wes williams

Jake - If you have his phone number you could get the area where he lives from the prefix code, and might find someone here who lives near.

That was recorded about 1984, but if you see the 1979 Roman Polanski film version of 'Tess of the Durbervilles', John is also leading the procession at the beginning. John kindly gave me a box of his videos after he had them converted to DVDs. I must do the same sometime soon!

Sometimes concertinas appear in the sales ledgers more than once. Assuming there were no errors in the numbers written, your concertina was sold to Hammond & Son (so a dealer?) in June 1852 as part of a batch of four. We have no records for concertinas re-purchased by Wheatstone (sometimes in part exchange for a better model), but the 1853 sales ledger shows it was sold again to Joseph Scates as part of a batch of twelve in 1853. Scates was a maker and dealer who had gone into business on his own account about 1845, being formerly a tuner for Wheatstone. However he sold his business to George Case (another maker/dealer) about 1850 and then moved to Dublin, Ireland. Lots of info on Scates here: http://www.scatesconcertinas.com/ I'll happily be corrected, but I don't think model numbers were in use at this time. The price paid depended on the wood used, the button material, and other 'extras' like for example inlays. These are much more evident in later ledgers. It makes it very difficult to link a particular build style of concertina to a sale price, especially where dealers are involved and getting 'trade prices'.

Its worth remembering that Bob Gaskin's Concertina.com site has a lookup for Wheatstone numbers : http://www.concertina.com/ledgers/lookup/index.htm That tells you that 4950 also appears in Ledger C1048 page 60 (October 1853) where its in a batch sold to Joseph Scates (maker and dealer), so you've got a little more of its history.

To move things on, nobody has yet commented that Regondi's early concerts in Germany were reported as him playing the melophone rather than the concertina.

Thanks Peter - I've just got around to listening to it. 2019 - new hall? But where's the dog?

David, With a number that low it would be impossible to date unless you give us some more details. Is it an English system (with loops you put your thumbs through) or an anglo system (loops you put your palms through)? How many buttons, etc, etc ...

Everything about this looks like a small German 'Swan Brand' melodian (especially the actions on each side) I have, except its a hexagon rather than a rectangle. So maybe not so difficult to play?

Fred Gaisberg, Chief Recording Expert for The Gramophone Company/HMV, wrote in his autobiography about recording Peter Nevsky, a popular entertainer with his 'concertina', in St Petersburg, Russia in 1901. Although you might assume that Fred would know what a concertina was, as opposed to an accordion, after his early associations with Percy Honri, the autobiography was written in 1943 when Fred's memory wasn't as sharp as it had been, and in the second video you'll see a miniature accordion which might easily be mistaken for a concertina. Here is a recording of Nevsky, which will be interesting to free-reed folk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tZyJwUT8Zw There's also a video in Russian about an accordion museum in Moscow that gives lots of information about Nevsky and his instruments from about 11 minutes onwards.

Chris Flint also did some research on the Chidley family more recently than most of the earlier posts and has some related pictures. This can be found at at Joseph Scates Concertinas

Here's Jack with 'His Wonderful Family of Concertinas' circa 1915. Six Maccanns? and a miniature.

That isn't a good example of how to tune a reed. Most folks here would support the reed by placing a shim of some kind (eg old style double sided razor blade or feeler gauge) between the shoe and the reed unfixed end when filing. That way filing is much more precise and the file need never touch the shoe.

Since my name appears prominently in the first link above, the page directed to (written ~2008 and no longer in existence here) would have given you a date about 1919. But the best current estimate would be from member Dowright who suggested 1910 for No 2700 (here) and ~1923 for No. 4062 (here). So you probably need to add 10 years or more to your 1906 estimate.

I expect most of you know, but Ankh-Morpork was an invention of Sir Terry Pratchett. In 2002 Wincanton in Somerset, UK was officially twinned with Ankh-Morpork. There is a shop there called Discworld Emporium . One house further up from the shop used to have a melodeon displayed in its front windows, so I wonder if there was any connection between that and the SteveS original thread post.