TromboneChat

Let me start out by saying... With Vintage Bachs, there are: Dogs, ok horns, good horns, great horns, and magic horns. These are what can be expected from many older Bach trombones.

Now for the horns that are good, great, & maybe gems there are differences i've noticed depending on the era.

Has anyone played a couple, or a few, or a lot of New Yorks/Mt Vernons and had a chance to really think about the differences in sound? I hear that the beads are different and the overall "consistency" of the two different eras were quite different in sound.

I'm wondering what the TC hivemind has experienced with these two vintage eras of Bach trombones:

For NY, you're talking about just over 4k horns total, of which the enormous majority are 6s, minus everything that hasn't survived. 34/36/45/50/? go that far back, but even if the bell mandrel is the same as something produced later the diameter might not be.

Beyond JF and Noah, I'm not sure who'd have the experience and sample size with the big horns to musically generalize beyond the technically observable.

The NY 42s are much quieter, in that I'm not sure they existed yet

(FWLIW the only 'direct comparison' I've made is with 6viis. Mt V was darker/slower/denser/heavier, small Big Horn, didn't want to be pushed and didn't particularly reward trying, NY physically lighter, easier, slightly more dance band sassy on demand, but no less rich at low volumes. Pure mass? Different feedback from the different bead? Brass rather than NS brace tubes slightly taking the edge off the response? The fact that the Mt V had much more lacquer left on it? Sock color?)

James Burton JB3 can probably chime in

Every New York I’ve had has been an awesome horn

Only had one mt Vernon which was a 16 with a French bead and it too was outstanding

The 50B was made at the Bronx factory (NY Bach). I have not tried a NY Bach 50B but my understanding is that the slide is narrower than the typical 50B slide. My Mt. Vernon 50B2L's slide is interchangeable with my modern Bach bell sections.

Brian - sending you a PM.

Joe Stanko

So another forum-ite and I recent compared an handful of horns, 45s and 50s mostly. There were singular examples from NY, Mt. V, and Elkhart.

Individual variances on each are too great to say that there is an overall character for each… IMO. If I were to classify something here, I would say that MtV horns have an interesting ‘covered’ aspect that I wonder if it has more to do with how they expected the horns to be used, but I have no idea there.

That said, between NY and MtV, you can have wide varieties of bead styles and widths. There are some obvious bracing differences, but fundamentally the parts generally fit each other. Unfortunately, when Bach was running the company there are great records of what mandrel were used for a horn, but not great records about when those masters were altered. There is a lot of info on this for the C trumpets that folks have pieced together. But not much on the trombone side that I am aware of.

For slides, the obvious changes are the oversleeves, from equal lengths to the current setup during the MtV period. The Oldest 50Bs have narrow slides, not sure any 42s are narrow. My 45s have the “same” modern wide crook, and my NY 50 has an obviously later wide crook. I don’t know when or what was on it previously.

Need to remember that these old Bachs are more like a small custom shop than a highly standardized production environment. Almost nothing would surprise me as a one off. (Like my straight 45, for example).

Cheers,
Andy

My NY 36 also has a narrow slide. Looks like it might possibly have gold brass outers.
It plays with a very rich and warm sound but lighter than my corporation 36b (in both sound and physical weight. Bell is definitely lighter weight.). I have never played a MV 36, only 34, so I cannot really contribute to this comparison.

elmsandr wrote: ↑Sun Jul 31, 2022 8:12 am Need to remember that these old Bachs are more like a small custom shop than a highly standardized production environment. Almost nothing would surprise me as a one off. (Like my straight 45, for example).

When talking about NY and MV horns, the above statement is key to remember. Bach wasn't just cranking out horns like Ford was Model Ts. They were made to order for an individual customer. If you look at the old shop cards, they are pretty much custom tailored.

That said, I've played a couple NY and MV 50Bs. The NYs had narrow slides with oversleeves on top and bottom that were the same length. The MVs slides were like you would find on a 50B today. The NY bells seemed thinner/lighter with beads that were smaller and more "square". The MV bells had beads closer to current size and shape but still seemed slightly smaller and "square-ish" but not as pronounced as NY. The small braces on the bell sections seemed "sturdier" on the NYs too.

Getting back to the custom aspect, the NY bells I tried, one was 9in gold brass and one 9.75in yellow brass. The slides were both narrow with one being yellow brass and one gold brass. The MV bells were 9.5in with one yellow and one RED brass. (yes, that is not a typo) The slides were both wide and yellow brass. (the famous "Reiner Bell" that used to belong to Kleinhammer was a red brass MV)