The Vincent Bach Corporation began when Vincent purchased a $300 foot-operated lathe and began producing mouthpieces in the back of the Selmer music store in New York. Vincent Bach Corporation New York Period
While Bach was on tour in Pittsburgh in 1918, a repairman destroyed his mouthpiece, and Bach began experimenting with mouthpiece repair and fabrication.
He resumed his career as a performer, interrupted by another term of compulsory military service, this time in the US military as a musician. At the outbreak of World War I, he was in England and was forced to flee to the United States in order to escape detention as an enemy alien. When he left the military the second time, Vincent decided to defy his family's wishes and pursued a career as a solo cornetist touring Europe. After he graduated from Maschinenbauschule (Mechanical Engineering School, Ansbach) with an engineering degree, he entered into compulsory military service in the Imperial Navy, worked as an elevator operator, and then was re- conscripted during which time he served as a military musician in the Austrian Marine Band. By age 12 he had concentrated on the trumpet. As a child he received training on violin, trumpet and bugle. Vinzenz Schrottenbach (sometimes misspelled 'Vincenz Schrotenbach') was born in Baden near Vienna in 1890.
