Carl Fischer Bb Cornet

Here is a beautifully engraved cornet labeled "Carl Fischer New York" from circa 1900. I picked this up as a wreck of a parts horn but the engraving was so nice that I just had to piece it back together. I could tell from the listing that it had extensive engraving but it was missing the tuning slide and lead pipe socket as well as having a badly dented bell. What surprised me was that the design was identical to a William Seefeldt cornet that I had recently restored.

Here it is as I purchased it.

Thankfully, even though the lead pipe and water key were broken off, they were still with the cornet. After a few hours in the shop, I had everything back together with some old donor parts.

Here it is all back together and playing well.

Below is the William Seefeldt cornet of identical design which has serial #4562. The question is who actually made them? Did Seefeldt make it for Fischer or were they both imported? Fischer never made any horns but they did do their own engraving.

Here are more photos of the finished cornet.

A year later I came across another cornet with the same design labeled for Aschbach in Allentown, PA (photo below). Is this another one made by Seefeldt and sold across the state or another import? The only difference is the tuning slide shape which is more compressed.

Below is another possibility recently pointed out to me. B&F of Austria produced many instruments for export at this time and their model #2 (below) is very much like this except for the lack of fancier connectors. This even has the same single band for the joint in the valve casings. Even the position and shape of the lyre holder is the same.

In looking back at my photos of the Seefeldt cornet, I saw that it does have the #2 on the second valve under the valve numbers so more than likely this is by B&F.