Although the Bach brand is best known for his trumpets and trombones, a small and fascinating chapter of history involves the company founder's experiments with the French horn. The project can be traced to the early 1940s, in Vincent Bach's personal workshop in New York, where he began designing a professional French horn in response to requests for an instrument bearing the Stradivarius name. Between approximately 1942 and 1945, while the Bach factory was largely occupied with military trumpet and trombone orders during World War II, Vincent Bach developed and engineered several French horn designs, including a professional double in a Schmidt-style wrap, and single with stopping valve. His brother Hans J. Bach and his son Hans Vincent Bach were also involved in this development work. Hans Vincent, then studying mechanical engineering at Northeastern University, worked at his uncle's Bronx factory in 1942 and was tasked with translating Vincent Bach's designs into formal engineering drawings. Those original French horn blueprints are preserved in the Vincent Bach archives in Elkhart.
The horns from this period remained experimental prototypes and never entered regular production. While they were assigned a serial number in the 3 digit range, this does not follow the production sequence in the 4 digit range by this time, and the Conn-Selmer company has confirmed that no shop cards exist like sold production models. Only 3 surviving horn protoypes are known to exist, with one other double owned by a Vincent Bach collector, which was photographed with the one surviving single prototype for a 1976 Selmer Bandwagon tribute to Vincent Bach following his death.
These early Bach Stradivarius prototype horns, made by Vincent Bach himself within his personal workshop, should not be confused with other Bach-branded French horns offered at various times by Selmer, King, and Conn. In the 1960s, the H & A Selmer Co bought the Bach company and moved production to Elkhart, Indiana, and Vincent Bach consulted to design french horns for this large factory's production line. By the early 1980s, the Bach Stradivarius Double French Horn and Selmer 77 Double French Horn had been introduced, and discontinued shortly after in favor of the Conn models still made today. Other Bach horns are mass-produced instruments carrying the Bach name, built four decades after with a totally different design and quality, rather than the professional Stradivarius prototypes made by the Vincent Bach.
About This Horn
This instrument is one of the rare surviving examples associated with Vincent Bach's early French horn development, and displays a fascinating construction of Bach parts and Vincent Bach's personal fabrication.
The slides are characteristic of Bach construction, including the New York era's hexagonal slide braces, diamond style braces within the corpus, rolled slide ends, and longer slide ferrules. The 3rd Bb slide features a separate end slide, shared with his trumpet design, so tuning is not lost when the slide is removed to empty water. The valve section uses a traditional Schmidt-style arrangement, a European horn design that was established by the CF Schmidt brand within the United States, and the most popular style at the time.
Like Carl Geyer, who built the CF Schmidt horns with parts from Wunderlich Germany, and later his Geyer wrap horns with rotors from Marston in the US, Bach also built this horn around a premium supplier's rotary valves. It is not confirmed who this supplier was, but the top bearing plates are stamped with 2-digit production numbers like German makers, and it is confirmed that Bach used Marston rotors for his Bass trombones made in New York, so either is the likely source. The leadpipe receiver is similar to Conn and Buescher instruments of this era, potentially sourced from them or recreated by Bach. Apart from these rotor mechanics and parts, the construction is entirely handmade and assembled by Vincent Bach, including the rounded nickel-silver knuckles between each rotor, slide tubing with rolled ends, slide ferrules, and the piston assembly.
Notably, Vincent Bach improved the ergonomics by shortening the distance between the rotor levers and piston, and also fabricating a thumb lever for the piston-actuated trigger, using a trumpet finger button and leadpipe pinky hook.
The bell provides another unusual clue to the horn's origins, with characteristics shared on all the prototype horns. Rather than the uniform stamped engraving normally encountered on production Bach instruments, the bell logo and model is engraved by hand. Variations in line depth, alignment, and overlapping corners are visible throughout the lettering. Hand engraving would also have been practical on a completed prototype bell, whereas mechanically stamping a bell typically requires internal support from mandrels that weren't developed yet for production.
An additional "617A" marking remains unidentified. It does not correspond with a known Bach factory address, and may instead represent an internal production, component, drawing, or invoice designation.
Taken together, these features make the horn particularly interesting as an experimental instrument rather than a conventional production model.
Specifications:
- Maker: Vincent Bach
- Model: Stradivarius, Prototype
- Era: New York circa 1942-45
- Instrument: F/Bb Double French Horn
- Configuration: Schmidt style wrap
- Valves: Rotary valves with change/piston valve
- Bell: Hand Engraved
- Finish: Relacquered
- Condition: As-Is
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Classification: Experimental Prototype
Condition & Evaluation
The instrument has undergone a previous cosmetic restoration, including removing all dents and relacquering, with minimal buffing to preserve the original metal thickness and engraving. The engraving, slide ferrule knurling, and other fine details are still intact due to this care. However, to preserve the original hallmarks of a prototype instrument, the construction and mechanics were left original. Versus a production instrument, there remains signs of soldering, improper fitment, and other fabrication, and it did not receive a complete modern mechanical overhaul.
Because of these mechanical considerations, this instrument is being offered As-Is rather than as a fully restored professional playing instrument. That distinction does little to diminish what makes this horn remarkable. Bach trumpets and trombones from this period have an established collector market, but the experimental French horns were never commercially introduced and consequently appear far less frequently. Their significance lies primarily in their rarity and their historical connection to Vincent Bach's instrument-making history and determination through the second world war.
For the Bach collector, historian, or horn enthusiast, this instrument offers something seldom encountered: a surviving example of Vincent Bach's personal work, and his efforts to develop a professional Stradivarius French horn decades before the name would finally appear on a production model.
More details, including compression readings and playing characteristics, can be found on our product page.