Richard Mellish
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Posts posted by Richard Mellish
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For my MIDI concertina project I decided that the buttons had to be in the same positions as on my real concertinas. Cherry switches are too big for that spacing so I ordered some from Mouser Electronics, https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/688-SKHHBW which are 6 mm square with buttons 3.4 mm diameter.
The operating force is 1.6 N, and in use I have found them a bit uncomfortable so I am considering replacing them by a version with lighter operating force and/or fitting them with caps of larger diameter.
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The 1910 date is well after Queen Victoria's demise.
It's impossible to know from the auction listing how much work this one will need to restore it to top condition. It will be interesting to see how high the bidding goes.
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I'm disappointed that the sound is that of an ordinary musical box, entirely unrelated to the instrument that he is supposedly playing. If the head etc movements are produced by a "single-air cylinder movement" it's a pity that that doesn't also blow air past reeds.
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I assume
On 3/11/2024 at 5:47 AM, Morgana said:Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere (I did do a search
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I am looking for a C/G Anglo with a Jefferies layout but don't think I will ever be able to afford one, so I wondered if there are any makers of new instrument anyone could recommend that are making C/G Anglos with this layout? I have a lovely C/G Lachanel and I'd really like to have the extra options the Jefferies layout provides. All help appreciated.
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.
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1 hour ago, Little John said:
I think you'll find loads of harmonics with any concertina. What I've never been able to understand is how they are generated. The string or wind column vibration analogy just doesn't apply.
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.
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On 3/2/2024 at 3:26 PM, Clive Thorne said:
Good job he's not trying to set up business in Australia!
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.
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Did it start life as an Anglo or is it a converted Jeffries Duet?
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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.
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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.
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10 hours ago, SIMON GABRIELOW said:
Why not start them off of one of the eternally ever available GDR concertinas, they are affordable, and always available to buy .. then if interest fades as they grow up, or change mind, not gone too expensive, at this early stage🌝
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.
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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.)
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Alex asked whether the raised area on my Wheatstone (Dickinson) Anglo is circular. Yes, it is.
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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.
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3 hours ago, alex_holden said:
I think the domed shape works better for an English because the buttons are fairly central in the end plate. If you try to make an Anglo with domed ends, the buttons wind up very off centre in the dome and it looks a bit odd. I've been playing with an idea for a modified dome shape that has a steep slope around the top end and a very shallow slope below the palm of the hand.
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.
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24 minutes ago, Frank Edgley said:
Concertinas are real instruments, not jokes.
In general, certainly, but this one could have been a very deliberate exception.
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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.
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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.
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Meanwhile has anyone actually done the experiment to investigate Steve S's original enquiry?
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When I need to refit a button (either replacing one that has broken or just because I have disturbed one while doing something else) I often have difficulty getting the lever through the bushing without pushing the bushing out of the hole. At least once I have used a short piece of silicone sleeving. Like the valve rubber it does the job and it has the advantage of not perishing with age.
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7 hours ago, ttonon said:
Richard, I'm surprised that you haven't heard of the several applications of strobe lighting
Misunderstanding! I am perfectly familiar with that. As I said " I would normally understand the word "strobe" to refer to a light that flashes at a controllable rate for viewing a rotating or vibrating object".
What I had not encountered before was using a strobe light to measure the frequency of a musical note.
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3 hours ago, ttonon said:
Thus, by its definition, one cent is 1/100 of the frequency interval between semitones and 0.1 cent is 1/1000 of the interval, or one part in a thousand. You can go to online calculators if you want to very that. Such a result applies along the whole range of musical pitch.
Thank you for explaining that the Peterson devices do actually use a strobe light. That isn't the most obvious way of measuring frequency but fair enough if they choose to do it that way.
I didn't use an online calculator. I used a spreadsheet.
1 semitone = 2^(1/12).
1 cent = 1 semitone ^(1/100).
0.1 cent = 1 cent ^(1/10).
That differs from unity by about 58 ppm.
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This discussion is getting a little heated, but let's look at some numbers.
ttonon quotes Peterson strobe tuners as being accurate to within 0.1 cent. By my calculation that is about 58 ppm. The equivalent error in a clock or watch would be about 5 seconds per day. Those figures would be impractical to achieve with an R-C oscillator, but are reasonable with a crystal oscillator even without needing to put the crystal in an oven. A concertina reed can change its pitch considerably more than that with change of bellows pressure, never mind what happens with change of temperature.
BTW (thread drift alert) I would normally understand the word "strobe" to refer to a light that flashes at a controllable rate for viewing a rotating or vibrating object, so I am intrigued as to why Peterson chose it for their tuners.
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Both the pitch of a reed and the clock frequency in a smart phone (or whatever device) can drift over time. However the specific effect of temperature could be investigated fairly easily. Note the pitch, as indicated by a tuning app, with both the concertina and the phone at room temperature. Then put one of them somewhere warm (such as an airing cupboard) or cold (outside in winter) for half an hour while keeping the other at room temperature. Note the pitch as now indicated by the tuning app. Then swap them over, wait another half hour, and note the pitch again. Throughout, run as few other apps as possible on the phone to minimise internal warming.
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I have decided to give this concertina a home. I will aim to report further once it has arrived and I have made further investigations of the reed swaps.
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ICA sticker and logo
in General Concertina Discussion
Posted
I have been wondering where to put the sticker. I'm not a great fan of stickers on intrument cases, especially when there are many of them. Do people actually look at them and take much notice? I wondered about a sticker on my car, but there you need one that is sticky on the front, for sticking inside a car window.