THE "AUTOPIANO", KASTNER & CO LTD , BROADWOOD

[Bill Kibby]

Although there are lots of words in your enquiry, they don't tell me anything about your piano, although I presume by the length that it is a grand. 7 octaves (85 notes) was common over a very long period. In 1930, their grands numbers began with #56,028. In 1932, all Broadwood upright and grand pianos were combined in a single sequence, starting at #250,000. I'm not sure where that puts the imprint 228723! Shorter numbers don't help us. There was no one, single moment when legs changed like that, there were different models with different legs. Broadwoods' archives may be able to date it for a fee, but I doubt if they can tell you what it looked like. It is difficult to discuss what it should look like, when we don't even know what it looks like now!

[Bill Kibby]

There are a growing number of websites offering apparently simple reference to dates of serial numbers. Their lists are mainly quoted from books. (Remember them?) These are, in turn, quoting from other books, which contain huge amounts of wrong or misleading information. See

http://www.uk-piano.org/piano-gen/piano ... mbers.html

In this particular instance, Brodwood pianos are assumed to run in just one sequence, this is not the case.