Vincent Bach began making mouthpieces in New York in 1918 and built the first Stradivarius trumpet in 1925. The archive follows the main brass sequence through its New York, Mount Vernon and Elkhart eras.
The record makes room for uncertainty when a precise year is unavailable.
Factory and production era appear alongside the date when supported by a source.
See the source behind a match and what still needs to be confirmed.
The archive currently covers 5 series and 72 dating ranges from 1925 to 2025, compiled from published maker records and reference charts. Coverage grows as new tables are verified.
Valve block. Pre-1940: reverse side, horizontal. Mt Vernon 1953-65: front side, upper baluster, horizontal. Pre-1990 Elkhart: reverse side, bottom casing, vertical. Post-1990: reverse side bottom casing horizontal below location stamp; also front upper baluster. The exact spot varies by era and instrument type — the serial number guide walks through the common locations.
Recheck the characters exactly as marked, including any letters and leading zeros. Letter-prefixed numbers often belong to student or non-domestic lines that cannot be dated from the number. Some production periods may simply not be covered yet.