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A sad day...

https://www.cleveland19.com/2026/01/07/ ... f6JROdUKUA

Ugh.

The bean counters lost the mandrels to some of the more storied instruments made there. Twaddling dofusses….

I feel terrible for those workers.

Good time for h.n.white to buy the rights for the king brand and reopen thier factory with those workers...... wishful thinking..

I dont like how conn selmer owns the rights to conn, holton, king, and what else. To me it seems like they white washed everything and stripped out the soul that made the brands unique. It's a sign of the times. I guess I'm too old fashioned.

EASTLAKE, Ohio (WOIO) - A manufacturing plant in Eastlake will reportedly shut down by summer, leaving over a hundred workers without jobs.

UAW International Representative Mike Kalman confirmed Conn Selmer told its 150 employees on Wednesday morning it will shut down its Eastlake manufacturing plant by June 30.

Conn Selmer describes itself as “the largest U.S. manufacturer of band and orchestral instruments, with 12 renowned brands.”

The Eastlake plant is located at 34199 Curtis Blvd.

Conn Selmer also has production facilities in Elkhart, Ind. and Monroe, N.C.

You’re welcome.

.

The history of US manufacturing from the beginning had been all about reducing the amount of labor to make something. Most people don't realize that the US is still a manufacturing powerhouse we just do it with far fewer people. That's what the assembly line was all about... increasing output per worker.

By the most common cross-country metric for “manufacturing output” (manufacturing value added), the U.S. is #2 in the world, behind China. A 2025 House committee memo citing NIST’s Annual Report on the U.S. Manufacturing Economy summarizes 2022 levels as China at $5.1T vs. U.S. at $2.6T in manufacturing value added.

When people hear about US manufacturing resurgence... they envision jobs coming along with that.. and the reality is the opposite. All of the effort of being put towards developing fully automated "lights out factories" that run 24-7 with no people. I take students to Carpenter Steel which has the largest steel continuous caster in the world and they always ask "Where are the people".... What was 100 people physically doing things in the 1960s is now one guy with a bunch of computers and a joystick.

It might sound cynical but unless someone figures out how to have robots make instruments the only US made brass left with be boutique really high end stuff.. with Chinese valvesets.

The Cyborg speaks. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. You will be eliminated if you protest.

If you recall some of my posts over the past few years, I saw it coming. The stuff coming out of there hasn't been very good.

crap. Just what we need, ANOTHER Chinese horn builder....

@tofu
That Schwinn story sounds a lot like what I’ve read about Sears having the opportunity to change their very popular catalog into a digital business and do what Amazon eventually became. It was colossally mismanaged.
At one time, they were the largest retailer in the world, but a lot of asinine decisions by tone-deaf bureaucrats sitting in an office somewhere in the Sears Tower, not having a clue how their company ran because they never left their offices to see, doomed them.
(One decision among many, which they, of course, obscenely mismanaged to start with, since their catalog was their most popular entity, being to scrap said very-popular catalog and focus on in-store sales in competition with the rising Walmart.)

It reminds me of what I saw in the pro tennis world, in that the top rising players were coached *not* to try to get everything as good as everybody else but to focus on their already-highest level skills and make them more high level, because that was what was going to win matches, not trying to be like everybody else. Sears trying to be Walmart is an example of what happens when you don't do that.

The story also said,

Conn Selmer sent 19 News a statement after our story aired, saying they haven’t made a final decision yet.
…
The announcement was made on the first day of contract negotiations between the UAW and Conn Selmer, Kalman stated.

So maybe some of it is posturing by Conn Selmer.

I thought maybe I had an (emotional) dog in this fight, but both my trombones say “Elkhart”.

I found another article with more specifics on the China manufacturing plan:

Today, Conn Selmer announced a tentative decision to close its Eastlake, Ohio manufacturing plant on or about June 30, 2026. This proposed action is subject to negotiation with the union representing Conn Selmer’s hourly employees at its Eastlake plant. If this tentative decision is finalized, the company plans to transfer professional French horn production to its Elkhart, Indiana brass factory and transition tuba, sousaphone, and student/intermediate French horn production offshore.

Source: https://fox8.com/news/eastlake-manufact ... -150-jobs/

Are 88Hs still made?

If so, are they made at the Elkhart Bach factory?

jtm wrote: Thu Jan 08, 2026 12:28 pm The story also said,

Conn Selmer sent 19 News a statement after our story aired, saying they haven’t made a final decision yet.
…
The announcement was made on the first day of contract negotiations between the UAW and Conn Selmer, Kalman stated.

So maybe some of it is posturing by Conn Selmer.

Its posturing by the union(s) they made the announcement of "the planned move"

arpthark wrote: Thu Jan 08, 2026 2:50 pm Are 88Hs still made?

If so, are they made at the Elkhart Bach factory?

I personally only believe that I know that (these days) all of the playing slide tubes for trombones are drawn in Elkhart.
I do not know (ie. have not heard from any reasonably reliable sources) whether the non-Bach bell sections are made in Elkhart, but (yes?) it seems to make sense that this could be a possibility.

Of course, it could also be a possibility that all of the bells are spun in Elkhart, but that Eastlake has been producing a good bit of the hardware..

bloke "The farther down this response was typed, the more guessing and supposition occurred.")

This brings up an ongoing dread that I have been trying to digest. As the factories make everything with robots and AI replaces people in the workforce, what are we going to do with everyone?

People need to work.

Also, how do I prepare my children and students for a world where they might not be needed?

This stuff keeps me up at night, at least till I run through a couple of Tuba Concerto second movements to calm my soul down.