Not a Martin

Kohlert(Winnenden)/Martin

Steve,
The comparison that you suggest necessary would allow us to be more precise on these "stencils". My horn seems to have been fully made (even the engraving) in the Kohlert factory. In terms of overall quality, it seems to be in a superior league to the Kohlert Bixbey. Measurements and more documentation would move us from "informed speculation" to certainty.
 
flava said:
Steve,
The comparison that you suggest necessary would allow us to be more precise on these "stencils". My horn seems to have been fully made (even the engraving) in the Kohlert factory. In terms of overall quality, it seems to be in a superior league to the Kohlert Bixbey. Measurements and more documentation would move us from "informed speculation" to certainty.
Click to expand...

and thus the reason I sometimes buy clarinets .... to inspect, document and evaluate. Sometimes when there is no documentation and only speculation, one has to generate their own.
 
More evidence for my horn being a Kohlert (made for Martin)

Here is a post in SOTW from 2007 from poster in Germany (peterging). What is of interest is that the serial number in my horn is just a couple of numbers before this one. Mine also has domed-shaped toneholes:

"I own and play a Kohlert Winnenden tenor from 1954 (s/n 7012). I absolutely love to play it. Tonewise, it is like a "lean and mean" Conn 10M. It somehow feels "flexible" to play. The sound is forceful but not booming. I have tried a King Zephyr, a Conn 10 M, a MkVI, an SML and I own a Dolnet Bel Air. I prefer the Winnenden over all of these for its tone. (The MkVI was easier to finger). I shortly have tried a Martin Handcraft from the 20's and this is the only one that I might prefer due to its sweet lush tone. I play my Winnenden with a Morgan Excalibur or with a Guardala MB I. The intonation is very good with these mouthpieces.
I should mention that this early Winnenden has dome-shaped toneholes. I have seen pictures of later Winnendens with straight toneholes. This could give a different tone."
 
Yes, I've been sleeping on this thread. Sorry 'bout that. I'll try to put a bow on all of this tomorrow. I think. Maybe. Perhaps. Something, at least.

That Clarinet BBoard thread Steve mentions goes off the tracks in a couple places, and I'd like to try to synthesize and correct. I can say that the Kohlerts aren't supposed to be bad horns until after the late 1950's, when the company essentially became way overextended and quality suffered. I've recently seen several post-war Kohlerts that look really, really nice. There also have been posts here and there about horns as late as the Kohlert Modell 59 being fairly decent.

Anyhow, the only other thing I can say, off the top of my head, is that Julius Keilwerth made some horns right after WWII that did have the beveled tone holes of a Martin ... because, according to someplace else, they were trying to copy Martin. Keilwerth definitely made some horns for Kohlert, too, so there could easily be a beveled-tone-hole horn labeled "Kohlert" out there, somewhere.

Again, let me ponder. It was a long day and I've had some other admin tasks here to take care of.
 
More a Kohlert than a Martin

Pete,
Let me just say what a great resource the forum has been for dealing with this puzzle.

I am in contact with someone from Europe (not a member of the WWF) who has a horn with a serial number immediately following mine and "K&C" stamped under it. I am expecting some pics soon.

I am more and more convinced that this is 95% plus a Kohlert. The one difference is the words "Martin -Elkhart-Ind" in a Kohlert-esque style. Why?

Still to be determined.
 
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!
 
Octave Mechanism of Kohlert-Martin

Pete,
You are a hard-working man!
I have uploaded three pics to my album. Two are close ups of the full octave mechanism as requested. The third is of a domed soldered tone hole.

I got a few pics from my contact in Denmark. His horn is exactly like mine (with a different engraving on the bell). WIll try to figure out this Tale of Two Horns. His serial number is immediately after mine.

THanks for all the helpful suggestions and I hope you can throw some additional light on this horn when you get a chance.
 
Kewl. Thanks.

Here's a new gallery for y'all. It's a rather uncommon Kohlert Winnenden "Star." It's, quite literally, the only one I've seen.

Comment, quickly:

I've mentioned on my old website that Kohlert used "designations" for their horns to refer to a finish choice and/or a horn that had extra stuff, like extra keywork or a microtuner. The most obvious one is "Popular." There were others, and "Star" appears to be one of them. As an example, Helen's got a pre-WWII horn in her pic gallery that's clearly labeled "Star."

The "designations" I'm currently aware of are "Popular," "Regent," "Star," and "de Luxe." I also mention that "Regent" may have morphed into an actual model name, sometime after WWII. YMMV. For kicks, check out this s/n 29xxx Winnenden Regent.

Anyhow, the Winnenden Star obviously has the exact same G# cluster as your horn and it also obviously has beveled ("domed") tone holes. Your horn also has the same shape chromatic F# key and pretty darn close low Eb and C. That kinda seals it for me: it's definitely a Kohlert Winnenden. It's early enough so you could call it "transitional." Hey, it's right after WWII and Kohlert probably recycled some parts. That'd explain your G# cluster.

Take a quick look at a 1939ish Martin Centennial's octave key. It's amazingly close to the horn you have. Hey, if you were only looking at parts of your horn and included the engraving, I'd want to call your horn 100% a Martin.

Oh. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to look at a couple Keilwerth models. One's pretty new to me, the King Lus. There were at least two versions of this horn, one with crazy, loopy keyguards and one without. I wanted to see if the loopy one matched your horn even slightly. Nope.

The other Keilwerth I wanted to look at was the one that I've grouped as the "New King II." They're from the late 1940s and also have the beveled or "domed" tone holes, but they don't look much like your horn, otherwise.

============

I think there's a possibility that Kohlert actually did stencil a model for Martin, but I doubt it. Primarily because I haven't seen another. The engraving is possibly closest to a Martin Handcraft Standard or Handcraft Imperial, but it's still rather unique. I think it's more probable that Kohlert and Martin did a little switcheroo, like I mention above with Conn and Evette-Schaeffer, or Kohlert and/or another third party engraved the horn like that to try to get it to sell in Germany/Czech. One could even make the argument that there could have been some US armed forces still on the ground and the seller wanted to take advantage of that. If you wanna go WMG, you could argue that someone slapped a Martin bell on a Kohlert body.

---------------

Oh. Admin time. I'll split this off onto its own thread in a few days. It definitely deserves that.
 
Kohlert-Winnenden 7XXX- Kohlert despite Martin engraving

Pete,
Thanks! Great gallery on the Kohlert "Star". It supports your conclusion that this my horn might be a previously uncatalogued Kohlert Winnenden (transitional).

The "Martin" engraving remains a mystery. Switcheroo of the bell seems unlike given the overall integrity and consistency in feel of the horn (but you never know). More likely is the idea that an enterprising former owner of the horn would engrave it "a la Martin" to improve the horn's allure in post WWII era. I hope to get photos of the engraving in the horn with the immediately subsequent sn. to add an additional element to the speculative/investigative effort.
 
I'll look forward to seeing them!

I'll split this thread off in a moment and leave a linky.

EDIT: Done.
 
Fun with research! This is also not a Martin. (Nor was it made in Paris.) It's an Amati.

Now, there are actually a few French companies with "Martin" in their name (Martin Busine and Robert Martin come to mind).
 
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