Recently purchased a Conn mellophone, what I believe is a model 6E. I'd like some validation and/or correction on what I think I've figured out about the horn. Serial number 118,341 - overall very good condition, albeit tarnished and a solder job on the Eb leadpipe that came from the school of "The bigger the glob, the better the job!"! No case.

Depending on which serial number list one consults, it could have been made from 1909 to 1911 - 1911 by the one found here. I'm very inclined to go with the 1911 date as Conn Loyalist indicates that this model was introduced in 1911, which would make sense as the Conn factory burned to the ground in May of 1910, was rebuilt and reopened late that year so a plethora of new models were introduced after that.

Line drawings found here and on Conn Loyalist both show all four leadpipes (keys of F, Eb, D and C) as well as two tuning slides. From what I've been able to determine the only difference between the low pitch 6E and the high pitch 7E is that the 7E came with two tuning slides, a short and a long (as the line drawing shows), whereas the 6E only came with the long version.

Scouring the Internet for information and pictures of this model has come up fairly dry. I found another 6E from ca 1912 or so that was identical to mine, and even had the original pair of mouthpieces (1 for F/Eb, the other for C/D (???)) with it. Apparently sometime between 1912 and 1918, the quad leadpipe idea was abandoned in favor of a conventional fixed leadpipe and F/Eb slides but otherwise identical from pictures I've seen. With that said, Conn Loyalist indicates that the both the 6E and 7E were made up till 1926 - which doesn't make sense as they would have had to have provided four tuning slides for the 7E to cover both low and high pitch. Either Conn Loyalist is incorrect or more likely, I'm confused and/or missing something!

UPDATE: Just found an apparent 6E from 1922 which has four crooks (in lieu of leadpipes) for the various keys. This would suggest that either the 7E was no longer made (as above) -=OR=- the 7E became a dedicated high pitch instrument without low pitch ability as it apparently had earlier.

The horn arrived with a cornet mouthpiece - which resulted in horrid intonation and poor lower range. Finding a Mellophone mouthpiece was "interesting" due to the change of specifications of what a "Mellophone" is, as well as eBay sellers not knowing what they had. Ended up with a Bach 6 on the third try that was a significant improvement over the cornet MP, the latter of which is now in the hands of a happy cornetist via eBay. The MP cost me 50% of what I paid for the horn!

I'll email in a couple of good pictures for the site...

UPDATE: Pix emailed!

That's good to know - and further research SEEMS to vindicate my 2nd hypothesis; later 7e horns didn't have low pitch capability at all - I've encountered pix with multiple crooks and the F crook looks "short" on some horns, yet not on others - according to my calibrated eyeball. Must be both 6E and 7E horns I'm looking at - since they didn't actually stamp the model indication on them (or certainly not on my early example), who knows?

I thought high pitch fell out of favor well before the late 20s... *shrug*

kenton wrote on Aug 16^th, 2022 at 7:32pm:

For how long? But your point about converting is well taken!

UPDATE: Googled the high pitch question - apparently HP was still a thing as late as the 1960s!

How long did high pitch last, it appears that the high pitch manufacturing of instruments lasted until 1964.

It is easy to mis-interpret some of the marking on instruments.  As enthusiasts, we sometimes ascribe significance  - most notably age of instruments to some rather marginal clues. 

Chronological lists are generally re-constructions and not derived from factory sources.  For the companies, the serial number was a way to keep track of the product and parts through the manufacturing process.  And, it was accomplished in variety of ways.  Some makers had one serial for the valve section and another for the balance of the instrument.  The relationship between the date of completion and the order of the serials is only approximate. 

Most companies had departments that did only a portion of the construction and assembly process.  Therefore, a valve section may have been made at a considerably different time from the bell section.  And, a valve section could be drawn from a stack of valve sections and matched up with a bell section randomly drawn from that stack. 

While it is likely that a union made valve section was made and marked as union, it is also quite probably that an older valve section that had languished in the bottom of a stack of valves was matched with a bell section that was union made.

nope

I was trying to figure out the difference between the 4E and the 6E.  In a 1924 price list, it appears that the 6E was pitched in Eb, but the 4E was F, Eb, D, C. 

The 6E was supposed to Weigh 4.75 lbs, 16.5 in length, and 12.5 width, 12 in bell


The 4E was 5lbs, 15 length, 11.5 width, 12 in bell.

yes, that email should work.  (maybe the attachments were too large)

kenton wrote on Aug 20^th, 2022 at 4:30pm:

Crud. I bet that was it. I sent two or three full rez pix. I'll try sending them one at a time...