The Bach is the default answer to "what should I buy." This episode asks what that recommendation means now that the plant making it is gone.

• The Elkhart, Indiana factory that built the professional Bach line for generations closed in 2016, and Stradivarius production moved to China under Conn-Selmer. The brand, the model numbers, and the prices barely changed - what changed was where each joint got soldered and who was watching.
• For decades the "Made in USA" stamp on a pro Bach was genuinely true, while the student and intermediate TR line had long been assembled from parts made elsewhere - sometimes by the same Chinese OEM factory that now makes the pro horns. That is why 2016 mattered: for the first time, the pro line itself left Elkhart.
• The floor problem is the whole argument. A small shop of lifelong brass workers ...