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Life at the igloo has been super busy lately, with lots of new shipments of Bach and Conn brass from Conn-Selmer! Today I’m going through a shipment of 22 trombones. Most of them are Bach 42BO like the one you see here!  This particular horn is like brand new aside from a small dent in the knuckle tubing I have repaired. Most of them are near perfect with tiny cosmetic flaws, and a few show light use. We’ve also gotten a bunch of Bach trumpets in similar condition - as you can see from this photo they have all been...

BACKGROUND One of the instruments that we see fairly regularly in our shop is the Leblanc paperclip contrabass clarinet. Being very specialized and featuring an extremely unique timbre, it is typically a very sought after and valuable instrument. However, there has been a slight disconnect in the market for these instruments in that they come in two different versions: one that plays down to D which is the more common of the two, and more preferable to some for the way it plays, and one that goes down to C which has more practical application because of the expanded range....

Today’s awesome horn is a Conn 62H trombone, and it was a lot of fun to work on! Serial number dates this one at 1970, and it still has a lot of years of play time left in it. This is a very unusual horn in that the main tuning mechanism is in the handslide instead of the bell. It was stuck and had a small dent, so I had some delicate work to do. It came out beautifully with no issues, so the tuning mechanism works smoothly and the handslide does as well. Someone had painted the rotor caps...

Today’s gem was from one of our customers, who is also a gem!! He sent back a euphonium case for repair and a box of Thin Mints as a thank you - what could be better than that?? We don’t expect cookies from all of our customers, but we certainly do appreciate them, and the thank you note with them. A big THANK YOU to all of our amazing customers, and to all of our social media followers as well! You all make what we do worth it! Wishing you all sorts of happiness in your day! #AmandasBench

Our horns come from all over, so most of the time I don’t know much about their history. This horn is different, though, as I gig with its previous owner quite regularly! I recently helped him with the purchase of a new Jupiter XO 1600i Ingram model, and he decided he didn’t need to keep this one. Here we have a 3 MLP LA Benge, serial dates it to 1980-81. It doesn’t show a lot of wear for a horn of this age - though it’s been played a lot, it has also been well cared for. All it needed...