Martin trumpet 1936 serial

It has a wonderful density and lots of rich overtones. The intonation and slotting are excellent, and the notes bend easier than any other horn I currently own.

Mechanically the slides are nice and tight, no drippy slides like so many other horns, even new ones. The valves are lightning fast and the tolerances seem very tight. This horn has better compression than any I have owned. I love the trombone style water keys, I wish all trumpets had these. I bought this trumpet for sound and hoped for good mechanics and am thrilled by all the extra touches, like the wonderful indented finger buttons.

Customer service is top notch, I was able to get this without the 1st valve saddle and with brass valve stems. I've been playing on this mouthpiece for almost two months now. I find it comfortable to play and I love the sound.

It's loaded with overtones and gives me a beautiful sound which works well for all styles of music. No complaints about this horn. Others can copy the tapered tuning slide; the cone-shaped, cornet-like bell; and even the quirky water keys. But nobody has deciphered the magic formula for that unique tone — so smooth, so dusky, so … jazzy. The Martin mystique has continued to intensify over the years.

The Martin Committee was introduced in and quickly became a favorite among jazzers. Either way, Martin decided not to rebuild and instead moved to Elkhart, Indiana, and went to work for the C. Conn Co. By the s, Martin already had a reputation for producing first-rate instruments, and its top-of-the-line model, the Martin Handcraft Imperial, had become the choice of many of the best players of the time.

Exactly who served on that committee remains a matter of some debate. But questions about who served on the committee remain unanswered. Why would Reynolds, founder of the F.

Reynolds Company, help a competitor design a superior trumpet? And the first advertisement for the Martin Committee, which ran in the Dec. The one name that shows up on both lists is Schilke, and he was widely quoted as saying in later years that the Martin Committee was really designed by a committee of one — namely, himself.

By about , a lot of players felt that the quality of Martin horns had declined. Chet Baker, for example, famously switched to a Conn Connstellation around that time. Others stuck with the Committee. Miles played them forever, and Dizzy continued to do so for more than a decade before switching to the King Silver Flair, like the Gillespie horn that's in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Leblanc bought the Martin name in , moved the operation to Kenosha, Wis. When they reintroduced the Committee, it was a different design and a decent horn by all accounts.