Michael Rath Trombones

Michael Rath Trombones

Michael Rath R9DST bass trombone
Industry	Musical instrument manufacturing
Founded	1996
Founder	Michael Rath
Headquarters	Honley, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Area served	North America, South America, Japan, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan
Products	tenor, bass, contrabass, alto trombones and accessories
Number of employees	12
Website	rathtrombones.com

Michael Rath Trombones is a British manufacturer of retail and custom hand-made trombones. Rath offers artist-quality and student instruments in its line of tenor, bass, contrabass and alto trombones. Rath Trombones was founded in 1996 by instrument technician Michael Rath, and is Britain’s only trombone manufacturer. Rath’s 12 craftspeople create as many as 500 trombones per year, exporting instruments through 25 distributors in North and South America, Japan, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan.

Company founder Michael Rath (b. 1963 in Slough, Berkshire, England) studied musical instrument technology at Merton Technical College in South London. He finished at Merton in 1981 and for the next nine years served an apprenticeship with Paxman Musical Instruments, a Covent Garden-based manufacturer of (French) horns. Himself a brass player – he began on tuba at age 11 – Rath opened his own brass instrument shop in West Yorkshire, specializing in repairs and customization. His clientele grew to include professional musicians, particularly trombonists, from throughout Europe.

In 1995, British jazz trombonist Mark Nightingale asked Rath to create a bespoke instrument. Completed in 1996 after nearly two years of prototyping, this tenor instrument became the first Rath trombone.

With tenor trombones in steady production, Michael Rath, along with technicians Andy Hutchinson and Adrian Davison, began development of a full trombone line. Hutchinson crafted bells, Davison the hands slides, and Rath did the remainder himself. Over the next decade the Rath catalog grew to include small-bore jazz trombones, large bore symphonic instruments, bass, contrabass and alto models. Rath instruments grew increasingly popular in Europe, while less known in the U.S. Rath Trombones faced setbacks, including cash-flow problems and the increasing demands of production on what began as a three-person shop. Another blow came in 2006, when respected trombone slide specialist Adrian Davison died at the age of 28 in a motorcycle accident.