Frank Holton founded the company in Chicago in 1901 and moved production to Elkhart in 1918. The maker used several concurrent sequences — trumpets and trombones were numbered separately in some 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 2 series and 80 dating ranges from 1901 to 1980, compiled from published maker records and reference charts. Coverage grows as new tables are verified.
Serial on the valve section (2nd valve casing) for trumpets and cornets; on the rotors for horns. No official diagram. 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.