The King Liberty, an Exciting Piece of HistoryA Vintage Treasure.  Fairly recently I had the chance to by this "horn of my dreams."  At last I had found a prime example of a mid-fifties King Liberty with the gorgeous hand-engraving on the bell and the extra tuning slide that one moves with the famous X-Brace.  With the second slide extended, the trumpet is converted from Bb to the key of A in a flash. I'm an old fellow and simply unable to keep up with the variety of wind instruments I own, so I'll offer this great horn up for sale on eBay.The Players' Favorite. In its day, this King was indeed King of the Heap, and though my trumpet teacher at the time was both a Benge seller (friend of Elden's) and a Conn dealer--and though I too owned each of those good horns--the instrument he preferred to play out "at the Follies , at the Circus, and at the NBC Studios in San Francisco, was his beloved King Liberty.Mechanic's Look-over. Upon its arrival, I took the horn to Denver's oldest Band Instrument shop to have it professionally bathed, to get new springs and felts, and to have the third valve slide loosened up a bit. The horn was otherwise near-perfect: no signs of previous repairs, no re-welds, rust-pimples or signs of dents, and all valves working perfectly.Big Sound!  When I first played the horn, I thought its sound was terrific, lots of resonance and with the Old-Benge-like challenge to a player to give it more and more.  You are just never done blowing down the walls with these.  That had surprised me, as I was always afraid that the extra slide would somewhat attenuate the resonance of the horn.  But that was not the case at all, to my pleasant surprise.  And when the horn had had its bath, and accumulations removed, the sound opened up even another notch--unbelievably.  I was thrilled.Gold, not Brass.  This trumpet has the original lacquer at about 95%, no damage, just the slight wear of  years of quite careful use.  The lacquer is gold, not brass, though somehow, when i got the horn back from its bath, the two smallest slides (second valve slide and only the cap of the first valve) came back with a brassier finish, though no one would likely notice this at first blush.  The store had no explanation for this little transformation, but I feel the need to point out this one flaw.  These slides were gold when I took them in, and they are the originals.Big bands, Lead players.  The horn comes with a brand new $135 hippy bag, and a like-new Bach 10 1/2 C mouthpiece.  The photo of historic ads which we have shown of course depict different, earlier models, but they contain interesting information, nonetheless, and reveal the pride which King took in their Liberty trumpets.  These horns were so common among the big band players, those in the Basie and Ellington bands, in particular.Good old horns in this fine original condition are hard to come by!You're Great.  Thanks for stopping by the listing.  Feel free to shoot me any questions.