Little John

On average, yes, but there's a lot of variation. On size, I suspect most 35s are 6 1/4". In the past I've owned two Crabb 35s. I didn't measure them but I'd say there were that size. [I also had a Crane and Sons 42 button which was 6 1/4".] My 48 button Crabb Crane was 6 5/8", which I think was pretty well the standard size. Certainly it's likely to be the minimum size as you need that much space to fit in the 28 right hand reeds. [Curiously it means wasted space in the left hand reed pan of a 48.] On weight it depends a lot on materials. Mike Jones' instruments seem exceptionally heavy at 2kg and 3kg. Both the 42 and the 48 mentioned above came in below 3lb, i.e. less than 1.4kg while my Dipper 51 button comes in at about 2kg (also 6 5/8"). The Crabb is relatively light because it has aluminium reed frames, action and end plates. Whether or not these differences are "appreciable" is subjective to a large extent. Sitting down to play with one end resting on a leg I'd say not, but standing to play with no support for the instrument there is a big difference between a 4lb + instrument and a sub 3lb one. LJ

An illustration might help. There are three natural notes ("white" notes on a piano) in each row (or arc) and there are three corresponding chord shapes. In the attached chart: Top left shows how D minor, G major and C major have the same shape, based on the fourth column from the left. Bottom left shows how moving your finger to the outer column* of accidentals ("black" notes) changes major to minor and vice versa for the same three chords. Top right show how the three major chords in the key of F have similar shapes, based on the second column from the left. Bottom right shows that a few variations are possible. This is my favourite form of C major. Chords based on the middle column follow similar patterns. So pretty well all chords follow one of three basic patterns, the variations being that the outer columns are used when "black" notes are required. LJ * Or using your little finger, as I do for that column. Crane chord shapes.pdf

Only really by playing it; but that said, a reputable seller will be able to you give you a good idea. And in general, since it's a desirable property, the faster it is the more expensive it's likely to be. Not at all. It depends basically on two things. (1) How well-made the reeds are; that is how well the reeds fit the frame they are held in. (2) How well the reeds have been set; too high and they will be slow to start, too low and they won't sound at all. (1) is down to the maker but but a good tuner/repairman can sort out (2). There are plenty of old Wheatstones, Jeffries and other makes that are fast. LJ

It's swings and roundabouts, really. On the Hayden there's one chord shape for major and a very different one for minor; on the Crane there are three basic shapes, though major and minor are very similar. Again, swings and roundabouts. The lack of an obvious home position on the Hayden is also the reason why you can use identical fingering over a range of keys. On the Crane there is an obvious home position, but you have to choose to modify the fingering slightly to accommodate different keys. I'm a Crane player, but I'm not arguing that it's superior to the Hayden; just that each system has its different pros and cons. LJ

It would be worth contacting Chris Algar at Barleycorn Concertinas. He's bound to have a few in stock. The "stock selection" on his website is just that - a selection and not the whole stock. It's worth considering a 35 button instrument just to try the system, though you'll probably want to upgrade to a 48 (or more) eventually. Echoing David Barnert (above) small is beautiful! To my mind they start to get a bit unwieldy above 48 buttons - though plenty of other people seem happy to play the large ones. A 35 button instrument is a bit limited in range, but there's still a lot you can do on it. I started on one. The good thing is that it's fully chromatic*, and that if/when you move to a larger instrument the only difference is that you get more higher notes on each side. Nothing to re-learn. A 35 button Crabb Crane might look rough (mine did) but the reeds should be good. LJ *Well almost - on the left hand the C#4 is omitted in favour of an E4.

I'd agree with that. My wooden ended Holden is brighter than my metal ended Dipper. If the end material was important you'd expect the opposite. I doubt it. I had a Crabb Crane duet re-tuned from equal temperament to fifth comma mean tone. It made the harmonies sweeter but didn't otherwise alter the tone. Most Anglos are tuned ET nowadays anyway. The difference is more likely to be the reeds. You might feel quite differently about the Crane if it was a Crabb. My first Crane was a 35 button Crabb. It looked awful! The ends were plywood held on with round-topped wood screws. But it sounded good. LJ

There's a lot of variability, according to make and materials. I had a 30 button Jeffries Anglo which was heavier than either my 48 button Crabb Crane duet or my 42 button Crane & Sons duet. Small MacCanns have a big disadvantage in starting at G4 (above middle C). I'm not so familiar with the range of Haydens, but even a 42 button Crane has a right-hand range from C4 (middle C) up to C6 which is satisfactory for a lot of music. If chromatic capability is important then it's worth noting Crane duets are fully chromatic (or very nearly so). For example, a 48 button Crane is fully chromatic in the bass from C3 to G4. The right hand extends from C4 to F6 with only the top two accidentals missing (C#6 and Eb6). There's a lot you can do on a 48 button Crane, and they are not that hard to find. LJ

This is really no help but the answer is - play whatever system feels most natural to you. You can play more-or-less anything on any concertina. True, if you want to slavishly mimic current players of Irish music then you would want a C/G anglo, but there's nothing to stop you playing Irish on any other system. Similarly there's nothing to stop you playing baroque on the Anglo (just listen to Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne) or playing counterpoint on an English (listen to Dave Townsend). I've played both English and Anglo in the past but eventually settled on the duet (Crane system in my case). If I'd had no choice in the matter I'm sure I'd have made out on either of the other systems. Indeed, since there are pros and cons to each system it's not a straightforward decision; but then neither is it irreversible. A lot of what you learn on one system translates to another. If you can't get to try out different concertinas, watch and listen to others (on YouTube for example) and see what takes your fancy. In the end you won't really know if a system suits you until you give it a serious bit of effort. LJ

An excellent rendition indeed! I use my little fingers occasionally to stabilise the instrument when I'm standing up, but in general I use both little fingers too frequently to do so. I can't see any advantage to not using them - it gives you extra options for fingering. I'm a Crane player. On a Hayden, surely you need all four fingers to play a scale? LJ

Jake is right - there's much more to it than the number of folds or the total volume of air. Firstly there's the overall airtightness of the instrument. Then there's the condition and effectiveness of the valves. On one low-quality instrument I had Alex Holden managed to double the effective air capacity by attending to these issues. Then, and crucially, there's the efficiency of the reeds. I believe (though I'm happy for the real experts on this forum to correct me) there are two aspects to this. Firstly how closely the reed tongue fits the reed frame. Secondly how the reed is "set"; which affects how quickly it will sound and therefore how much air it takes just to get it going. If the general air-tightness and reed efficiency are good, then I believe you don't need more than seven folds. In recent years I've played mainly a Dipper (7 folds), Crabb (6 folds) and Holden (7 folds) - all Crane duets and all, incidentally, with a cross-sectional area smaller than your Beaumont. I've always found the bellows gave sufficient air. In fact the Holden is so efficient I could easily get away with six folds. A further point is that well-set, quickly sounding reeds allow bellows reversals mid-phrase without sounding awkward. I need this, as I have a couple of anglo-style buttons to extend the bass, but it's helpful for general playing anyway. LJ

Not necessarily. You will have developed bellows control and got used to the feel of buttons under your fingers, so it should be quicker second time around. I started on the EC myself (I didn't know duets existed when I got my first). I'm very interested in harmonising tunes. Whilst it can be done on the EC, for most people it comes more naturally to separate the melody from the accompaniment. I made the transition to Crane duet after about two years. LJ

As Geoff points out, there are 14 buttons to the octave which means you can have both Eb and D#, and likewise both Ab and G#. With meantone tuning these will be tuned differently. Tuned to meantone an English can still play in all keys from three flats to four sharps, which is surely sufficient for most mortals! But to answer your question about Anglo-style buttons on an English. Yes, it's vanishingly rare but I know of at least one. Steve Turner's English has five buttons at the bottom end which have Anglo action. There isn't a clear logic to them (I've played it) but the aim seems to be to extend the range downward without making the instrument too large. On my own Crane system duet (which is closely related to the English) I have four Anglo buttons. Three are to extend the range downward without increasing the size. The fourth is to give me a choice of Eb or D# as it's tuned to fifth comma meantone. (It doesn't have the "duplications" of an English so it's "limited" to keys from two flats to three sharps. That's hardly a limitation at all, except occasionally an E minor tune calls for a B major chord; hence the D#.) LJ

Yes, I've watched it a couple of times in the past. It's one of the things that convinced me to try mean tone tuning. And, so far, I've only tried 1/5th comma so I can't comment either! Yes, I'd particularly like to hear a comparison of 1/4 comma and 1/5th comma. Or even just hear of the experience of someone who has both. LJ

That is also what I have done on my Crane duet; albeit tuned to fifth comma rather that quarter comma. (Although I might try quarter comma in the future.) This is what I've done on my Crane (except for the other way round). I have Eb on the pull and D# on the push. In two years with mean tone I haven't found any tune or song I can't play with this tuning. Geoff suggested quarter comma might be too extreme when playing with other instruments. Do you find it so? What led you to using quarter comma rather than fifth comma tuning? LJ

I've had this for decades. Rarely used it in the past and never use it now. It's sloppily put together, seemingly from whatever bits he could easily lay his hands on. There are much better sources available nowadays, both printed and online. For example, Paul Hardy's tune book - free online and only £8 for a paper copy which is nicely set out and, with its spiral binding, lies flat in use. It has something of the order of 600 or 800 tunes. If you want Morris Dance tunes they are all available on the Morris Ring website; not just the poor selection in Raven's book. LJ

Not sure you'll find one in Bb, but you might find a tenor-pitched one in F. I think they were produced for playing Eb parts from brass band scores (whilst the trebles played the Bb parts in C). My bass English played in F - again I assume for playing Eb bass parts - but I couldn't get on with it so I had the B and Bb reeds swapped. Result? It now plays in C but with the notes one row higher than you would expect. I can cope better with that than playing a "transposing instrument". (Although I can happily transpose! Illogical, but that's just how my brain works.) LJ

This is an interesting comment. In theory 1/4 comma should sound better because the thirds are pure. I have experience only of 1/5 comma tuning, so I'd be interested if anyone with experience of both 1/5 and 1/4 comma has a view. Likewise, I haven't had any comments about the tuning from other players. On the second point, I play mainly in the "English" keys of G and D. For these, centring the tuning on A (to match ET) is best as it minimises the deviation from ET. So, like Paul, I can give an A at 440Hz. Actually, it would probably make no difference if you gave them A instead of E. Your A would be only a couple of cents different from what they would expect, and apparently most people can't tell the difference if it's less then about 20 cents. Even in the keys closest to ET (G and D in my case) some notes are almost 10 cents different from ET, but as the general experience in this thread and elsewhere attests, no-one seems to notice. LJ

I have to confess I am not familiar with it (other than as a concept). I, too, find the diagrams hard to read. For me it would be better to rotate the right hand a quarter turn clockwise and the left hand a quarter turn anti-clockwise. That way you can extend your hands in front of you and imagine your fingers over the keyboard. That is how pretty well other concertina layout is shown. But to get to the point, the more common layout ("bi-directional") would be familiar to anyone who comes from a piano background. Maybe that's why Crane and MacCann duets are also arranged this way. Anglos follow this pattern too; though I suspect that derives more from the idea of taking a melodeon style keyboard, cutting it down the middle and folding it back-to-back. LJ

I would suggest you don't do anything hasty! There's a lot that can be read into what you've said. First thing. It's unlikely that both D# reeds have drifted out of tune to exactly the same extent. They are probably tuned correctly. You also indicate that you're playing Eb instead, implicitly because it is sharper than the D#. That's exactly what you would expect if your instrument is tuned to a mean tone temperament, as many English concertinas were (and as quite a few still are). Secondly, there are some styles of playing/singing where people prefer to make leading notes in particular sharper than they would naturally be. It sounds like your fiddler is one of those. But a fiddle (or voice) can make micro-adjustments to the pitch. A concertina can't. You'll have to find some other way round the problem. Either your fiddler will have to accept the pitch your concertina plays at, or you need to find some other solution, like you playing a harmony instead of both playing in unison. Whatever you do, don't ruin your concertina's tuning for the sake of one fiddler's preference of style! LJ

This might be going slightly off-topic, but as a duet player this is of considerable interest to me. Often, with a duet, balance is a problem - the bass can overpower the melody. One "solution" is to fit a baffle to the left hand end to reduce the volume; but that's a bit of a fudge. I have owned several Crane duets over a period of more than 30 years, but it was only about six or seven years ago when I bought a 55 button Crabb that I realised where the problem lay. On that instrument the reeds all started to sound at the same pressure. It didn't have a balance problem. In the light of that I had the reeds on my Dipper re-set so that they all started to sound at the same low pressure. Big improvement. When Alex built me his #4 instrument he was careful to make all the reeds sound at the same pressure. That instrument has great balance. Getting the reeds sounding at the same pressure also increases the dynamic range of the instrument because you can play quietly. If the low reeds start to sound first you have to play fairly loud to get the high reeds to sound at the same time; but at any volume it seems that the low reeds, having started louder, stay louder. LJ

So you might think, but the D/G melodeon and the G/D anglo are different, insofar as one tends to play the melody in the lower octave on the melodeon and in the upper octave on the concertina. So the fingering is not the same - e.g. in the lower octave you start with a G/A button but an octave higher it's a G/F# button and the A is on the B/A button. So don't imagine it's a straightforward transition from melodeon to concertina. Also I believe the relationship between the two rows is different from concertina to melodeon, so if you use any cross-row fingering that won't translate either. LJ

I guess I'm "seasoned", so I'll throw in my two-penn'orth. Yes, it would probably work. All sorts of wierd and wonderful arrangements of notes can be made to "work". But what you are proposing is highly non-standard. It doesn't even seem to follow the basic anglo principle of having all the push notes in a given row play the chord of the key it's named after. If you learnt to play this system you wouldn't be able to play a "standard" anglo, and no-one else would be able to play this; making it essentially worthless. Your basic requirement is to be able to play both English and Irish music on one instrument. All I can say is that plenty of people play Irish on the standard C/G anglo, and plenty of people play English on the standard C/G. I'd suggest you make that your starting point. And actually, you could probably get both a decent G/D and a C/G for the cost of a custom special. LJ

I haven't insured my concertinas for years. When I got my first one (almost forty years ago) I insured it with a specialist company (can't remember who) and later insured it as an extra on the household insurance. When I got a second concertina the cost was so high for the two that I calculated I could buy a new instrument every 15 years for the same cost as the premium. (In other words, the insurance premium for a year was 1/15 of the cost of a new instrument.) That's all a long time ago now, so things might have changed. I'd be interested to hear from anyone with experience as to whether the cost has become more reasonable, although even if it has I doubt I would bother to insure them now; not having had cause to make a claim in all that time. LJ

Even a "standard" 42, 48 or 55 button Crane doesn't have an entirely consistent pattern. Playing in the keys of F, C, G and D majors (and associated modes) is easy because there is a consistent pattern. To play the "accidentals" you just move one row out. That is, in G and D you move one column out from the F natural to find the F sharp; and similarly for C# and Bb. But that breaks down in A major. The low G# is where you would expect it, next to the G natural. But an octave higher it is next to the A - effectively an Ab instead of G#. Playing in Eb gets worse because in the lower octave E and A are in the central column so for Eb and Ab (G#) you're suddenly jumping from the centre to the outside column and the whole scale pattern is altered. One just has to get used to a different pattern. (I think I'm getting there, but it's not automatic yet.) This is a bit sweeping. As I've mentioned elsewhere I have Bb2/B2 reeds (anglo style) where C#3 would normally be. Both notes are actually more convenient in that position than they would be if the scale were extended "to rule". Chords such as B minor, Bb major and G major (first inversion) are all easy to finger (all "spread", not as simple triads). And I use them so often I don't have to stop and think. So I would argue that these "out of pattern" notes are actually very handy in general. In fact I estimate that if I didn't have those two notes (and in such a convenient position) I would have to re-arrange the majority of my repertoire. LJ

Yes, it's probably in old high pitch, so it may not have been tuned since it was made. This means it could well be tuned to a mean tone temperament rather than equal temperament. You can test this by playing G# and Ab together (also D# and Eb together). If they sound out of tune it's a good indication that the instrument is in mean tone tuning. This will make the triads (three-note chords) and the major thirds sound much sweeter than in equal temperament. LJ