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The X-Series

With this series of instruments, we wanted to capture some of the special traits of Bach’s early New York era instruments, like the single brace in the tuning slide and a true French bead bell. A piece of early Bach historical trivia eventually landed us on the ‘X’ name. When instruments would come back to the shop and be resold, he would occasionally add an X to them. This practice seemed mostly limited to the NY era and occasional Mt. Vernon trumpet and plus, it sounded cool! Here are some of Bach’s first trumpet’s that were bought, returned and then re-sold as you can see by the names being scratched out and replaced.

 
 

Byron’s Trip…ing

I first met Byron Stripling on a trip to Pittsburgh to play with the orchestra. He had recently been appointed as Principal Pops Conductor and as I said in my Instagram post below, “Amazing trumpet player and entertainer but man does it feel bad to be in the back of the orchestra knowing that the conductor is a better trumpet player than you!” It was nice to chat about Bach trumpets and give him the shop card for his old NY Bach.

A few months later, Mark Hughes, Principal Trumpet of the Houston Symphony, sent a note that Byron had tripped and damaged his NY Bach era trumpet! I reached out to him and offered to have us fix it. You can see the damage pretty clearly here on the bell!

 
 

Goldilocks and the 3 bores

 The following year in 2022 when we really started developing the X-Series now that the Vindabona was complete. We still had the goal of a 37X and a 72X but another idea had emerged from our friend Steve Winans. He had worked on some early Bach Mercedes Trumpets that were .456” bore and said after valve rebuilds and new leadpipes they generally played great! I had had many disucssions with orchestral players like Mark Hughes who loved their medium bore NY’s but wished they were just a little bit bigger.

We had made the very first prototype of the 72X the year before and even the first one was excellent!

When it was time to make some prototypes, my first thoughts jumped to Byron Stripling! One of the greatest soloists, performers, entertainers, educators but also a lifetime Bach love and specifically famous for playing New York Era Bach trumpets and someone who might be in need of a new trumpet!

We had already been working with Melvin Jones on the new 19043 model. He sounded great on it and there are lots of videos of him playing a raw brass horn like the ones below at The Oscars and with Stevie Wonder!

Melvin was loving the 19043 but ultimately, he was playing so much commercial music that I wanted to see if a 72X would possibly work better for him. We completed what we thought could be final prototypes of the .456” 37X and .459” 72X and it was time to get them tested in the field and I am very grateful Byron and Melvin agreed!

Previously, Byron has performed on many different Bach trumpet setups, including New York era Large bore, Medium Large bore, and Medium bore trumpets. I brought 4 different prototypes with me to visit him on my original trip and the M+ was the clear victor. As someone who had previously played multiple trumpets on Bach’s 3 most common bore sizes, he immediately appreciated the extra agility without sacrificing too much sound. Myself and Steve Winans have been calling it the Goldilocks Bore and the more people who play it, the more it rings true! Only two weeks after delivering the horn to Byron, you can see him using it with the Pittsburgh Symphony below!

 
 

To Russia with Love

The new Medium Plus bore was a great success and we were excited for what we thought would be the first ever Medium Plus .456” bore Stradivarius from Bach as all the previous ones were the Mercedes model. However, after going through Bach’s archives in Elkhart, I found some correspondence between Vincent Bach and the great Russian soloist, Timofei Dokshitzer! This was a response from Vincent Bach to Dokshitzer regarding his desire to try a medium bore .453” trumpet. The relevant paragraph being:

Regarding your request to try a medium bore trumpet, I would not recommend this to you for you would not get enough volume of tone out of it. Perhaps we could make up a trumpet for you of a bore half way between the medium and medium-large – of a valve bore .456”. Our medium-large bore had a valve bore of .459” while the medium bore has a valve bore of .453”.

It was great reassurance to discover Vincent Bach also going down the same path of the .456” bore for a soloist! The letter has a date of April 10, 1962 so with that knowledge I went looking into the shop cards for an instrument that may have been made special for him…and low and behold, the first and only (until now) Bach Stradivarius .456” bore trumpets.

 
 

His Royal Airness

Rewind back to my trip to New York for Melvin. It was an urgent visit because the following day he was leaving on tour to Africa! Only 5 days after delivery you can see and hear him on the 19072X with Usher for the Global Citizen Festival in Ghana. And after that, well…you can see him everywhere with it! From Africa to Patti LaBelle, Stevie Wonder, the Soul Train Awards, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Jimmy Fallon! You can even catch him hanging with Rashawn Ross on Instagram.

 
 

The Most Legendary Upper Extreme Register

Speaking of Rashawn Ross… I know some of you are probably thinking, “Andy, why haven’t we heard your artist with the most legendary extreme upper register play the X-Series yet?” Well, if you watched SNL on Dec 12 you did! Rashawn wanted try a something in the band that was a little more lead trumpet focused and the trumpet worked great!

 
 

More Melvin Everywhere Else

 
 

Urban One Honors

January 16, 2023

Legacy Event Honoring Queen Latifah

March 27, 2023

With Usher in Vegas

March 14, 2023

Dreamville Fest with Usher

April 3, 2023

 
 

 X-Series Marks the Spot

The whole Bach team is very excited about these two new models! As with all the models, they were not an attempt to copy NY era instruments, but we wanted to take inspiration from them and we love the results. You can read the full details on the models page.

190M37X

19072X