DaveRo

I started on a Stagi 46, which has a slant (each end different, neither as Brian Hayden specified) and now have a Peacock - no slant, not mirrored. The changeover didn't make much difference, absolute beginner as I was, but if I bought another - e.g. from Lukasz - I'd want it the same. And hopefully with a similar button spacing. I know that CC will make a mirrored layout - but does anybody actually play one? I've briefly handled a Wheatstone 46 - with slant - but at the time I wasn't proficient enough to play it. It was remarkably small and light compared to my Stagi! But they are rare. I'm on Kent/E. Sussex border. If you want to try my Peacock, PM me.

Concertina Connection sell the 36-key Troubadour - Wim Wakker introduced it in this thread He also mentioned the proposed Peacock XL in that thresd - but he hasn't mentioned it since. Where in the world are you? I think most Beaumonts are in the US - but I'm guessing. Does anybody know how many were made? Is it a Hayden or Wicki layout - or haven't you decided

I did - right at the start! I read your posts and looked at your examples. I was certainly attracted to the concept. But I concluded that I needed to know the old system to find stuff to play. And once I start learning that I might as well live with it.

Having bought a concertina in my 70s, having never played an instrument (apart from a bit of piano before I was 10) I decided that learning a bare minimum of dots, and then playing those dots, was a way forward. So far it works for me - ish. I'm finding that I'm beginning to relate the dots on the staff to the button layout. But if I look at a dot, I don't readily recall the name of the note A,B,C... Perhaps in ten or twenty years I'll be able to do what you describe. By contrast, having 50 years experience of computers, I find transposing ABC or sheet music a doddle. My choice of a Hayden was predictable: I'm an engineer not a musician.

I mean 2-voice - in ABC terminology. Whether it's 2-part sounds like a musical question, so I'll evade it. Here's one of my sources: http://www.rudemex.co.uk/library/RM_arrangements/01tunelib_RMarr.php I'm been learning A-Bruxa. There's an Am and a Bm version there, but I found that Dm fits the Peacock best: the accompaniment is not off the bottom, but ISTR I had to alter the melody a bit at the top which spoils it slightly.

I often transpose a tune to fit within the compass of my 42-button Peacock duet. These are usually 2-part tunes. Sometimes I have to choose between the accompaniment going off the bottom or the melody going off the top. If I can find the music in ABC it's easy, as several people have said. I change the bass clef to treble-8 at the same time. If I only have staff notation I use an Android app - Music Scanner by David Zemsky - to convert it to MusicXML, which Easy ABC can import, and then transpose it. The app will work from a pdf, a screenshot from a website, or by photographing sheet music. And it will play it - which is a feature I often come back to when trying to learn it!

It's a Beaumont 52-button from The Button Box, with a bigger bellows. He mentions it here: https://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?/topic/21827-scores-for-wicky-or-hayden-duet-concertinas/&do=findComment&comment=203404 Unfortunately The Button Box stopped production a year or so back, scuppering my upgrade plan.

Fails for me, too. Perhaps you have to be signed into Facebook. I'm not a member.

The CC Peacock is a hybrid. Does that affect the likelihood that the reeds will speak at the same pressure, or the difficulty of adjusting them?

I've wondered that. My secondhand Peacock duet (6-fold), if I hold one end, falls open in 10-15 seconds. I've had the offending end off - to fix something else - and the cause is not obvious. I'd have to fix it to find that out. I do find the the highest reeds on the right sometimes don't sound if there is a simultaneous low note on the left - as there often is.

@genepinefieldUseful pictures. During the 9 months I had a Stagi Hayden (from new) I didn't take it apart - nothing went wrong with it. I was tempted to just to find out what causes the different slope of the buttons between left and right. While the 'parallel levers' design has obviously stayed the same over the years I wonder whether the materials or details of the buttons or valves have changed much? (I used Google Tranlate - behaviour will vary according to your Google settings. Here it requests a popup which is actually a new tab. https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&op=websites )

On Amazon you can 'Look inside' and read the first 12 pages up to and including the first tune in Chapter 1.

Chouette! https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_tu_vois_ma_mère

There's a video here which will give you an idea what you'll find when you pull out the pins and take the end off. https://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?/topic/25812-a-video-visit-to-concertine-italia-the-successor-to-bastari-and-stagi/ Unfortunately it doesn't actually show one being put together.

Is yours one with pins on the sides like the C range here? https://www.concertineitalia.it/en/concertinas-concertine-italia/diatonic-concertinas-20-keys-concertine-italia/