Other manufacturers of musical instruments may be older in years than Rudy Mück, but none are more brass-wise and none have rubbed elbows with more top-ranking professionals than he. For Rudy Mück was steeped in the fascinating environment of the brass instrument shop as early as the age of eight, when his father made Rudy an apprentice. Rudy's father, J. R. Mück, had come to America to build instruments for fine concert and theatre musicians, his own father having been a master brass craftsman in Austria. The House of Mück, you see, had been building instruments as far back as 1875. Young Rudy was taught trumpet by his father's customers and at the age of 12, having already spent four years at the apprentice's bench, Rudy was playing in the world-famous B.F. Keith's Band. Manny Klein was only one of the present day stars who played side by side with Rudy. Many years later, Rudy qualified as a craftsman in his father's shop, and together they perfected the Rudy Mück Cushion Rim Mouthpiece, which is today used by 60,000 brass players throughout the world. The Mücks were building brass instruments to order for a loyal clientele, but they hesitated to offer the horns to the general public because they feared mass production methods would affect quality. When, in 1936, J. R. Mück retired to a rural laboratory to devote the rest of his career to the experimental phase of brass instrument manufacture, his son Rudy determined to make the Rudy Mück Trumpet and Cornet available to every musician - but still on a custom-built basis. This explains why Rudy Mück instruments are known as "hard-to-get" horns. The Mück workshop builds every instrument almost leisurely, at a pace consistent with musicians' needs, and thus dealers' shelves are never overloaded. Rudy Mück gears his production so that there are always enough horns to go around among buyers, but never enough to lie around on store shelves, growing stale and stiff-actioned.