Rudy Muck Trumpet - Bach Stradivarious Clone in Kansas City, Missouri

Rudy Muck Bb Professional Trumpet - Bach Stradivarius CloneFor your consideration a beautiful professionally refurbished instrument. This horn has been completely taken apart, inspected, and painstakingly put back together in my shop, and is in great condition. As a part of this procedure, all felts and corks were replaced, instrument was cleaned and disinfected, and then scoped inside and out including all slides and the internal tubing. I found no brass rot or anything that is compromising the brass or any of the passageways. As a part of this procedure the alignment of the valves were inspected using an internal electronic video scope, and each was adjusted to align each valve chamber with their corresponding slide ports to ensure that there were no blockages in any of the valve positions. All slides have been cleaned and greased, and work flawlessly. You can be assured this instrument is in excellent condition and will be ready to use for years to come. I have included pictures of all of the valves and the bottom of the valve chambers for your viewing.This

is a Rudy Muck Conductor (Serial #1019) Bb trumpet from the early 1950's. Many of the design features

resemble the New York Bach trumpets of this era and Muck was known to

produce copies of several well known trumpets around this time.  Having

worked for Bach, he knew the sources of parts so could produce a very precise copy.  This one is an ML bore (.458) and plays very well. Valves are in excellent condition with little wear, as you can see by the pictures, and all move with the precision you would expect in a quality professional instrument.The

lacquer is original and shows minimal wear.  Valve

compression is excellent.  Likely this trumpet was used very little when

new and stored for most of its life.  The early Rudy Muck trumpets such as this one were made with parts acquired from Vincent Bach at the New York Bach factory and play very similarly.It comes with the original case and a 7C mouthpiece. This is a rare beauty of a horn and is ready to go!Some history about Rudy Mück trumpetsRudy Mück was a

professional trumpet player in New York City during the 1920's and 1930's. He

operated in New York City from 1.

Born 1907 in

Moravia and trained by his father as a Brass repairman. Came to the US in 1911.

established company in 1930 and built Custom rim mouthpieces starting in 1932.
Rudy Mück worked

with Vincent Bach, but later opened a shop right next door to the Bach NY factory and

with the help of Vincent Bach, built the Rudy Mück Citation.Rudy was the son of J.R. Mück who had come to America to build instruments for fine concert and theater musicians. J.R. Mück was a master brass craftsman in Austria. The House of Mück

had been building instruments as far back as 1875. Young Rudy was

taught trumpet by his father's customers and at the age of 12 was

playing with the famous B.F. Keith's band. Manny Klein was only one of

the present day starts who played side by side with Rudy.Many years later, Rudy qualified as a craftsman in his father's shop, and

together they perfected the Rudy Mück Cushion Rim Mouthpiece, which is today

used by 60,000 brass players throughout the world. The Mücks were building brass

instruments to order for a loyal clientele, but they hesitated to offer the

horns to the general public because they feared mass production methods would

affect quality.When, in 1936, J. R. Mück retired to a rural laboratory to devote the rest of

his career to the experimental phase of brass instrument manufacture, his son

Rudy determined to make the Rudy Mück Trumpet and Cornet available to every

musician - but still on a custom-built basis.This explains why Rudy Mück instruments are known as "hard-to-get" horns. The

Mück workshop built every instrument almost leisurely, at a pace consistent

with musicians' needs, and thus the dealers' shelves were never overloaded. Rudy Mück

geared his production so that there were always enough horns to go around among

buyers, but never enough to lie around on store shelves, growing stale and stiff-auctioned.Bach Stradivarius Copies:
By far the most sought after by

collectors are the copies that have serial numbers in the 1000 to 2000 range. My guess

is that these were the offering just after WWII and they are

copies of

the popular Bach Stradivarius. If you look at the serial number list

page, the few horns that have purchase dates claim that these are late

1940s to mid 1950s.

According to Rudy Muck Jr, his father knew Bach

but never worked for him but it's possible that some Bach parts were

used. They would have been competitors but in that industry at the time

they were friendly toward each other. The 126th Street shop was about 9

miles from the Bach factory in the Bronx. The owner of #14xx reports

that some parts are interchangeable with a 1940s Bach yet the bell and

lead pipe inlet are different. The valve casings also have a completely

different design.

#1128
Here's a brochure from the 50's listing the Conductor trumpet for sale for $177.00 (same purchasing power as $2318.00 now)

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