Brand

Used Bach instruments

Vincent Schrottenbach was born near Vienna in 1890, landed in New York in 1914 and started calling himself Vincent Bach. A repairman ruined his mouthpiece, so in 1918 he started making his own, and in 1925 he sold his first Stradivarius trumpet. Trombones followed after the move to the Bronx in 1928. In 1961 Bach sold the company to Selmer, which moved production to Elkhart, Indiana, in 1964 and bought Conn's old Elkhart plant in 1970 for Bach. Stradivarius trumpets and trombones are still built there. Selmer also kept Bach on to design student brass, and the TR300, TR400 and TB300 you see on eBay belong to Bach's student line, which now uses BTR and BTB numbers. Prelude and Aristocrat are imported stencil brands. The serial is the quickest tell. A Stradivarius trumpet has a plain number of six digits or fewer stamped on the second valve casing, while a Bach serial that starts with a letter marks a student or intermediate horn.

5 models we cover.