About

Hello and welcome to Ian’s Pianola restoration website.

This is the story of how Ian bought a non-working “spares or repairs” pianola off of eBay for £5, eventually got it home, cleared some space in the garage and spent many days restoring it to fully working condition.

The pianola is an Ajello & Sons (makers to the kings of Italy) model and is over 100 years old.  It takes 65-note rolls, which have not been made since the around the time of WW1; hence the music collection comprises either classical, music hall or wartime melodies.

We had no experience of pianolas, so this was a research project as well as a repair and restoration project.  Original materials were not necessarily used – if the makers had had plastic tubing for the inner workings they would undoubtedly have used it, so we felt no qualms there.

The pianola is now repaired, partially restored and in full working order, and Ian is watching other ebay sales with an eye on his next project.