French horn, routinely forgets what key he's in again (Christmas 2017...)!

@aTrumpetdude said in Vintage Horn Eye Candy:

1950 NY Bach Strad 38 closet queen, not even one ding on it, original valves pop like a new Schilke

Is that a French bead? or is it just the camera lens making that rim look semi-flat?

The Administrator has, I believe, done a good job in finding a middle ground. The point of a forum is free sharing of ideas - which can have obvious challenges.

I am vehemently opposed to deletion of content unless that content includes actionable defamation. That being said, I think locking threads when they get out of hand, stating at the end of them precisely why they are being locked as the Admin has done, and, as necessary, taking steps where individuals are concerned may be a far more difficult approach, but it is a far better one in terms of avoiding biasing a site and having the site become an advocate for a point of view instead of a free exchange.

OK, here's another one:

The many Martin companies

1850: Johann Heinrich Martin (John Henry Martin) Apprentices to Christian Hemming in Dresden
1852: His brother, Gottfried Robert Martin opens a brass workshop at 1 Franklin Square in New York
1855: JH Martin joins GR in New York at a new shop at 34 Forsyth Street
1858: The Martins move to 59 Forsyth Street in yet another expansion
1860: (possibly 1858) JH Martin relocates to Chicago. Company lore says he opened a brass making concern there, but while Martin horns were all marked, no horn marked Chicago has ever been found. It is equally likely that he opened a distribution center for their instruments there, as Chicago was the nexus of all transportation in North America at the time.
1864: GR Martin relocates to 43 Greene Street in New York.
1867: GR Martin partners with Moses Slater, who specialized in wood and string instruments at 41 Greene Street. Martin and Slater offered a full line including instrument parts and materials. Concurrently, and at the same location, Martin also partners with Stephen Gordon, but the firm lasted only a year.
1869: Martin and Slater relocates to 221 Greene Street. Martin & Co. relocates some time shortly after this to 31 Courtlandt Street (site of World Trade Center #4).
1871: The Great Chicago Fire destroys the Martin enterprise there. The partnership with Slater becomes Slater & Martin, suggesting a change in equity on the part of Martin, and Martin & Co. has to seek out a financial partner, Henry August Pollman, from outside the music industry to infuse the firm with capital. It becomes Martin, Pollman & Co.
1874: Slater and Martin ends with the opening of the Slater Musical Instrument Company at 41 Courtlandt across the Street from Martin Pollman & Co.
1876: Henry Distin comes to work at MPC as superintendent, freeing JH Martin to relocate to Elkhart and participate in the early years of the C.G. Conn Company where he learned about modern brass design (MPC was still building the same Saxon style rotaries)
1878: Distin left MPC to begin a series of brief joint ventures, most notably with Moses Slater building Distin piston valve cornets, that would lead to the creation of Henry Distin Manufacturing in 1881. This forced JH Martin to return to New York to run the shop floor.
1879: The company name changes again to Martin Brothers when Pollman leaves the partnership and opens a store 2 blocks away on Maiden Lane, which was the Northern extension of Courtlandt Street, selling piston valve modern instruments.
1885: Still building the same Saxon inspired out-dated designs, Martin Brothers fails. Both brothers go to work as fabricators for Michigan Musical Manufacturing in Detroit. GR remains there through at least 1887.
1886: JH Martin relocates to Elkhart and returns to work with C.G. Conn. His sons come to work there as well over time
1902: Strokes force JH Martin to retire.
1904: Henry Martin and other sons of JH Martin establish the J.H. Martin Band Instrument Company. JH is unable to participate and the firm restructures as The Martin Band Instrument Company in 1905.
1912: Plagued by sibling rivalry and general mismanagement, the company is sold to 27 year old book-keeper Francis Compton, grandson of an Elkhart pioneer and 4 year employee of the firm. Compton hires William Gronert, who had parted ways with Conn after managing the firm throughout its massive expansion between fires, to run operations. The company begins to turn around.
1919: Gronert dies and Compton, realizing the improvement in his investment and his own lack of expertise, sells the firm in 1920 to Oliver P. Basset.
1922: Basset completes a purge of the Martin family from company leadership with the ouster of Henry C. Martin.
1923: Martin adds “Handcrafted” to the bell crest making a marketing advantage of the firm’s inability to afford automated production tooling.
1928: Basset, Fred Holtz, and James State incorporate the Indiana Band Instrument Company to enter into the newly emerged student market.
1931: Fred Holtz becomes president of Martin and remains in that role until his 1948 retirement.
1937: Martin marketing brings together a team of celebrity trumpet consultants to advise on reshaping the Imperial as the Committee trumpet. Renold Schilke, as the only experienced brass maker in the group, becomes the driving force in the design.
1942: Martin absorbs the Indiana Band Instrument Co. making Indiana into a brand name. The firm is not subjected to making non-musical products during WWII.
1960: Richards Music Corporation starts buying up instrument makers. Martin is acquired by 1962.
1963: Burdened with massive debt and an over-supplied market, RMC fails. Wurlitzer acquires Martin out of the bankruptcy, and drastically changes the product portfolio including dropping the Committee.
1971: Wurlitzer opts out of instrument making, returning to their former business model. Leblanc acquires Martin. Shortly thereafter, the Committee is reintroduced and redesigned by Larry Ramirez.
2003: Vito Pascucci, founder and owner of Leblanc dies and Conn-Selmer acquires all Leblanc holdings including Martin. Only a couple of instruments are continued.
2007: Conn-Selmer shuts down the Martin brand entirely.
2017: Great-grandson of Henry C. Martin, Richard Martin, establishes the Martin Brasswind Company out of his home on the shores of Lake Michigan. Leveraging the family name and some oft-repeated myths, and ignoring that the family was out of the company long before the horn was developed, he introduces a new Martin Committee trumpet to the market and contracts Kanstul to manufacture it.
2019: Kanstul ceases operations and liquidates. Tooling and designs pass to BAC Musical Instruments in Kansas City. Using some of that tooling, gathering detailed specifications from all generations from Committees, and employing physics based modelling to optimize those inputs as a system, BAC develops a new, but faithful, Martin Committee to be sold by the Martin Brasswind Company.

The 22B Early is an exception among vintage horns. Almost none of the pre-50s horns are really usable in a serious modern context - these are the exception. And, they are abundant, thus affordable, and will reward a player who invests more than can be recouped in bringing them back to solid playing condition. That being said, once a leadpipe is mangled, its time to move on.

In 1911, Holton shook up the North American market by getting serious about an orchestral trumpet. Until then, chromatic trumpets had been a mix of half-serious attempts and in the last couple of years, instruments targeting dance hall applications. The only serious trumpets in the US came from France - specifically Besson. Almost a decade later, Holton was moving on to the next leading edge with the minimally braced, lighter, Revelations that would miss the serious market, but explode into the dance hall and emergent Jazz market with a new darker, smokier sound. Conn at that same time was restructuring under the new ownership of Carl Greenleaf (recovering from the fire that wiped them out and the parting of ways with William Gronert that actually did more damage to the bottom line than the fire as Conn was a terrible manager - and ultimately lost most of his money, his company and his marriage.) Greenleaf set out to introduce a new line of top end trumpets, with the 2B New World Symphony as the new flagship. By some quirk of fate, the 22B New York Symphony small bore trumpet out played the 2B and everything else on the market - and then outsold. Until Benge began resurrecting Bessons and a boutique maker named Bach caught hold in the 30s, Conn was the unrivaled leader in trumpets - due in no small part to the 22B.

"Get started" with a CNC router ?? Kind of like handing a beginner a Monette Raja - except unlike the trumpet, a CNC router will, if you download the files and follow the set-up instructions, do everything for you (at which point you are not doing any woodworking, the machine is).

I would suggest practicing the basic skills, learning the feel of the tools interacting with different species of woods. Hand tools first, then power, then programmable - like learning basic technique, developing range, applying musicality, etc. That would be my approach to "get started".

@georgeb said in where are they made ?:

Well even though Bach claimed on the bell the TR3002H I purchased in 2016 is made in the U.S.A. .Some here feel that Bach is not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, ...

I have stood next to the annealing furnace controls watching through the glass as TR-300 bell seams were flattened in the power hammer cell at Bach Elkhart prior to shipment to Eastlake. That was 2017.

Wow, what a moment in history.

That shows Bach on tour in England in 1914 holding the Besson cornet he arrived in the US with (and which subsequently disappeared from the Bach plant after being acquired and handed over to the company). This is moments before the onset of WWI would force Bach to choose between being arrested as an enemy combatant (he was an Austrian Navy reservist), or fleeing to the US on the Lusitania a couple years before its sinking would bring the US into that war and draft Bach into an Army in combat with the military in which he had, and technically should have been, serving. He won the assistant principal trumpet slot in Boston auditioning on that horn in his hands - says a lot about his skills.

@newell-post Actually with the Bach Bb Strad, just the 180s, there are 3 forms of construction (180, LT180, LR180), and a mix of bells and leadpipes depending on which of those 3 you pick, that add up to 1470 options for construction, bell, bore, alloy, bell weight, and leadpipe. Then there are 2 tuning slide geometries, so 2940. Then there are 4 options for throws (triggers or rings on 1st & 3rd), which brings us to 11,760 configurations. Add in the option of a spit key on third and the 6 finish options, and you get 141,120 different configurations before taking into account the myriad of engraving options. (and those numbers predate the new option of a 72 bell with a French bead, so its actually more now)