I have been playing the 30 button beginner Scarlatti English concertina off and on for about four years, it cost £180 and I think represented reasonable value considering the high price of concertinas, of course I wish I could have afforded something better from the off. Some of the buttons were stuck quite badly so the holes had to be filed, one of the springs has broken, middle c of course! And if you want to play softly, a lot of the notes don't sound very well on the push or pull.
Now I would like to upgrade and would really like a decent concertina but failing a windfall will have to settle for either a bashed up vintage off hob goblin or a a modern budget 48 key, which looks to be either;
Stagi at £699 on Hobgoblin
or
Thomann at £380 (http://www.thomann.de/gb/thomann_486_concertina.htm)
Obviously the Thomann would suit my budget requirements best and comes with a 3 year guarantee, plus the build quality in the pictures looks way above, I mean way way above that of my cheap Scarlatti so it seems to represent good value, however after scouring this forum and google I haven't found a single review of the Thomann concertina... has anyone got any opinion on them?