Vintage 1935 Conn 80A "New Wonder" Cornet in Silver Plate with Quick Change Tuning!

This Conn 80A from 1935 is the perfect horn for the trad jazz enthusiast! It's a fairly mouthpiece sensitive design that will pair well with a variety of our ACB short shank cornet mouthpieces. This horn has the stop rod for a quick change to A cornet, as well as the opera glass micro tuner. Valve action is good with heavier oil, and playability is quite good despite some compression loss. The horn measures at a 2 overall on the magnehelic. There some signs of lacquer wear inside the bell and on various spots throughout the horn. There is also a dent on the bell near the valve block. See pictures for more details. The horn is a bargain and IMO I think everyone should have an 80A in their collections:

Check out a clip of Trent playing an 80A (not this one for sale) below:

Conn Loyalist says

Notice the micro-tuning mechanism, just forward of the first valve. Also notice the "mechanism" attached to the first and third slides. This automatically adjusts all slides when the main tuning slide is pulled out to A. The 80A started out life as the "New Wonder", then the "Victor New Wonder" and finally simply as "Victor". If you compare the "New Wonder" specifications of 1914 with the "Victor" specifications of 1957 you will notice the Victor gained 7 ounces in weight compared to 1914. I don't know when that weight was added. The 80A New Wonder has a #2½ bore (0.484"). Also, this model 80A had top spring valves with adjustable spring strength, while the later version had bottom spring valves. A minor detail is the second slide which on this model is at a right angle to the body of the instrument, but on the later version angles back towards the player. Read the booklet Conn included with these instruments, entitled What you should know about this instrument for more on the "mechansim", the micro-tuning mechanism (a.k.a. opera glass tuning slide) and the adjustable spring strength. Production started no later than 1914, and possibly earlier. The 80A with mechanism was discontinued sometime around 1939.

I have learned that the third slide without the finger ring to adjust the pitch of a low D and C# is slightly longer than it is on modern instruments. On modern instruments the low Eb is in tune, but the low D and C# are quite sharp. On these older cornets with the longer third slide no finger ring the Eb is a bit flat and the D and C# are slightly sharp, but not as sharp as they are on later instruments. It was thought that the flat Eb and slightly sharp D and C# were within the abilities of the player to lip into tune.

A member of the Trumpet Herald Forum with experience on the 80A has this to say about using the 80A with various style mouthpieces: "The 80-A's are very mouthpiece sensitive, in that the tonal characteristics change greatly with the mouthpiece choice. If you use a deep cup, such as a Wick or one of the various vintage cornet cups, it gets a very rich, velvety sound to the tone, but loses projection. Put in a fairly deep bowl cup, and the projection gets better, but tone brightens a bit. Put in a Bach C cup of your choice, and you can hang with the trumpets for brightness. Go to a shallow cup and tight backbore, and you can get a laser beam sound."

As far as I can tell at this point, all Conn cornets built before 1958 take a short shank cornet mouthpiece as opposed to the 2¾" "Bach-style" long shank cornet mouthpiece. The long shank cornet mouthpieces won't properly fit a pre-1958 Conn cornet and won't give the proper intonation or playing characteristics of a short shank cornet mouthpiece. All of Conn's "Connstellation" cornet mouthpieces are long shank mouthpieces. The "Improved Precision" Conn mouthpieces such as the Conn 4 are long shank if there is a "ridge" halfway down the shank, and short shank if there is no ridge (in which case it is a "Precision" mouthpiece). All Conn cornet mouthpieces built before the "Improved Precision" series (ridge), such as the "Precision" series (no ridge) are short shank mouthpieces.

No case or mouthpiece included.

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Also note weight indicated in the ad is shipping weight not actual weight of instrument.