So you wanna date your Benge?
... doesn't that sound a little kinky?
It's a funny thing about trumpet manufacturers, they don't take time to record every little design change and detail, because they're too busy making horns. At the Benge shop in Burbank, Elden and his buddies just grabbed various components and put them together to make each individual player happy.
The easy way
Look at the serial number stamped on the left side of the second valve casing. If it's 10,000 or higher, and still a 5-digit number, go to this page to date your Los Angeles Benge, made at the Anaheim plant under the watchful eye of Zig Kanstul.
The not so easy way
I've interviewed at least half a dozen former employees of the Benge Company, including Zig Kanstul himself, who started working for Benge in 1968. There are several assumptions in this list: the Chicago Benges end somewhere around #3681 (special thanks to John Creed for this recent update!) [editor's note: take a look at the Data Base: the earliest Burbank reported so far is #3652; the last Chicago 322x, but there are a couple of years unaccounted for still], the Los Angeles Benges begin around #8300, around 1968 - the Benge Company was turning out about eight horns per week (before that, between 4 and 5). Therefore the assumption is that there are about 4,300 Burbank Benges loose on the planet. The problem is that there is really no clean cut-off between eras.
When Elden pulled up stakes and moved to Burbank in 1951-52, he didn't throw all the bells, ballusters, valve clusters, leadpipes and pistons away, he brought them with him. So, the early Burbank Benges were made almost entirely of Chicago parts, including the bells. As they used up bells, someone got the bright idea of making a Burbank bell stamp with the address of the garage (where they made them) on it. This clearly occurred before 1956, but no one I've spoken to knows just when.
Other fuzzy dates relate to just exactly how long the Los Angeles Benges were built at the shop in downtown LA. The consensus is that it was less than a year. Given the output of the shop at that time (estimated eight horns per week), there were fewer than 400 trumpets manufactured in the City of Los Angeles. It's a little ironic that these not-so-sought-after horns are in reality, the rarest Benges.
So, assuming a shop output of eight instruments per week in 1971, the only year Benge operated in Los Angeles, and a SN of 8300, we can figure that SN 8700 to 10000 covers the year 1972, the first year of operation in Anaheim. Then counting backward to about 1968, when Kanstul joined Benge, and upped production from 4-5 horns to eight per week, we can date the later Burbanks all the way back to the early fifties.
Remember these dates are approximate.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
*Editor's Note: Patrick's original list has 1966 twice, once for 6700 -6900 and for 6900 to 7120. As I said, there are anomalies. We are laboring to improve it by assembling an early Benge Data Base. If you have a Benge horn with a serial number under 10000, and you know when it was purchased new by the original owner or know when it was manufactured, please let me know the year, date, model, and location as stated on the bell.
At this point, with more than 150 data points (as of September 2007), the Data Base is far more accurate than Pat's chart above. Go there to get the best information.
© 2001-2007 by James F.
Donaldson
All rights reserved