Does anyone know what these ribbon engravings mean? I've seen it now on several different instruments, but I have not found any official mention of it either in the Conn catalogs or in the Conn loyalist. As far as I have seen it is only on instruments from the director line, and in the case of the 18H owned by a friend of mine, it could mean it has a smaller bell. Ordinarily the 18H should have a 7 1/2" bell, but his has a 7 1/4" bell. I have seen it on director trombones and cornets, on both coprion and yellow brass bells

Here is the link to the photos because this is my first post, and I can't attach them

<LINK_TEXT text="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing">https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-fJQ0RIz-_pQeuPFrwR4I3qERc9J6vID?usp=sharing</LINK_TEXT>

Hmm, it looks like the motif begins under that big star above the name engraving, and the bottom is that ribbon tied in a bow at the bottom with three stars around it. Maybe they decided later to simplify the engraving by removing the lower portion under the logo.

I wouldn't think that engraving design would really be able to specify anything, given that it appears on such a wide variety of instruments.

[quote="tbonesullivan"]Hmm, it looks like the motif begins under that big star above the name engraving, and the bottom is that ribbon tied in a bow at the bottom with three stars around it. Maybe they decided later to simply the engraving by removing the lower portion under the logo.

I wouldn't think that engraving design would really be able to specify anything, given that it appears on such a wide variety of instruments.[/quote]
It appears you are right, all of the ones I have seen have been from 1955 and 1956, although I haven't found any 1954 models to check if they have them. All examples I've seen of 1957 and later years do not have it. I also found that the catalogs from 1955 and 1957 show the engraving, although it is the same drawing in both, so they likely just hadn't updated the drawing to no longer show it.