Bach TR500 made in China?

[Bflatman]

Thank you jondrowjf dr_trumpet beyond16 and dennis78

I feel we are getting through the quagmire your information is confirming for me the scale of the problem.

For me this is about supporting home workers.

Every instrument purchased from abroad is a nail in the coffin for home makers.

If the foreign products are good and the home products are bad I have no issue, but if the home products are good and the foreign products are bad and we still buy the foreign rubbish then all we do is sack our home workers and make their families destitute for no good reason.

Companies like Bach need all the help we can give them or they will disappear and we will all suffer.

We have lost far too many great manufacturers it is time to put an end to it.

Thanks for your support
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Conn 80a Cornet
Boosey & Hawkes Emperor Trumpet
Olds Fullerton Special Trumpet
Selmer Invicta Trumpet
Yamaha YCR 2330II Cornet
Selmer Student Trumpet
Bohland and Fuchs peashooter Trumpet
Boosey and Hawkes Regent Cornet
Lark M4045 Cornet

[jondrowjf@gmail.com]

Bflatman
After buying the Schiller professional cornet and having all the seams and other things fixed by my local tech. I am not buying anymore lower ended Chinese made horns.
Lucky I have a excellent tech, that accepts bartering. Due to my morbid curiosity about buying vintage and older horns, I spent a lot of money on repairs with local techs.
Very happy with my Getzen trumpet and cornet.Although I have been impressed with the quality and sound of the Chinese made Jupiter 520 M lacquered Shepherd's crook cornet. Selling both my Getzen Renaissance professional trumpet and Jupiter 520 M lacquered Shepherd's crook cornet. So I helping the economy, hopefully very soon I will reap the benefits.
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King 603 cornet
Yamaha 2330 cornet
Denis Wick 4 W classic gold cornet mouthpiece
Yamaha 11 e4 cornet mouthpiece
Yamaha 9e cornet mouthpiece
Bach 5 B cornet mouthpiece

[Dennis78]

The sight in fact no longer says the are manufactured across seas. It doesn’t specifically say where they’re made though. The last incarnation of their site did say the prelude line was Asian made and called them prelude by Bach. Now it only list them if you look u student trumpets in the conn-Selmer section of all of their student line.
While it is very true that the major names have better product but to a kid or even an adult who wants to play a new instrument but can only afford minimal then the Chinese instruments are well within their market.
I don’t think anyone is expecting their $500 Chinese trumpet to stand up as long as their $4k Schilke
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a few different ones

[OldSchoolEuph]

TR-500 is among those now re-rebranded as "Aristocrat". If you check the warranty page, Prelude and Aristocrat are both the minimum 1 year term. That makes it fairly clear that wherever these are made, CS had little confidence in their quality. It could be china, it could be India, it could be Markneukirchen Germany. Where it is made is irrelevant, the key thing is "how well". Minimal warranty tells us the company feels the answer is "not very".
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Ron Berndt
www.trumpet-history.com

2017 Austin Winds Stage 466
1962 Mt. Vernon Bach 43
1954 Holton 49 Stratodyne
1927 Conn 22B
1957 Holton 27 cornet
1985 Yamaha YEP-621
1975 Yamaha YEP-321 Custom
1965 Besson Baritone
1975 Olds Recording R-20

[Vin DiBona]

As a former expert in importation as a licensed US Customs Broker, I can assure you that virtually anything made overseas MUST state the country of origin either on the item or its container.
US made products do not require a made in the USA marking, but many US manufacturers do show "Made in US" or something on that order.
I started in late 72 and worked until 2017. Conservatively, I handled 40 thousand shipments of all kinds, mostly from Europe and the Orient., including high, mid, and low priced instruments.
Over the years, I witnessed incredible change in where items were made.
When China opened up for normal trade relations, there was an immediate shift to them.
What I saw was cheap junk and quality products from China and this still holds true. That price and quality is up to the US importers and what they will pay for the market they are in.
You pay your money and you take your chance. If you buy a low quality instrument from anywhere, caveat emptor.
R. Tomasek

[delano]

[blownchops]

I have had kids come in with the bach prelude (700?). For what they are, they function. The preludes are never very in tune, one slide will be out two inches while another prelude will be all the way in. I would put it in the same bracket as those cheap Etude brand horns for like $200.

They function, I have seen kids play them from their 6th grade year to their graduation. The horns look pretty tragic by then, but no valve meltdown.
I do not recommend them, but one or two preludes (of any type of instrument) always seem to work their way into my bandroom.

If you're looking for a made in the USA student horn, I have been having the local music store rent out my kids the modern king 601. They play okay. Build quality seems fine on the trumpets. The bach tr300 feels and looks too much like a bundy to me. I hate the bundy trumpet.

Sidenote, if the local music store carried yamaha, the kids would unquestionably be getting yamaha 2335/2330s. Best horns in the student category, hands down.(IMO)
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Bach 37

[OldSchoolEuph]

[HaveTrumpetWillTravel]

"Every instrument purchased from abroad is a nail in the coffin for home makers."

@blfatman, not to be a jerk about it, but you have a Chinese cornet, a Japanese cornet, a Czech trumpet, and I think Boosey and Hawekes is British. More than half of your instruments are imports.

Really struggling to understand...

[Crazy Finn]

[delano]

In fact I am a little confused by the post of OSE.
In my trumpet world Markneukirchen has quite a good name.
The Dutch trumpet builder Hub van Laar started a factory there for producing his valves after their goodbye to Bauerfeind, more specific there because of the proven craftsmanship of the (Czech) workers there. Hub even learned that crazy difficult language (this region is VERY close to the German-Czech border). The Van Laar factory is now a little up north, in Klingenthal.
It's possible that in the times of the GDR and the Rino there came some inferior products from this little town in the Vogtland but maybe that was for a big part involuntarily and/or caused by circumstances.

From Wikipedia:
Markneukirchen is the main town of the small musical instrument-making region, known for four centuries for high quality brass and string instruments. Within this small locality, 113 different enterprises are involved in making musical instruments. They rely on traditional methods but sell all over the world.

Of course B&S is now the big name there but they also produce the Johannes Scherzer rotaries and mr. Jürgen Voigt there made the excellent machine for my rotary trumpet.

Maybe next time a better example in the context of China and India.

[Bflatman]

HaveTrumpet

Well said, that is a good catch, so I should explain.

The nail in the coffin I describe comes about where a home manufacturer is making products in competition with foreign makers but foreign makers get the trade and not the home manufacturer.

A new instrument purchased from Bach will ensure profits from the sale stay in the USA and Bach workers continue to have jobs.

This only applies to new instruments made by workers in a factory creating wealth products profits and jobs.

As soon as the product is sold as second hand goods in a private sale, the sale cannot affect the maker the workers jobs or the economy and my comments cannot apply.

The money paid to a USA owner of a chinese instrument bought second hand does not go to china to fund the chinese maker and the chinese economy.

The money paid to a USA owner of a Bach instrument bought second hand does not help Bach and does not help the USA economy.

My comments can only apply to new instruments. I purchased all of my instruments second hand.

The Lark was purchased in a second hand shop locally so it helped the local economy and all but one of the rest were purchased in private sales locally. The Conn was purchased from a private seller in the USA

By all means buy second hand any chinese or foreign instruments some are excellent. It is buying new products that cause the nail in the coffin issue.

It is all about where the money goes and whose jobs you protect and which countries economy you support when you buy new products.

Great question.

I should add that the chinese Lark is slightly embarrassing.

I purchased it for 15 dollars in an attempt to prove how bad chinese instruments can be. All I proved is how good they can be. I bought it because it had the reputation as the worlds worst instrument and I wanted to find out just how bad the worlds worst instrument could be.

It is a great instrument so egg on my face there. Apologies to china on that one. Let us move swiftly on...............
_________________
Conn 80a Cornet
Boosey & Hawkes Emperor Trumpet
Olds Fullerton Special Trumpet
Selmer Invicta Trumpet
Yamaha YCR 2330II Cornet
Selmer Student Trumpet
Bohland and Fuchs peashooter Trumpet
Boosey and Hawkes Regent Cornet
Lark M4045 Cornet

[OldSchoolEuph]

[delano]

Sorry mr. OSE I can't follow you. India, China and Markneukirchen. Why these three? Very arbitrary and maybe tendentious. What have they in common? You say they all three make good and bad horns but that is not true and at the same time a platitude. Usually your posts show great knowledge of the history, of brands and types of horns but more and more I get the idea that that is only true as long as it are American products. Maybe European and Asian instruments are not your thing.

[OldSchoolEuph]

[delano]

There are over a million BMW cars produced in China every year. Still that will not mean that China can build a BMW.
India produces heaps of 100% rubbish instruments almost all meant for the own market. I have seen some factories there. Some brands are hammered on the street.
If you are afraid for a monopoly of the Markneukircher Gang: IMO Yamaha is the worldwide killer of musical instruments builders.
In Germany there has always been a big tradition of small and some bigger builders and there are a lot of. That tradition is grounded on a big tradition of craftsmanship and knowledge (now in Holland we participate with Adams and Hub van Laar and some others, much smaller).
Only the worth of those traditions and their cultural meaning makes a setting on one line of Markneukirchen with India and China disrespectful and superficial.

[Shawnino]

Companies need to make their own decisions about their branding.

Getzen was on here not two months ago saying he was offered trumpets from China at $75/piece, stencilled, in a case, delivered to his door. He said he passed because they were lousy.

Bach's going to do what Bach's going to do. (Well, the Holding Company's going to do what...)

Bach's Chinese trumpets may not be that bad, or may simply have wide variance. I'm told that some of the better Jinbao/Jinyin stuff is pretty good. I had a nasty experience with Wessex (who uses Jinbao), but other people swear by them. Carol is Taiwanese (let's not re-open the One China politics here) and the Carols I've played are on par with the Adams/better-grade Yamahas I've played--fine horns.

If the instruments are generally OK, they're getting people into the ecosystem at a lower price point which is smart. If they're not generally OK, they'll pay for it down the track.

[DJtpt31]

Spoke with a Conn-Selmer rep. and they informed me that Prelude by Conn-Selmer instruments were entry (student) model instruments built to their specifications in china. The student line of Bach instruments are built in the USA. Since the student line is built here, didn't think to ask about their "set-up" intermediate level instruments. Someone pointed out checking the warranty agreement on their website. They stopped responding after I asked about why the need to offer a Chinese student model and a USA student model.

[Crazy Finn]

[trumpet_cop]