Our active research is aimed at antique British pianos, so although we attempt to help with other enquiries, and try never to throw away any kind of piano information, we do not normally deal with...

The PianoGen service has no official funding, and its survival depends on DONATIONS - large or small - but in this age of computers and instant access, there are still very few methods of making international payments for small budgets. UK sterling cheques must be made payable to BILL KIBBY. Otherwise, you can simply mail Bill some bills in your local currency, or use PAYPAL.

Original ARCHIVES are simply not available to trace the origin of most individual pianos, and unless your piano maker is one of the very few, we can only base reports on what we can find out from the instrument itself.

The published dates of serial NUMBERS are often wrong or misleading, and it is often possible to find more reliable DATEMARKS inside a piano.

Many people feel frustrated if their piano has no name on the front, or is one of the vast majority which are not listed anywhere on the internet, but many PIANO NAMES are meaningless anyway.

We can compile a REPORT on design and approximate age, for twenty pounds, and this may assist you in obtaining a VALUATION from auction houses, etc., but it is impossible for us to guess the value without inspection by a tuner because if, for example, the tuning pins are loose, the repair may cost more than the value of the piano.

Sadly, although I am fascinated by Victorian pianos, they rarely fetch as much as ninety pounds at auctions in the U.K., unless they have been professionally restored, indeed many fetch less than twenty pounds.

Keeping an old piano in direct sunlight, or within five feet of a heater, will almost certainly cause serious, permanent, irreparable DAMAGE.

We have no full-time staff to answer telephone enquiries on 01493 658732, and it is not usually possible to answer an enquiry fully and instantly on the phone.

Also, our budget does not allow us to call everybody back, so EMAILS are probably the best way to contact us. Please do not use the heading "PIANO" for emails or photos, we get hundreds of these, use the piano's name, or a proper subject heading.

We offer a wide range of BOOKLETS on historical and practical subjects, but these are often made up to order from sections of our files rather than off-the-peg editions, so it can sometimes take up to five weeks to review the information before printing.

Since the seventies, we have received many GENEALOGY enquiries from descendants of pianoforte makers but unless their ancestors were in business in their own name, we often cannot find information by active research, although we probably have more chance than anyone else of some useful snippets of information turning up here at random.