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Does Blessing make some horns in China?


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Belteshazzar
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 26, 2021 9:37 am    Post subject: Does Blessing make some horns in China? Reply with quote

This BTR-1460M has "Made in China" on the underside of the mouthpiece receiver. I thought all Blessing horns were still made in Elkhart; I think I saw something explicitly saying so dating from around when the 1460 and other horns were introduced a decade ago, though the matte version was introduced just a few years ago. I doubt it's a fake since QuinnTheEskimo has a good reputation. Anybody know what would be up with that?
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Halflip
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 26, 2021 1:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When I click on your first link, I see that the sixth picture on the "Brass & Winds" site clearly shows "Made in China" stamped on the underside of the mouthpiece receiver. I also see that the price was cut from $1529 to $599. (Hmmm . . .)

When I click on your second link, I see that the italicized verbiage at the bottom of the page says that St. Louis Music owns E. K. Blessing (along with a number of other musical instrument manufacturers).

On the "About Us" page of the E. K. Blessing website, it says that E. K. Blessing was sold to St. Louis Music in June of 2015 (which "revitalized" it). That's much less than a decade ago.

I am guessing that, due to market pressures, St. Louis Music made arrangements to source certain Blessing instruments from China. (Long story short -- things change.) To be sure, you could always contact Blessing or St. Louis Music directly and ask them.
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Divitt Trumpets
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 26, 2021 3:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

St. Louis music distributes a lot of imported instruments, including P Mauriat.
I do not believe there is any instrument under the Blessing name being made in the USA.
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Crazy Finn
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 26, 2021 5:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Blessing factory in Elkhart was closed some years ago when the company was sold.

It's basically a stencil brand now, like "Olds" and "Reynolds" and so forth. It's owned - as mentioned in another post - by St Louis Music - which, as far as I know, doesn't actually make their own instruments. Who knows what they're doing with it.

Honestly, it's an easy pass on that Blessing. Just let it go, you're not missing out on anything.

The older ones, made in Elkhart are generally fine, but nothing special. The pro models that Powell (I think) helped design are good horns from what I've heard, they're the only one's I'd go out of my way for.
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Brassnose
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 26, 2021 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My first horn is a Blessing and while over 40 years old now and just being a student horn it is still in its original state and works just fine. So, yes, I like Blessing (and keep searching for that pristine Super Artist for cheap ) but honestly don’t consider the current offerings true Blessings. St. Louis Music was pretty open about it when they purchased the Blessing rights that those would be stencil horns. I seem to remember something along those lines on a Facebook page or so. It is confusing because they seem to carry over the model names from the last Elkhart era. Blessing is history now, along with Holton, Olds, etc.
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OldSchoolEuph
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 3:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Emil Blessing first worked for Gus Buescher and then Mennonite Publishing in the late 1800s. 1903 to 1906 he spent in Chicago working for Holton and a variety of other jobs as a machinist. In 1906, he started his own firm.

There were a few name changes, but the name always included EK or Emil K Blessing and the firm stayed in the family until 1961 when Paul Richards paid far more than it was worth to buy the company and add it to RMC - which then went bankrupt in 1963 from the debt load incurred by overpaying for all the constituent parts. Blessing then reverted to the family, which by marriage became the Johnson family, and it remained a family firm until 2009.

In 2009 Verne Q Powell flutes (not to be confused with Fred Powell, trumpet designer and maker) underwent a massive reorganization, opening new plants in China and Boston, and a new plant in Elkhart for its latest acquisition: Blessing.

In 2015 however, the Meinl-Triumph-Adler mega-corp known as Buffet-Crampon acquired Powell, and immediately eliminated Blessing as a competitor to its massive, and market-dominating, division VMI, as Blessing had always been a prolific maker of stencil horns. Selling the name to St. Louis Music was just a bonus. Much like closing Besson and destroying all of the records and tooling from Besson, Boosey, Hawkes and Distin in the process, or the closure of Antoine Courtois, the oldest trumpet maker, Buffet's only interest was in eliminating competition and forcing customers to its VMI/B&S monopoly - basically sentencing more of the musical world to have to endure the products of this former communist collective.

(For those who are unfamiliar with VMI: think Allora, Giardinelli, EF Durand, Bundy - also Besson brass, Courtois trombones & B&S trumpets)

St. Louis probably buys cheap stencils from VMI too, not just China, in a sad irony all too typical today.
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Brassnose
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 4:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The upside of all the Buffet-Crampon business is that they bring jobs to a region that has not many other job options to offer. The Musikwinkel Markneukirchen-Klingenthal and the corresponding region in the Czech Republic are not strong, economically speaking, and I think most people agree that B&S instruments are good quality horns.
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OldSchoolEuph
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 5:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Brassnose wrote:
The upside of all the Buffet-Crampon business is that they bring jobs to a region that has not many other job options to offer. The Musikwinkel Markneukirchen-Klingenthal and the corresponding region in the Czech Republic are not strong, economically speaking, and I think most people agree that B&S instruments are good quality horns.


The B&S Sonora I have is pretty sad. B&S does have its fans of the Challenger line (mostly those who say "a decent imitation of a 37 for the price...."), and certainly I would take a Challenger over any Blessing I ever played - but to wipe out the Courtois Evo's in favor of the Challengers was a huge step backward.
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yourbrass
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 8:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

OldSchoolEuph wrote:



In 2015 however, the Meinl-Triumph-Adler mega-corp known as Buffet-Crampon acquired Powell, and immediately eliminated Blessing as a competitor to its massive, and market-dominating, division VMI, as Blessing had always been a prolific maker of stencil horns. Selling the name to St. Louis Music was just a bonus. Much like closing Besson and destroying all of the records and tooling from Besson, Boosey, Hawkes and Distin in the process, or the closure of Antoine Courtois, the oldest trumpet maker, Buffet's only interest was in eliminating competition and forcing customers to its VMI/B&S monopoly - basically sentencing more of the musical world to have to endure the products of this former communist collective.

(For those who are unfamiliar with VMI: think Allora, Giardinelli, EF Durand, Bundy - also Besson brass, Courtois trombones & B&S trumpets)

St. Louis probably buys cheap stencils from VMI too, not just China, in a sad irony all too typical today.


Sounds like the way Conn-Selmer eliminated competition around 2005 in buying LeBlanc and eliminating Martin, Holton, et al, and closing the Ellkhorn, WI factories. Don’t compete, just buy the competition and shut them down!
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Liberty Lips
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 9:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Conn-Selmer and Buffet-Crampon seem to have quite a bit in common in that regard. The Bach horns are excellent, yet the predatory nature of Conn-Selmer management to eliminate competition is anything but excellent. B&S instruments are great (I'm especially partial to the "Exquisite" Bb and C trumpets), but as Ron said it's not worth losing the great instruments from Courtois and Besson due to the scorched-earth policy of VMI.
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LittleRusty
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 9:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Buying out competitors is common in many industries. Think both Microsoft and Apple buying out successful products that they want to add to their portfolios.

Whose fault is it when this happens? The buyer? The seller who wants to cash out? Perhaps due to a pressing need for money, or wanting to retire?

Or perhaps it is on all the customers who decided to purchase other brands thus depriving the company of operating capital?

It is fine to pine after old brands but not all of the blame falls on the buyer in all the cases.

Note that I am intentionally ignoring leverage buyouts or hostile takeovers in making my point.
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Brassnose
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 10:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

@ OldSchoolEuph: I don’t want to pick a fight but the B&S FBX is the best flugel I played in a loooong time. Also I think the B&S trumpets that are not derivatives off the Strad such as the DBX and MBX series are pretty good horns in their own right.

Killing Conn or killing Courtois of course is sad from a players perspective, so there is a lot to hold against Conn-Selmer and Buffet-Crampon. Yet people buy Strads and B&S all the same. Life is complicated.
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OldSchoolEuph
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 10:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fair enough: Mergers have been a part of the music business since the Pharaoh's Court took over the production of certain bugles....

However, my problem with Buffet-Crampon and The Music Group as they were known briefly beforehand, is the deliberate erasure of engineering information, tooling and production records to preclude anyone being able to compare past product quality to present day, or to recreate those elements that have been lost. (yes, this was done to Conn too, though Greenleaf saved a lot into private collections before the buyer got his hands on it).

The loss of the F.Besson, Couesnon, and Getzen records were at least via disaster, while Holton was almost lost to the seller's zeal (though with key materials going to Bach) and Kanstul almost disposed of all of the Olds engineering files only to see them saved into a private library at literally the last moment (Mark told the recipient that he would dump them in the morning if they were not removed that day - the Kanstul marketing archive was dumped).

But only this Meinl-Triumph-Adler group has destroyed records & tooling as a strategy to inhibit determining if they are producing inferior product.

Brassnose wrote:
@ OldSchoolEuph: I don’t want to pick a fight but the B&S FBX is the best flugel I played in a loooong time. Also I think the B&S trumpets that are not derivatives off the Strad such as the DBX and MBX series are pretty good horns in their own right.


Wish I could say the same for the B&S Sonora - but I REALLY can't.

VMI seems to have some pretty good tech for making flugels - as does JinBao remarkably. (still not a Kanstul 1525, but... better than a lot of others who should do better) Not sure why, as these are not the first companies one would expect to excel.
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mafields627
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 10:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

LittleRusty wrote:
Buying out competitors is common in many industries. Think both Microsoft and Apple buying out successful products that they want to add to their portfolios.

Whose fault is it when this happens? The buyer? The seller who wants to cash out? Perhaps due to a pressing need for money, or wanting to retire?

Or perhaps it is on all the customers who decided to purchase other brands thus depriving the company of operating capital?

It is fine to pine after old brands but not all of the blame falls on the buyer in all the cases.

Note that I am intentionally ignoring leverage buyouts or hostile takeovers in making my point.


Sometimes there are just too many options and what you really need is a forced choice. It's like going to Publix vs. Aldi.
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Brassnose
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 10:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

See, I was not aware of a company deliberately destroying information and tooling. That’s dumb (or marketing). All I can say is that B&S horns are solid instruments. I also like their rotary flugelhorns, much better in fact than the famous Kanstul 1525, much less clumsy than the Kanstul, excellent sound, trigger in the right places, and so on.

If you’re looking for a really dark and broad sounding flugel check out their 17/2 and 3017/2 models. Not sure why they still seem to sell the same horn under the VMI brand but w/o a trigger.

However, one reason why they make good flugels may be because there is a pretty big market for flugels in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, along with eastern and southeastern European countries. Think German oompah bands, Balkan folk music, and the like.

On a different note, it would be interesting to know why Mark Kanstul wanted to dump the library and all.

PS: I just realized why you may not like the Sonora. Sonora is a GDR-made B&S that has nothing to do with the current products. If I am not mistaken, these instruments were not made for export (to the west), in contrast to the Weltklang instruments that were also sold in the west and were of a higher quality.
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LittleRusty
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 11:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
On a different note, it would be interesting to know why Mark Kanstul wanted to dump the library and all.

Not all people appreciate historical details in the same way. While I understand other’s interest, especially someone who works documenting history, I don’t share that interest much at all.

If Mark feels as I do, and he was tired of dealing with the aftermath of Zig’s passing, I can see why.

It also can cost money to store the detritus of a company.

Perhaps the truism “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” expresses it best.
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OldSchoolEuph
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 12:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

[quote="Brassnose"On a different note, it would be interesting to know why Mark Kanstul wanted to dump the library and all.[/quote]

I dont know for certain, but I would guess that like furniture and fixtures and his father's horn collection sold at fire sale prices with incorrect descriptions on EBay, it was cluttering up a $5,000,000.00+ Industrial property he wanted to unload.
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F.E. Olds Nut
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 12:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was told by a tech in Elkhart who used to work for Conn-Selmer that once Selmer Paris brasses were discontinued all the tooling was destroyed, following Conn-Selmer's previous track record.
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Halflip
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 3:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

LittleRusty wrote:
Not all people appreciate historical details in the same way. While I understand other’s interest, especially someone who works documenting history, I don’t share that interest much at all.

If Mark feels as I do, and he was tired of dealing with the aftermath of Zig’s passing, I can see why.

It also can cost money to store the detritus of a company.


Considering historical records in general, I can see where their preservation might be a low priority item for some (particularly under certain circumstances), but I think that the loss of engineering files and production tooling is tragic (and shameful, if there is intentional destruction for an ulterior motive).

In the auto industry, the Society of Automotive Engineers was formed to promote standards and provide a technical knowledge base through the free exchange of ideas. It was standard practice for engineers to publish papers sharing information about engineering advances, and the SAE provided a repository for this knowledge. I wonder if musical instrument designers might not benefit from having a similar independent organization to act as a repository of engineering information and discoveries for their specialty. (And no, I don't know how "trade secrets" would be handled, but the SAE manages it somehow. )
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LittleRusty
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 27, 2021 4:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Halflip wrote:
LittleRusty wrote:
Not all people appreciate historical details in the same way. While I understand other’s interest, especially someone who works documenting history, I don’t share that interest much at all.

If Mark feels as I do, and he was tired of dealing with the aftermath of Zig’s passing, I can see why.

It also can cost money to store the detritus of a company.


Considering historical records in general, I can see where their preservation might be a low priority item for some (particularly under certain circumstances), but I think that the loss of engineering files and production tooling is tragic (and shameful, if there is intentional destruction for an ulterior motive).

In the auto industry, the Society of Automotive Engineers was formed to promote standards and provide a technical knowledge base through the free exchange of ideas. It was standard practice for engineers to publish papers sharing information about engineering advances, and the SAE provided a repository for this knowledge. I wonder if musical instrument designers might not benefit from having a similar independent organization to act as a repository of engineering information and discoveries for their specialty. (And no, I don't know how "trade secrets" would be handled, but the SAE manages it somehow. )

I believe there are societies for instruments and repairs too.

But I am sure that all of the automotive manufacturers only allow publishing details on information that is not trade secret or on which patents have expired.

Although that said, isn’t some of Tesla available via open source?

Would it be nice if all of the Tucker documents were preserved, sure. But most of the information that is for the benefit of the automotive manufacturing was probably carried away in the head of the former employees to their next job.
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