In my opinion, the primary reason nearly all Nicoles, Bremonds,
Ducommun Girod, etc. machines sound like their sister instruments is
because their combs were made in huge batches by the same company.
In thousands of cases this was Kaarer.

I believe that in spite of the relatively crude working conditions, and
lack of modern tooling and electricity, these fellows actually were
amazingly advanced in their knowledge and practice of the ancient art
of metallurgy.  I have found too that as a general rule, the instruments
with brass bed plates sound better than most of the later period pieces
which used cast iron.  Don't know exactly why this is, possibly because
brass is more dense?  In any case, I will be interested to read others'
comments on this.

Regarding the techniques for marking the cylinders, I have seen a
custom made drilling machine which produced two identical cylinders at
a time, and worked in conjunction with a dividing head to precisely
index the positions for each note on the blank brass cylinder.  You can
see a couple photos of this machine in the more recent of Henry
Bullied's books.  Seems to my recollection it was on display in the
CIMA museum that used to be Paillards factory.  I am pretty sure most
cylinders from the smaller makers were marked by first wrapping a
notated paper around the cylinder, pricking through this, and then
doing the actual drilling and insuring more precise positioning with
the use of a dividing lathe.

Their power source would have been foot treadle, or in a few cases
water powered wheels with those overhead belt setups.  Isn't it a
terrible loss to us all that there apparently are no surviving photos,
shop records, or other documentation to clearly show us how they did
this?

How sad that Wendy's Hamburgers razed the site of Nicole Freres
original workshops in Geneve to build an American hamburger joint only
a few years ago!  Wouldn't you and I have given most anything to have
had a chance to rummage through there before it was all demolished.
Can you imagine having the interest we now have and going back forty or
fifty years to wander through the remnants of B.A. Bremond's or Mermod
Freres' workshops?

It has always been a curiosity to me that the Swiss craftsmen who made
these wonderful machines seemed so uninterested in leaving any clues or
even dating or signing the products of so many of their lifes work.
One hopes for miracles and perhaps yet to be uncovered somewhere are
the shop ledgers or similarly fascinating records from one or other of
those companies.  What a treasure that would be for us all!

Reg Smith - Perfect Pitch Restorations
Precision Repair of Antique Music Boxes
Athens, Georgia, USA
Phone: (706) 543-1920