Original Mandrills.

plp · Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2004 4:08 am Post subject:

I heard a story yesterday, repeated about 6th hand, that for a brief period in the 1980's the original French Besson mandrils were reverse engineered and new ones produced, which were used in the production of many Besson/ B and H products, including my recently acquired B and H Emperor. I thought I had read somewhere the original mandrils were destroyed during a fire prior to WWII. Does anyone have the low down on this, or any suggestions as to information sources?

This opens another topic. I would think the original Bach mandrils would be in the possession of Selmer at this point. Where are the Olds mandrils? Original Conns? There is a point to this, as my repairman friend is trying to acquire spec sheets with the intent of fabbing his own mandrils. We could make castings from existing trumpets, and reverse engineer to get them ourselves, but needless to say, this is very time consuming, even with access to AutoCad and cad driven fabrication equipment.

Trptbenge · Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2004 4:47 am Post subject:

It wouldn't surprise me if Conn still had them because they have been pretty much in existance without a breaak. Of course they may have been destroyed at some point. Everything at Olds was auctioned off in 1979. I know Allied got some parts and tooling but I don't know about the Mandrels. They may have been auctioned off to different people. I wonder if Robb Stewart might know.

Mike
_________________
It's the sound that makes the difference!

plp · Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2004 5:22 am Post subject:

mandrels= good spelling
mandrils=bad spelling

at least I didn't ask about the baboons with the red bottoms.....

tom turner · Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2004 9:56 am Post subject:

Hi,

There were sooooo many companies that made trumpets and cornets through the years. I've often wondered where the old equipment went!

As far as the Bach Mt. Vernon equipment, as well as older Bach tooling:

1. Selmer chose to re-engineer all new tooling of their own when they relocated to Elkhart.

2. Some Mt. Vernon trumpet tooling and mandrels were tossed out into the snowbanks, to rust and be covered with snow, by p_ssed off, long-time Mt. Vernon employees left stranded when Selmer moved the company.

3. Holton purchased a lot of the Mt. Vernon stuff . . . and later used that tooling to produce the Holton 101 "Symphony" Bb trumpet . . . as fine a playing "Bach 37" as you'll ever encounter!

Sincerely,

Tom Turner