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York Model 40 Trumpet |
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York Band Instrument Company Length = 19" These incredibly bad photos of a York trumpet were posted online and the result was very few bidders. When I saw the pearl inserts on the slide knobs and gold-plated mouthpiece, I knew that I had to buy this just to find out what it was. The case and knobs led me to estimate this around 1930 and I wasn't far off. One thing that I could tell was that the bell appeared very straight.
When I got this, I found that it was complete and even had gold-plated water keys and valve caps. When I tried playing it, it sounded very stuffy, so I assumed that the valve alignment was way off. After taking everything apart, I started to remove some small dents in the bell and found this blocking the passage.
After making a hooked end on a stiff rod, I was able to pop this out. To my surprise, it turned out to be a cornet adapter and a trumpet tuning bit stuck together. This is why I remove all parts from the case when shipping trumpets and put them in a separate padded envelope. The gold plating has a satin finish that matches the mouthpiece.
Here it is all apart and polished up again.
Using a page from the 1931 catalog, I was able to determine that this was a model 40 with the large bore. The tricky part with York is that they don't put the model on the horn so there is no way to tell from photos which bore size it is. The only difference below is that by 1931, the fixed slide ring is now adjustable.
More views of the beautiful trumpet.
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