I find it hard to believe that Besson would leave so little room in the design. This means that the spring bases are hitting bottom just as the alignment is correct. This plays well but I found that to get the valves aligned correctly, there is so little felt on the inside that the valves all clunk when they come to the top of their motion. I don't know what the "4" stands for but the bore is about 0.44" so quite small. The engraving covers every part of this including the little slide on the key change valve. You can see some of the deterioration of the plating on the inside of the bell showing as small dark spots but what an engraving. The amazing engraving includes a bird, American flag, US shield, and even a portrait of Abraham Lincoln! There are a number of tiny dots where the plating is deteriorating but overall this looks good. There is some wear through the plating on the 1st valve so I could tell this was well used in the past.Īfter a bath in silver cleaner and some light hand polishing this really came out great and is gold plated. A silver plated instrument would be black all over but this looked gold except for the engraving. The only problems with it were a crushed 2nd valve slide with missing knob, the missing key change lever, and a bell that had been hit from the side as evidenced by the cross brace in front of the valves having been pushed into the bell.
![besson and co prototype class a besson and co prototype class a](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/-ywAAOSw799dfvjA/s-l300.jpg)
It has a key change valve for Bb to A but the original lever is missing so for now I keep it at Bb. It is labeled Class A Prototype New Creation and was sold, like all Besson instruments, through Carl Fischer of New York.
#BESSON AND CO PROTOTYPE CLASS A SERIAL NUMBER#
The serial number is 105184 which dates this to about 1920. I bought it off the internet when it was very badly tarnished but I could tell that the engraving was special and I suspected from the color that this was gold plated. Here is an incredibly engraved Trumpet made by Besson & Co.