H. N. WHITE (KING) VINTAGE HORN WEBSITE!

tom turner

Hi,

This was posted on the Horns forum but probably belongs here better.

A decendant of H. N. White has put up a fanstastic website dedicated to H. N. White and all the years before the White family sold out in 1965.

There is so much great information about the instruments, the family, the factory, the celebrity endorsers, catalogues, etc.

This site is a MUST SEE for all vintage horn collectors, and I'd recommend you "save" the link for future viewing too!

http://www.hnwhite.com/

I've corresponded with both guys that are so instrumental with the lauching of this site and invited them to visit both this website and the trumpetmaster.com site. I'm sure readers would love to ask some questions . . . and I hope that somewhere out there is information that some of YOU may have that will help them too!

This is great! Two new sites dedicated to the instruments and memory of H. N. White and Foster Reynolds! This, along with Olds Central and the Conn Loyalist sites (plus vintagecornets.com), will increase what we know about the great makers of the past and the awesome horns they lovingly made!

Enjoy!

Tom

plankowner110 · Heavyweight Member Joined: 12 Jun 2003 Posts: 3620

Perhaps TH members can send the webmasters of hnwhite.com photographs of their vintage King trumpets, cornets, and other instruments to build a photo library. (e.g. I own a mint condition 1055T Silver Flair trumpet.)
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DaveH · Heavyweight Member Joined: 20 Nov 2001 Posts: 3861

It's a very nice website...as long as you have a high speed connection.

I have a high speed connection at work, and it is great. Otherwise, I can go wash the car while I'm waiting for it to download...

I'm glad the Silver Flair has been added to the list of trumpet models.

BeboppinFool · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 5:11 pm Post subject:

This is great . . . I was able to finally determine that my King Master cornet is a 1932, not a 1933 . . . I wasn't sure until just now.

Thanks for posting this, Tom!

Too bad I don't make enough money to be a collector!

WAIT!!! I just looked at the serial number list, and now I'm totally confused! My King Master cornet is serial # 19xxx . . . depending on whose serial numbers I look at, this could have been made anywhere between 1905 and 1915. I give up!!!

Rich

Gilligan · Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2005 12:56 am Post subject:

Rich

I've been working to find information to narrow down the White serial number list for about the last year.

I know of and have pictures of a Master model cornet that has a patent date of Aug. 27, 1918 and a serial number of 47491. I've posted the details about this in another thread. The UMI site shows that the horn with the serial number of 50,000 was made in 1915. This can't be correct as the horn above had to of been made sometime after Aug. 27, 1918. I suspect that the UMI and Lars lists are off by about five years with the 50,000 being manufactured closer to 1920.

White started serializing horns somewhere around 1897 and to the best of my knowledge didn't have separate lists for different instruments. I don’t know what number he started with.

Does your Master model cornet have the slide lock on the main tuning slide? This is what White patented on the Master model cornet. He applied for two patents for this on the Master model cornet, the first #1,277,012 on March 1, 1915 and the second #1,277013 on May 6, 1915. Both were awarded on Aug. 27, 1918. If your cornet has any sort of patent pending markings then it was probably made sometime between March 1, 1915 and August 27, 1918. If it doesn't then it was made earlier. Either way let us know so we can add to or knowledge base.

I hope this helps.

Gill
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BeboppinFool · Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 11:25 am Post subject:

Brian Moon · Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 12:15 pm Post subject:

I asked on the HNWhite website but haven't heard back. Does anyone know the serial # of the oldest surviving King trumpet?

Gilligan · Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 5:54 pm Post subject:

The Master model main tuning slide was designed to be long enough to change the horns key to "A". Tune the main slide to "A" and pull the other three side to the marks and your horn will play in tune in the key of "A".

What the "B" next to the main slide means I don't know for sure. It might indicate that the slide is for playing in Bb and A. Some horns were setup with two sets of slides for playing in high or low pitch. While others were designed to be convertable between concert C and Bb/A.

What is incredible is that we now have documentable proof that horns with a serial number of 19xxx were made between 1915 and 1918.

I suspect that since your horn doesn't have the slide stop it was made in 1915 or possibly as early as 1914.

The UMI serial number records are probably off by 27,000 to 30,000.

Original "King" model horns can be recognized by a lions head medalion that is mounted to the bell or the second valve tube. One sold on eBay about four months ago. All others were horns "Made by King Craftsmen", like the Liberty, the Master, the American Standard, the Cleveland, etc. and were only called King in a generic fashion. "KING" didn't become a manufacturer's name until the White Company was purchased by a corporate conglomerate in 1966.

BeboppinFool · Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:09 pm Post subject:

drducati · New Member Joined: 24 Dec 2004 Posts: 8

My first horn ,in 1954 was a Cleveland Cornet. It cost $180. I played it for several years and bought a Conn "Coprion". In another year or two I bought an Olds Mendez which I still have. A few years ago I was in a Pawn shop and found a Cleveland just like the one I had in 1954 -almost new. I bought it for $55. I was amazed at the sound it had. Nice full Cornet sound. Not at all what I remembered. One of my cousins wanted it and I gave it to him. Shame on me for the second time.

Gilligan · Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 6:40 am Post subject:

I'm going to have to correct myself abit here. I went back and looked at a bunch of pictures and found that all the Master model cornets have the engraving that you have on your horn.

Nick Decarlis has some incredible pictures on his website at:

http://www.vintagecornets.com/html/mainpics_cornet_cornets_corone.htm[/url]

BeboppinFool · Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 9:49 am Post subject:

Gilligan · Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 7:11 pm Post subject:

Tom K. · Veteran Member Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 483

This website shows serial numbers for King:
[/url]http://web.missouri.edu/~cceric/sn/king.html

Some of the Cleveland numbers overlap with the regular King numbers. My impression was that the Cleveland numbers were later (if it says Cleveland on the horn). I have the master model (C/Bb) from the 30s like this.

Gilligan · Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2005 5:41 pm Post subject:

Tom, if you look into the information we have put togeather above you'll see that that number list is off by over 30,000. We now know that the horns with a serail number around 19,000 were made sometme between 1915 and 1918.

BeboppinFool · Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2006 6:30 pm Post subject:

I'm pleased to report that my King Master (circa 1915?) now has had a valve job, and I played it on a gig tonight with excellent results!

When I took it out of the shipping box and played it, I was flabbergasted at how beautifully this horn plays, and knew I had to play it on a gig as soon as possible. Lucky for me I got to do it on the same day!

I had one thing done to this horn that makes it not original, and that was to have an Olds Super-style 1st valve slide thumb saddle mounted on the 1st valve slide. It works great, I don't have any intonation problems that can't be corrected with that slide, and I'm thrilled to death (can you tell?).

I had tried to sell this horn once a couple years ago, and the guy shipped it back ('cuz it needed a valve job), and now I'm glad he did. Every once in a great while the gamble pays off.
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MadMan · Regular Member Joined: 05 Jan 2016 Posts: 11

You've got that right! This website is chock full of in depth http://hnwhite.com history! I go back time and time again

jazzpik · Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2016 6:22 pm Post subject:

I agree this is an excellent site and they are very helpful with questions.
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MadMan · Regular Member Joined: 05 Jan 2016 Posts: 11

yeah, you can find them on Facebook too there's a lot of activity on their page