Simon Alves

Thank you all for the help. That british patent was realy good, has everything I wanted to know!

Can someone give me some information or direct me to a site about the design and reed specifications of a standard 48 button english concertina? Some diagrams would also be very helpful. Thank you in advance

Thankyou all for the help. I tested your suggestions and arrived to the following considerations: 1 - Recorded placing a mike in front of the concetina 2 - Recorded placing 2 mikes, one at each end 3 - Recorded using Microvox system 4 - Recorded using techniques 1 and 2 at the same time to then mix them together The recording with only 1 mike was quite good and "balanced", although I did think it made it loose a bit of characteristic in a dynamics point of view. The recording with 2 mikes was quite good but very difficult to deal with afterwards since there are considerable changes in the amplitude of recording, needing a good amount of effects. The microvox system (if it doesn't fail during the recording) is probably one of the best solutions since it keeps quite truthful to what the player played, but has the disavantage of not being able to use the acoustical properties of the room where it is recorded. (I would probably use this system for live performances). When combining techniques 1 and 2 together I got a very rewarding result; I mixed the recordings together and got a stable balanced sound, but still with all the dynamic variations technique 1 lacked. (Created a stereo impression by using the 2 end mikes as left and right mixed with the central recording in each. Allows some movement of the sound in the stereo spectrum but without exagerating) So for personal or studio recordings I would recomend no 4, and for live no 3. While recording in the studio AKG condenser mikes worked better for me.

Thank you all for your suggestions, I will put them into practice at once and give you some feedback soon. Please add any other views you might have.

Thankyou for your reply Alan Day, I'm sorry I was a bit vague so I'll be more specific. I'm a recording technitian and I have some work coming up where I will be recording an english concertina. Because I never recorded a concertina before I was doing some research and found this wonderful site. I would like to try several different recording techniques to test different sound quality. Thanks in advance for any other replies.

Hi, I'm doing research on the english concertina and need some information about the physics and sound creation on a concertina. I would also like to read some views on concertina recording thechniques. Can anyone help? Thankyou.