Lunchtime! Gives me a chance to do some research. First, something off the top of my head:
There are a few mentionings in this thread about engraving. I have seen an Evette-Schaeffer 1920ish horn that was engraved with Conn New Wonder regalia. I've also seen some 1920s Conns that were engraved like Evette-Schaeffers. In other words, don't always trust the engraving. Also, FWIW, I do remember that there was a guy on eBay that was engraving horns with misleading make/model stuff. He'd have, say, an old Dolnet that was engraved with Selmer Mark VI regalia, etc. Unfortunately for him, he was really bad at engraving.
So, I'm not going to trust engraving, yet.
Anyhow, referring to your Martin, two things immediately gave me pause and those were the serial number and that bell-to-body brace. The serial, if it was a Kohlert, would = about 1954. Martin, it'd be insanely early 1918. 1918 is an obvious "no," as the horn doesn't look like a 19teens horn. There's also the other point that, if the horn's a stencil, the serial # means squat.
That bell-to-body brace immediately makes you think of Kohlert because the "triangle window cutout" was on a lot of post-WWII Kohlerts (and Amatis, for that matter). However, the Martin Centennial is very close (
your horn vs.
Martin Centennial). Steve mentioned similarities to the Centennial earlier in this thread.
I'd then look at the G#/C#/B/Bb cluster. I did a bit of looking on Helen's website, as I don't have that many Kohlert Winnenden pics on file. There are at least two versions of the Winnenden G# cluster (
version 1 and
version 2). Neither looks like what you have on your Martin. The one on your Martin does look a lot like ones found on other Martins, such as the Handcraft Troubador (compare
your horn to a
Martin Troubador).
The "ridged" neck is also a fun thing to look at because it doesn't look like one found on a Martin. It looks like the one found on the Kohlerts, both the Regent and the Winnenden and
several pre-WWII models.
Then we've got keyguards to talk about. While they're
similar to the
Martin Centennial and
Martin Committee "III," they're
exactly the same as what you'd find on a
Kohlert Regent or
Kohlert Winnenden.
I'm running out of time, so I'll try to finish this later. I want to look at some keywork and some other Kohlert pics I have on a different hard drive. I also want to look at some pics of a couple J Keilwerths I have on file.
flava, if you can post a pic of your horn's octave mechanism -- a big enough pic so I can see the actual key you press with your thumb, too -- that'd be very helpful!