By the way -- before anyone rushes out to put beveled glass in their
Nelson-Wiggen as reported in the MMD a couple of days ago -- Nelson-Wiggen
was a late entry into the coin-operated piano business.  Beveled glass was
found in early-made coin-operated pianos and was most likely discontinued
around 1910.  Nelson-Wiggen in their models without art glass used plain
plate glass with a decal on the inside of the glass.

The Nelson-Wiggen pianos are gaining popularity with collectors now
because they are very musical for an American coin operated piano with a
distinctive sound all their own.  One of my favorite patent numbers is
good old 1136190.  This patent was granted April 20, 1915 to Peder Wiggen
and Oscar Nelson of Chicago, Illinois.  The patent covers a lock and
cancel unit, drum mechanism, expression system, and more.  The drawings
are good.  This patent number was discovered on an early jukebox made by
the Seeburg Corp.  One look at the drawings and you can clearly see that
it is the Seeburg "G" drum shelf.

If you will notice, Nelson-Wiggen instruments made in the 20's have most
all components made of wood such as the spool box.  They were real wood
workers and not metal workers.  They started producing instruments about
the time that Seeburg introduced the Western Electric pianos.  Western
Electrics have the same serial numbers as do their Seeburg counterparts.
There are many similarities between Seeburg and Western Electrics such as
the stack.  The pump, rewind valves, and valves for coin trip, sustain,
etc. are close to Cremona.

The corporate officers of Western Electric were the same men that ran the
Marquette piano company who made Cremona.  They were Axel Larson, Byron
Waters and Russell Wilcox in 1924.  It must have been a small group that
ran the coin piano business in Chicago.  Mr. Seeburg got his start at
the Marquette piano company.

Sometime before 1920 Mr. Seeburg had sold the Seeburg Company.  It was
during this time that many of the different Seeburg art glass changes
were made, such as the dancing girl glass found on some Seeburg K's and
the unusual glass found in some Seeburg "G" models.  Mr. Seeburg during
this time started the Marshall and Marshall piano factory.

I had an old ad from The Music Trades about the Marshall piano company
that gave us this little tidbit of information.  Mr. Seeburg then bought
back the Seeburg piano company probably in 1920.  It was at this time we
believe that the pianos were in fact made by Seeburg and began with
serial number 55,000.  Since we know that Seeburg kept track of their
serial numbers it was not too long into this numbering sequence that they
realized the pianos made for them by Haddorf in 1913 also had 55,000
serial numbers so they placed a 1 in front of the number hence the
155,000 series.

There have been several examples of the tiny "L" model found with the
55,000 series numbers which would have dated them in the 1913 period.
Then there was a huge gap before any more "L" models would have been
produced.  These 55,000 numbered "L" models all have 1920's components.
This would have also placed them before the Phono-Grand model introduced
around 1918.  We have not yet located any Seeburgs with numbers between
100,000 and 155,000. The last Seeburg pianos produced are numbered in
the 169,000  range and are  mortuary organs.

This is a tiny bit of the information that has been gathered so far in
the research of Seeburg coin pianos.  I would really like to hear from
any of you that can provide detailed information about your coin pianos.
So far we have examined close to three hundred Seeburg pianos and
gathered information on the location of close to one hundred model "G's"
know to exist.

We also believe there are about one hundred Seeburg "H" models still out
there.  Bowers had compiled a list of "H" models once about 20 years ago
with 80 Seeburg "H" models.  During my quest for a Seeburg "G" in 1981
I found collectors with 60 known "G" models and did not even touch the
western part of the United States.  I was amazed to find that there were
still some in public places.  There was even one in the back of a
hardware store in the Chicago area.  To me that is a lot of Seeburgs.
In our serial number search we hardly touched the surface of all known
Seeburgs.

If we can get your help perhaps some of the mysteries concerning this
great force can be found.  I would like photocopies of any old ads,
literature or whatever you have.  It may not look like it is significant
to you but please pass it along to me.   Thanks

Don Teach, 1610 E. Bert Kouns, Shreveport, LA  71105¶
fax: 318-797-4572¶
e-mail: dat-smc@juno.com

 [ Don, I heard once that Western Electric was established secretly by
 [ the owners of Seeburg in order to give some competition to the Seeburg
 [ salesmen and route operators.  Is there any truth in this?  -- Robbie