dabbler

As a guitarist, I appreciate the concertina's ease on my joints and tendons. I imagine I'll appreciate this more with age.

I sometimes use the Google metronome (type "metronome" in Google).

I'm not a master builder but here's a thought. Maybe the resonance of your fretwork is tuned such that it absorbs energy from the F3 frequency. That is, the fretwork is acting like a tongue drum tuned in a way that interferes with the F3. You could probably test this by sticking hard modeling (plastalina) clay or mounting putty to the fretwork to alter or eliminate the resonances.

Nice! It would be interesting to hear the tune played in different temperaments.

Very nice design work! What type of filament are you using for buttons and the white lever paddles and will you be lubricating those?

Very nice! Free reeds and plucked strings make a great pairing.

Interesting. Seems like this would make it possible to pull the bellows into a straight cylinder, or a dodecagonal prism more precisely. Would this not cause stability problems?

I really like their "bandoline", a bandoneon with an intuitive button arrangement, like a stringed instrument tuned in 5ths. -George

I had this problem on my hybrid concertina. The cause was exactly as Dana described. I was able to fix it by gluing a thin sliver of photo negative to the valve like this. I should have tried Dana's methods first. Good luck! -George

That's such a nice looking instrument. I think I understand the triplet technique now. Nice playing! -George

Thanks, folks. That's really nice to hear from people whose playing I admire. About 14 months plus one pandemic so it has seemed like forever (almost two years total). I'm a long time guitarist though. -George

Thanks guys! Interesting. I wonder why makers (except Stagi) didn't go wider when they started building them. Maybe tooling and materials reasons? Possibly. I haven't attempted the triplet technique, but I do have to hit the buttons more precisely or I will hit a neighboring button. Also, I have to hit the button from a higher angle, as lower angles can also cause neighboring buttons to be depressed. I have thought about giving the buttons a raised dome profile to help with this while still allowing easy two-note presses. -George

Hello everyone. Several months ago I had recalled some musings on the forum about wider buttons on the Hayden duet, maybe from Brian himself. Having recently bought a 3d printer I realized I could print my own button caps to give wider buttons a try. Also, I thought that it would be nice to use my thumbs to better position my hands as I played. I find these enhancements very nice and will be keeping them. See the attached pictures to get a better idea of what I did. I don't like the term but I might call the wider buttons a game changer. They let me quickly play a P4 or P5 dyad with a finger tip. This was possible before but required more effort and finger bending, especially for thin fingers like mine. I posted a video in the "video and music" section of me playing with this setup. An important note in case you'd like to try this yourself: Make sure that everything you add is easily removable. The button caps should not be too snug or you will not be able to pull them off, leaving you with an unserviceable concertina! I made mine on the loose side and where needed added a bit of removeable mounting putty. The pictures show two button styles. I used the simple flat buttons for most keys. For the lowest row on each side I ended up using the contoured buttons to keep my fingers from slipping off due to the angle of my fingers and low friction against my nails. The button diameters are about 9.7mm. Cheers, -George

Hello everyone. It took several months of practice and a couple of ergonomic enhancements to the instrument, but here's a performance of Maple Leaf Rag for the 52-button Hayden duet. I'll detail the enhancements I made in a separate post since I think they add a lot of capability to the Hayden. Cheers, -George

It's always handy to have an extra guitarist hiding in the bushes. Seriously though, sounds great. Nice to hear an unmicced performance with such balanced instrument volumes. -George