F. E. Olds

F. E. Olds was a manufacturer of musical instruments founded by Frank Ellsworth (F.E.) Olds in Los Angeles, California in the early 1900s. The company made brass instruments, especially trombones, cornets, and trumpets.

By the late 1960s or early 1970s, although still producing some professional level instruments, the company had become better known for mass-produced student instruments. Construction quality declined as production quotas were emphasized. That plus competition from other companies and cutbacks in school music budgets led to the firm going out of business in 1979. The Olds and Reynolds names (Olds merged with F.A. Reynolds in 1964) have since been bought and revived by a company based in New Jersey.

Frank Ellsworth (F.E.) Olds was born in Medina, New York in 1861. He was named for the Civil War hero Frank Ellsworth of the Ellsworth Zouaves. While a child his family moved to Toledo, Ohio. After finishing high school, F.E. went to Elkhart, Indiana to work for C.G. Conn and learned the brass instrument making business. In 1885, he moved to Los Angeles, California. An amateur trombone player and entrepreneur, he first set up a shop to build bicycles, which was the only one in Los Angeles at the time. By 1886, he had established the first electroplating shop in Southern California, doing silver plating with H. T. Hazard, establishing the Los Angeles Tool Works by 1887. 1886 also marked the arrival in Los Angeles of F.E.'s future bride, Helen Daisy Birdsall. In 1901, he was a machinist with the Locomobile Company of the Pacific, branching out from bicycles to automobiles.

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