Bach Minerva Trumpets - Mt. Vernon era
We are starting a new post about the history of the Minerva brand of trumpets from Vincent Bach Corporation during 1958 – 1961. Contact us through our website; if you have additional information or examples, please share.
Bach Minerva-branded trumpets and cornets are assumed to be an experiment to see if Vincent Bach could introduce another brand of student-level instruments to meet the growing number of band students looking for a high-quality and reasonably priced trumpet or cornet.
Vincent experimented with German valve assemblies and his bell, leadpipe, and assembly manufacturing. Interestingly, Vincent continued to manufacture a handful of Minerva-branded trumpets/cornets after Selmer purchased them. It is assumed to have assembled the remaining parts left over from 1958 – 1961.
Medium bore (0.453″)
Medium Large bore (0.459″)
A number of the Bach Minerva trumpets had “German” marked in the Valve-Model on the shop card. One shop card indicated a Hüller valve (German) manufactured by the Ernst Modl company.
There were approximately 90 Bach Minerva branded trumpets and cornets built from the fall of 1958 to late 1961 after the acquisition by H. & A. Selmer in Sept 1961.
After carefully reviewing the shop cards of that Mt. Vernon era, I found that the previous speculation of 300 Bach Minerva trumpets and cornets is not correct.
There are a few (1 or 2) known examples of Bach Minerva branded trumpets with the serial number 40, xxx that are believed to be prototypes from 1961 and are assumed to be experiments during the time of the H. & A Selmer acquistion.
Serial # | Instrument | Mfg. Date | Bell | Bore | Leadpipe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2628 | Trumpet | July 1960 | 38K | 0.453" | 7 |
2722 | Trumpet | Oct. 1958 | 38K | 0.453" | 7 |
2756 | Trumpet | Sept. 1959 | 38K | 0.453" | 7 |
2781 | Trumpet | Nov. 1960 | 38K | 0.459" | 7 |
2786 | Trumpet | Jan. 1961 | 38K | 0.453" | 7 |
2791 | Cornet | Nov. 1961 | 38K | 0.459" | 106 |
2799 | Trumpet | Feb. 1961 | 38K | 0.459" | 7 |
2811 | Trumpet | May 1961 | 38 | 0.459" | 7 |
40,xxx |
Shop card examples of Bach Minerva trumpets and cornets can be found on the BachLoyalist database.
This is a copy of the correspondence from Roy Hempley, the author of Bachology articles, to an owner of a Bach Minerva trumpet.
” I think, repeat think, that I once said or wrote that there were about 300 Minervas made all total, including cornets and trumpets. There is not real way to know this, however. Too many of the shop cards are missing. for us to tell for sure. I can tell you this. The number of Minerva cornets is very small, maybe around 20 or 30.
The Minervas are one of the little mysteries of Bach production. I’ll tell you what I think I know. The first serial number that I can find is #2506. The last one is #2811. This might, repeat might, imply that there are about 300 instruments. They were all sold from Mt Vernon between early in 1958 and early in 1961.
The problem with buying a Minerva is that you can’t tell exactly what you might get. Almost all of them were made with imported valves. They were made with two-piece #38 bells and a normal production mouthpipe. For most of the trumpets, this means a #7 mouthpipe. For cornets, it means a #106 mouthpipe. There were medium bore instruments, i.e., 0.453″. Many aspects, except for the valves, reminded me of the NY Mercedes (which were quite different than the Mt Vernon Mercedes).
Later on, Bach made a few Minervas with his standard type E valves and in medium-large bore size, i.e., 0.459″. These were made late in the production as if he ran out of the imported valves. I’ve examined two of these. On of them is a cornet you can view on Dillon’s Web site. The other is a trumpet, which was a gift to John Bach, Vincent’s great nephew. If you look at these instruments, the first thing that occurs to you is the valves were, in fact, not made by Bach.
The second thing is that some of the adornments are not at all like Mt Vernon instruments of the late 1950s and early 1960s. There is a return to sleeves on some of the connection points. The bend on the cornet tuning slide is different. You could make something of a case for these instruments having been made from a combination of Bach and German parts and, perhaps, assembled somewhere other than the Bach plant. This is conjecture.”
– Roy Hempley, on or before March 2006
source: BachLoyalist research, Roy Hempley (2006)
