In 2009 James Felix, the then organist at All Souls, commissioned a number of reports on the organ and considered a number of options:

• completely refurbishing and restoring the present organ
• building a new organ
• installing a modern digital electronic organ
• restoring the existing organ and adding extra digital stops, creating a ‘hybrid’ instrument

Much of the advice from the various organ builders who were consulted was conflicting.  The cost ranged from a new organ at around £400,000, to the restoration of the existing instrument, at around £45,000.  Advice was sought from Fr Peter Jones and Keith Ainsworth, who are organ advisers to the Archdiocese.  Their view was that the style and history of All Souls Church and its remarkable acoustic, together with the relatively heavy use that the organ incurs, meant that, if at all possible, a good pipe organ should be installed.  Whilst a restoration of the existing organ was the least expensive option, the parish would be left with an instrument that was not worthy of the church, did not meet the needs of the liturgy in the post Vatican II era and was, musically, of very poor quality.

In their opinion, the best option would be to see if  a good organ could be found from a church that had been closed which could then be rebuilt in All Souls as (i) this would rescue an instrument that would otherwise be scrapped and (ii) it should be possible to do it for around the cost of installing a good quality digital electronic organ (which would not have a lifespan anything like that of a good pipe organ).  They considered several instruments – mainly in the UK, but also including instruments in Germany and the Netherlands, where many churches with fine organs are being closed.

Eventually an organ was found that had been built by a firm called Nelson & Co and had been removed from a school hall that was being demolished. Nelsons were founded in the late 19th Century in Durham and built many excellent small organs in the period 1885 to 1935, the vast majority of which are still in regular use.  Although the console was only fit for scrap, and there was no casework, the pipework, windchests and soundboards (the really important parts) all seemed to be of good quality and capable of being fully restored.   In addition, the organ builder who had rescued the organ, Mike Thompson, of M C Thompson Organ Builders Limited, had done a lot of very good quality work for the Archdiocese throughout Staffordshire and the Black Country at a competitive price.  Keith Ainsworth went up to Mike Thompson’s workshop in Burton-on-Trent and examined and tested the pipework from the rescued Nelson organ and both he and Mike carried out a survey of the existing All Souls organ.  In 2010 the parish decided in principle to use the Nelson organ as the basis for a ‘new’ organ whilst re-using as much as possible of the old All Souls organ.