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Richard Mellish

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Chatty concertinist

Chatty concertinist (4/6)

  1. I assume I assume you mean you won't be able to afford an actual Jeffries. New concertinas of traditional construction aren't all that much cheaper, so you may be looking at hybrids. As Jake says, current makers do offer Jeffries layout. However there doesn't seem much to choose between Jeffries and Wheatstone layouts unless you've already become familiar with one or the other, and even then some players seem to switch between them without too much trouble. A bigger difference is between 30-key and 39 (Jeffries) or 40 (Wheatstone), where all those extra buttons allow a lot more flexibility, at a higher price.
  2. As the reed moves into and out of the slot, the flow of air past it changes irregularly rather than in a smooth sinusoid: see Figure 2 of the paper linked to by Kathryn. However I don't understand why the acoustic waveform shown in that figure has a much higher harmonic content than the flow waveform. I do wonder how accurate that flow waveform is: one might expect the flow to start and stop more suddenly as the reed occludes or eases to occlude the slot.
  3. When I first saw the title of this thread I surmised that it had been started by someone in Australia, to discuss concertinas in a sorry state.
  4. Did it start life as an Anglo or is it a converted Jeffries Duet?
  5. I agree that the original reeds would have been good ones. My concerns are that many of those now present can hardly be original, and that even if some are original they are not at their original pitches. I put the ends back on before I thought to photograph the insides of the reed pans but I will take one or two. Edit: picture now attached. Note many reeds much shorter than their slots and shiny at both ends from retuning.
  6. This concertina arrived a few days ago. I can now report that it has been more drastically "got-at" even than was apparent from the pictures. One modification that should have been apparent from the seller's pictures was that the handles had been moved away from the buttons. That isn't too critical. One surprise was that the screws holding the ends on are not the expected kind, threaded only near their ends, but standard 6BA screws. Did Lachenal use those? If not, it suggests that whoever worked on this concertina must have been UK based, even though it was most recently in the USA. Anyway there is a much more serious issue. Besides about a third of the notes not being what would be expected on a Wheatstone-layout G-D, hardly any of them correspond to the notes stamped on the reed frames (where those are legible). Someone has retuned the reeds by drastic amounts. It was already apparent from the pictures that some of the reeds are too long or too short for their slots. Now that I have access to the inner sides of the reed pans it is apparent that some of the push reeds are very much shorter than their slots, so they cannot be those originally present. Perhaps whoever worked on this concertina decided that the original reeds were too rusty or otherwise damaged to be retained, but then replaced them by whatever they could scavenge from elsewhere without bothering about the correct pitches. I am dubious whether reeds that have been tuned far away from their original pitches deserve to be kept, even where their present pitches are correct for a Wheatstone-layout G-D. Anyway further retuning of those that are neither at their original pitches nor at the correct pitches would seem a step too far. I am therefore looking at replacement of many reeds, possibly all of them.
  7. That is certainly a possibility, and it's how I started (in my early 20s, not as a child). On the other hand, as with an adult beginner, a better quality instrument can be re-sold without much loss of value if they don't get on with it.
  8. Many factors influence the weight of a concertina. The most significant must be simply the number of reeds; not only the weight of all their frames but also the overall size of instrument needed to accommodate them. I think the next most significant is whether the reed frames are of brass or aluminium, then the material of the buttons. (From the picture it looks as if Paul's Connor has aluminium frames but brass clamps.) "Raised" ends may allow the edges of the ends to be slightly closer to the bellows and thus reduce the total weight slightly, but I can't believe that makes much difference. That seems to leave only aesthetics as a reason for the extra complication in manufacture. Some people may find raised ends aesthetically preferable and others have no preference. I have just looked at all my concertinas: until I looked I could not have said which have raised ends. (It's a third of them.)
  9. Alex asked whether the raised area on my Wheatstone (Dickinson) Anglo is circular. Yes, it is.
  10. The distances to the centres of the corresponding buttons on my concertinas are 43 mm to 49 mm and 49 mm to 54 mm. These are all 40-button Anglos but I would not expect that to make any difference to those distances. I don't know about other modern lower-end concertinas but those distances on your Wren do seem very small.
  11. I'm not sure which term (domed or plateau) would apply to my Wheatstone (Dickinson) Anglo. The ends are raised over a large area including under the handle.
  12. In general, certainly, but this one could have been a very deliberate exception.
  13. Listed on eBay again https://www.ebay.com/itm/325259378720 If this is the same person still trying to sell it, maybe someone should offer a more realistic price.
  14. For the record: I am buying this concertina. Kevin offered a price reduction. As he has to pay the Reverb commission I have paid the 2% for the forum.
  15. Meanwhile has anyone actually done the experiment to investigate Steve S's original enquiry?
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