Little John

If the D# is the acting as the third in a C minor chord it doesn't sound that bad. For that reason on my second Crane (also 1/5th comma mean tone) I have all D#s and no Ebs. If (and I suspect this is unlikely) you were to use it at the root of an Eb major chord it would sound awful. So that would be the third in an F# major chord? It will sound awful. Somehow a sharp major third sounds much worse than a flat minor third. So there are two options if you wanted to explore MT tuning. Firstly accept the nasty sounding Bb (when it should be A#) as the occasional price to pay for a much better-sounding instrument overall. The second is to have that button as an anglo Bb/A#. But if your use of Bb far outweighs the use of A# probably best to go for the first option.

You could have it tuned to mean tone 😀. Do you often (or even ever) play with more than two flats or three sharps?

There are two contexts: harmony and melody. Purely in a melodic setting many people wouldn't spot it. On my 1/5th comma tuned Crane I have an F# major arpeggio in one tune. I don't have an A# so have to use the Bb. As long as I separate the notes clearly it sounds OK, but if they overlap at all it sounds awful. The problem really comes with harmony. I have one button with D# on the push and Eb on pull. The proper note sounds sweet, but Eb in a B major chord is excruciating, whilst D# in a C minor chord sounds off but not so painful. I'm inclined to agree on this point. On an English concertina the value of having separate D#/Eb and G#/Ab is not just that one can play in two additional keys with mean-tone tuning, but that the fingering pattern remains consistent for all 8 keys. Choosing, for example, to use the Eb button when playing in a sharp key destroys the natural pattern.

An instrument with 12 buttons to the octave (e.g. Crane, Maccann) can play in 6 keys without encountering the wolf interval (and, to be honest, that's enough for me). An English concertina, with 14 buttons to the octave, can play in 8.

That's because you won't find an A# anywhere 😀. Likewise the Db someone mentioned earlier in this thread.

It would be interested to hear what these were.

I can only assume that the first "partial" stop (50ml/s at 1ms) is when the reed is passing into the frame (so the reed and the airflow are in the same direction and therefore the airflow isn't reduced entirely to zero); whereas the total stop (0ml/s at 2ms) is when the reed it coming out of the frame (so the movement is opposing the airflow and hence the stop is complete). The smaller hump (at 70ml/s) is halfway between these which would correspond to the maximum deflection of the reed within the frame and hence maximum airflow (in that half of the cycle); after that dropping as the reed movement reverses and opposes the airflow.

I think you'll find loads of harmonics with any concertina. What I've never been able to understand is how they are generated. The string or wind column vibration analogy just doesn't apply.

Useful, though I disagree with the description (top of page 3) "48 button Tenor". It has treble fingering extended down to tenor range. It's exactly the same as the "56 button Tenor-Treble" below it apart from lacking the top row, so it's a 48 button Tenor-Treble. I'm sure not everyone will agree, but to me a true tenor has F3 where your C4 is shown (and thus C4 where your G4 is shown). John.

I agree. I was just sticking with convention in using "tenor-treble". That's spot on, provided C3 was positioned exactly where C4 (middle C) would be on a treble.

The extra 8 buttons would give you an additional fifth below, not an octave. That being so, I agree with It a tenor-treble with an extended top end; so "tenor-extended treble" is a clear and accurate description. Inventing your own terminology helps no-one.

Haha! And I said my Wheatstone bass sounds like a bassoon - until I played it sitting next to one!

Likewise. I confess that when I ordered raised end on the metal instrument (the wooden one is flat) it was for purely aesthetic reasons. Sound quality never entered my head, either then or when I wrote my previous reply. I had thought the material might make some difference; but it seems probably not, and if so then certainly not in the way one would expect.

For another comparison, I have two very similar instruments made by Alex. The biggest difference in the ends - wooden on one and metal on the other. There is a small difference in tone, though it's hard describe. Hard, too, to attribute it to the ends: contrary to conventional wisdom the wooden one is the brighter.

I think most of us would agree that the difference would be negligible. In fact, zero in some cases. The raised metal ends shown by @alex_holden in an earlier post were beaten from a flat sheet; so flat or raised would have been the same weight unless it caused the fretwork to be cut differently, which seems unlikely. In this case Alex raised the ends first then cut the fretwork. On an earlier instrument the did the reverse. The tiny amount of wood saved on the action box sides is countered by the taller hand rests. All pretty negligible.