In the early years, Seeburg used several different brands of pianos
made by other companies, and in later years the firm made its own
pianos, resulting in six different groups of serial numbers.  You can
find details at the Mechanical Music Press website.

Please go to http://www.mechanicalmusicpress.com and scroll down in the
left column to the heading "Mechanical Music Topics."  Click on "See-
burg/Western Electric Research Project."  There, under "Seeburg His-
tory," click on "Serial Numbers & Dates" and "Chronology of Features."

If an MMD reader has serial numbers for any Chicago-made coin pianos
and orchestrions that you haven't already sent me, please do so at your
earliest convenience.  The stack number in a Seeburg or Cremona is also
important.

I've been collecting data since the early 1960s and finally had the
opportunity to read through almost the entire runs of "Music Trade
Review" and "The Presto" from that era, donated to the Musical Box So-
ciety International (MBSI) by Q. David Bowers a few years ago.  These
trade magazines provided many interesting photographs and details on
the history of Seeburg, Operators Piano Co. (Coinola), Marquette Piano
Co. (Cremona), Western Electric and Nelson-Wiggen.  The culmination of
my research, currently filling two file cabinet drawers, will be a ser-
ies of detailed articles to be published in the MBSI journal, "Mechani-
cal Music."  Please stay tuned.

Art Reblitz