Jacob Mauer

Hey - I just logged into this forum forum to post the reverse of your add haha.... So, what I have is a C/G 30 key Lachenal Anglo concertina. This is its story: I saw it on ebay during a 6 month long accordion repair apprenticeship that I just finished. I was the only bidder and got it for the opening price of $634 USD. It arrived in the mail, and when I squeezed it it made some pretty terrible sounds. Luckily, I was in the heat of my apprenticeship and dove into it: I cleaned, polished, and tuned all the reeds. I fixed a crack in the reed pan with wood epoxy, and made some cardstock inserts to line the outside of the reedpan and cushion it against the old chamois in order to improve the compression. I applied some "danish oil" to the reed pans to hopefully prevent future shrinking or warping from humidity changes. I cleaned the key levers and replaced the pads that were leaky with new lambskin ones. I sprayed the (original) bellows with a light coat of black laquer to help seal little micro leaks - this did help, and the laquer smell has finally subsided. An important note - I found one broken reed during the tuning process, it is a middle A note in the accidental row. I have not missed this note yet, there are two other places to play the same note, this one was to let you play it on the Push instead of the Pull. I'm not sure if you know how anglo concertinas are set up, but of the 10 buttons in the accidental row, a few of them are used constantly and some of there are barely ever used. ... There was also a few other minor things I did, like giving the endplates a light sanding and fresh oil rub, etc. Overall, the instrument is playing pretty well. IF you are interested in it, I'd be happy to make you a video of it. I bought it as a project, and I don't have the money to invest in it now to do a full restoration - It could use new lambskins gaskets and new bellows, and titlbach reed company makes some reeds that would fit it if you wanted to go to steel - (currently brass reeds, they sound beautiful but they are not as loud as steel.) Let me know if you are interested - I would sell it to you for the same as I paid for it. Although I put a lot of time into it, I didn't really put much money into it, and it was an important learning experience for me as I hope to one day build concertinas from scratch. Happy travels -J

Hey there - I was hoping there would be an answer to your question. I am also just starting, but I am a couple months in, I am playing a rochelle as well. I haven't tried a tune in A yet but I was seeking advice because It seems like almost everything I am learning is in the key of D, using mostly my left hand, and I want to branch out to use more of the instrument. I can share a bit with you though on play in D. theres probably a vocab for this that I don't know but lets say we are working with the "g" row, the "c" row, and the "a" for accidental row. so if your pushing the root, or d, with your pinky on the second button of the "g" row, next you push C4 with your middle, then pull g2, push g3, pull g3, push g4, push a6 (right hand index, thats the c#), push g5 with left index ---- thats the first octave. The second octave is easy using a push/pull pattern on the g row, until you get to the second C#, which is located on A9, and then the octave is way back on g8, seeming really illogical. Lets hope someone can come and shed some light on the subject for us, eh?