The "M roll", published by J.P. Seeburg Piano Co. or Automatic Music
Roll Company, is one of several early designations for the MSR roll
used by Seeburg photoplayers, a variation on the H orchestrion roll.
Over the years, Seeburg (and later its subsidiary, the Automatic
Music Roll Co.) used many different designations for these rolls.
The following includes details on most of these designations.

In August, 1913, when Seeburg first advertised the new style H
orchestrion, the special new rolls made for it were called SSS rolls,
with a paper width of 15-1/4 inch and a hole spacing of 6 per inch.
These almost always have the Seeburg company name and are numbered
between 1 and about 100.  Sometime around roll 100, the designation
was changed from SSS to H.

In 1914, when Seeburg added several models of photoplayers to their
line, they used rolls that were mainly the same as H rolls, but with
four different holes: controls for bass pipes "on" and "off," added
outside the normal 88 holes of the H roll, and "swell shutters closed"
and "open" in place of shutoff and mandolin, respectively.  (Since
photoplayers weren't coin operated, the rolls didn't need a shutoff
hole after each tune, and since they were used in theatres, albeit
small ones, the mandolin attachment control was sacrificed because the
mandolin made the piano too soft to be heard all the way to the back
of the room.)  The earliest photoplayer rolls, numbered from about 100
through 112, bore roll numbers in the regular H numbering series but
with the wording "Special for Photoplayer."

In January 1915, Seeburg began using several different prefixes for
this numbering series: H rolls were for style H orchestrions, M rolls
were for smaller photoplayers, and R for the largest photoplayers.  The
January 1915 roll bulletin includes six M rolls, six R rolls and three
H rolls, all in the same series.  In February, the designations were
changed to J&H for orchestrion rolls (reflecting the introduction of
the style J orchestrion) and M&S for photoplayer rolls.  The March
bulletin includes six J&H rolls, ten M&S rolls and four R rolls.  For
the rest of 1915, each roll had one of these designations except for
one last M roll: M-175.

In December 1915, the designation for most photoplayer rolls was
changed to MS&R.

The January 1916 catalog has the name "Automatic Music Roll Company
(Successor to the Roll Dept. of the J.P. Seeburg Piano Co.)"  At the
same time, the J&H designation was dropped.  From then on, all rolls
for styles J and H orchestrions were simply called H rolls.  In May
1916, the MS&R name was changed to MSR.  Thereafter, only a few R rolls
were issued, sometimes with the subheading "Vox Humana Roll; for R & V
only."  Certain MSR rolls were called "MSR Orchestrion," and others
were called "Orchestrated MSR" rolls.  These had drum perforations,
which were absent in regular MSR organ rolls.

Adding to the complexity, the Marquette Piano Company (of which J.P.
Seeburg had been an original incorporator before opening the J.P.
Seeburg Piano Co.) called its orchestrion rolls "M" rolls, and its
large photoplayer rolls "S" rolls, all through the years of production.
Because of their different widths and hole spacings, there is no
problem confusing Marquette M rolls (11-1/4", 9 per inch) with Seeburg
M rolls (15-1/4", 6 per inch) nor Marquette S rolls (15-1/4", 9 per
inch) with Seeburg S rolls (11-1/4", 6 per inch).

Art Reblitz