Originally Posted by s.coomer

Beautiful instrument, wonder how it plays.

Originally Posted by Zig Kanstul

There were only two trumpet bell mandrels. The Opera (large bore) and all the others. Although trumpet bells could be made of different materials their shape were all the same.

The one exception to this was the “Custom Class” line. It had 3 different mandrels but only accounted for a small percentage of the Olds production.

For all practice purposes, there was only 1 bell mandrel Ambassador thru Mendez.

Almost all Olds trumpet bells were 2 piece. Again only the Custom Class had 1 piece. Olds did experiment with explosive forming (one piece bell from heavy wall tubing), but that was only for a short time. Therefore, for all intents and purposes Olds trumpet bells were 2 piece.

The reason you cannot see the radial seam is that the technique used in brazing the seam made it very thin and the color match of the brazing wire was very good.

Zig Kanstul

Originally Posted by talcito

That Ebay seller(John Cyfers) does fantastic plating work. He has done two horns for me and his work is the best.....also very, very, reasonable. About $175-$200 for silver w/gold highlights

Originally Posted by ChopsGone

There have been several threads recently (here or TH?) on the similarities between the Ambassador and the Mendez models. Yes, it was a student horn, but to put it in the class with a Bundy is to ignore the facts. The Olds build quality, and the valve sets especially, set the Ambassador apart from the rest of the student horns, and led to so many of them being cannibalized to become custom horns. The Ambassador was a phenomenally successful line, and the survival of so many of them today is due to their having been built well and to last. I was around when the line was introduced, and they acquired their good reputation quickly and on merit. That's no urban legend.