Dirge

Don't forget how incredibly portable a concertina is either.

Much better than the original.

I was turning this strange business over in my mind. I got to thinking that wood ended instruments sound 'sort of brown like the instrument' and it struck me that I routinely describe the metal ended wheatstone aeola tone as 'silvery' anyway. Perhaps this is where the difference lies; we see the instrument and our brains adds a twist when interpreting the sound signals they are given to work with. If this is so I'm creating a percieved difference in my head. Is this because someone told me I should expect a difference? It will be interesting to see how things sound next time I'm out with a number of players, now this has been suggested. Will the effect vanish? There's a doctorate there for someone...

So do you think this is an odd result from this particular instrument? Or are we all deluding ourselves generally? I WOULD have said quite confidently that wood ended instruments (and I'm usually talking big duets here; thicker ends maybe? You were talking quite thin ply I think?) had a much softer, rounder tone with more emphasis on the bass, and that it was quite clear and unmistakeable. Now you have me totally confused.

Yes, me too, not much on the lower notes and more pronounced in the higher pitches, so I would also expect it to be metal first, wood second.

I thought anyone who is not on Bob's emailing list should have the chance to see because it is quite delightful. An advert, yes, but completely charming. It WILL make you want to take up the banjo-ukelele and without even mentioning George Formby. Thank you for that Bob.

You can, you know. You can gain a bit yourself by moving the screwhole in the rest off to one side a bit and you can gain a bit more by redrilling, and perhaps moving the supporting post too; if you get carried away you may end up with the old holes showing but given the choice between that and not being able to play as well, I know what I'd do. Talk to your fixer next time you go near him perhaps? I use it like that; I'd have said negative implications only came from the context, not that they were implicit in the word.

Oh. Do you have a presence on gong.net? Probably should.

I stayed there earlier this year; a particularly charming place. Lots of delightful old buildings and decent pubs. Too small to interest the supermarket chains but big enough to still maintain a real highstreet with proper shops and real shopkeepers. And they make decent cider locally. I was most taken with it. Just down the road from Malvern and the Morgan factory too but they were on holiday (damn) I bought a superb gong there for £20. Rank Organisation quality. Consequently it weighs a ton and was left behind in favour of lots of bits of Morgan and Triumph. Next year. Didn't see any morris dancers though, or even realise it is important in that field.

Yes popping over for a beer would be complex and expensive, so thank you but another time. Glad I could help anyway. We are all told NEVER touch that clamp; just to check the screws are very tight...You move the reed by main force; perhaps then you just check the clamp screws are STILL tight. I'd guess Steve is thinking that you will have done well to get the reed back to exactly the same free length it was before. This does happen occasionally; they wriggle in their fastenings and it is as you found damned annoying. I don't see how the fit of 2 bits of metal is affected by humidity, I think it's just cussedness. Reeds loosening in reed pans is easier to believe. So go on then David, what sort of stuff are you recording?

Hope this isn't too late. Work out which notes are causing the trouble and whether 'in' or 'out'. Open her up. Work out which REEDS are causing the trouble. See if either has come loose in its groove. If so push back in firmly. If it doesn't grip scrounge a fag paper and a pair of decent scissors and use it to shim it a bit. If they were loose that was probably it cured. If not I'd expect a tongue to have shifted sideways in its frame. Take out one of the problem children and hold it up to the light. Can you see a fine gap all the way round? Use a pencil to push the reed down. Does it pass through the slot cleanly? At this point I have an old fashioned razer blade for the next step; you will need to improvise; you might even get away with thin paper. Put the blade vertically into the shoe, next to the tongue. With your pencil press the tongue down; it will be forced to move across from the shoe wall to accomodate the blade. Finis. (well it may take a little trial and error to sort it out in the field but it should be something along those lines.

I'd agree with that except as long as you do the research (huge amounts of info here and linked to here) and you have very long suffering and reasonably alert relations I don't see why you shouldn't have a go. Remember if they foul up you'll probably be honour bound to pay up anyway. You could do the initial searching. After Xmas (especially when the credit card bill comes in) is a good time for keen bargains; everyone is broke. And don't let them post it until after Xmas anyway unless they are very fast off the mark or it'll sit Heaven knows where for ages in transit.

He didn't want my music and I couldn't think of anything else to offer.

If I've read this right you all seem to have deduced that he might be a rogue because he's not taking Paypal. Paypal can be a dreadful thing if you are a seller; the British Ebay's requirement that there is a Paypal option has considerably reduced the amount I use them for starters; I find other ways to offload things where I can. From a seller's point of view Paypal gets you instant payment. However then they take a huge percentage cut; (more than if the buyer used a credit card); there are numerous tales of arbitrary judgements in favour of stupid or sly 'purchasers' getting the system to give them their money back when a refund isn't really warranted. Their rules are Byzantine if you are doing anything slightly out of the ordinary. (remember that fiddle they wanted cut up?) I once tried to get a head office address out of them and totally failed; they don't want correspondance, or even for you to know which country they are based in. You can spend a lot of time filling in pages only to get fed back to the start because you clicked the wrong box. Paypal works well for low value items. The classic car boot sale tat is, in fairness to Paypal, what it was probably really set up to deal with. The seller gets paid before the buyer loses interest and forgets; the value means that everyone can live with an arbitrary arbitration even if it is clumsy and there is less incentive to use the system to chisel sellers; it's hardly worth the return. But when it gets to the high value items like a concertina for instance, it doesn't matter that they are making 100 or 1000 times the money the crude rules and high costs are still applied and I know I'm not the only one on C net who merrily loathes them, and is deeply suspicious of them to boot. The company is indeed the vile spawn of its ill-favoured parent Ebay. Hah! Enjoyed that. Anyway; ranting aside, a seller wanting to avoid using Paypal for a high value item means nothing; it doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's doing either. If anyone knows Chris Algar I'd suggest they buy him a pint or 2 and then get him going on the subject. He's clearly come to terms with wading in the saltwater crocodile territory that is Paypal and I bet his private thoughts on it would make amusing reading!

Same here.

I agree - there appear ti be soime issues withn the reeds - they look to have been scraped, and the tips appear to have deep indentations., If this is the case, the reeds may well be shot. A Bb instrument that someone has tried to force up to C perhaps? I know of one well known fettler who killed a big duet trying to do that. Thank heavens it's only a Crane. Right I'm off for the long weekend....Bye...

Hallo George; that's a 'how long is a piece of string' question, impossible to answer without details. Post some pictures and ask again; preferably having double checked the number as well. Lachenals (like other makers) made different models of concertina. Some are worth a few hundred, a few (not usually 48 key ones, don't get your hopes up) might get into the thousands and this is before you consider condition. Very few instruments are so bad they have to be scrapped but repairs can mount up. So, pictures please.

1) We're talking one of those big music bindings with thin covers, not an Alastair Maclean type thing but still looks fundamentally made the same way. 2) Dunno, that was my contribution to having a flyer, but I was assuming Richard would have a few discs at least in with the deal so it wouldn't be completely useless!

Has anyone the dots or abc for these? I have not heard them since undergrad so many years ago and have longed for them since. They're all there to take, FOC, on the Petrucci Library. Hurrah!

OK I'll put in a bid. I will swap you a paperback Augener's edition of MOORE Complete Irish Melodies ("Price 10/- Net") the only date I can see on it is a preface dated 1859 but I suspect it's perhaps 80 or 100 years old; it's in good order, not pristine but no loose or missing pages or damage apart from it looks like it's been in a book case and the spine is a bit dogeared at top and bottom; it's not structural though. there are about 150 songs all with full piano acc. If this is a vast rarity you're ahead; I haven't checked; it seemed like it might be something special but it's not my sort of thing. AND a copy of Francis and Day's Pocket Book Of Folk Songs For Anglo Chromatic Concertina. c1966. Another 20 songs this time rather basic; words, tune, a bass line and annotated chords (and guitar tabs strangely. I wonder if F&D's Pochet Book etc but 'For The Guitar' instead was exactly the same apart from the cover?). Definitely not my sort of thing. You pay your post and I'll pay mine. Your turn...

Could you make them Geoff? Drill a hole the size of the rivet shank through a piece of scrap metal and put a slot in one side so you you can grip a piece of the right sized rod in it in a vice. Bifurcate the end (jumior hacksaw and needle file). Turn it over in the gripping device, hacksaw to length and mushroom the head with a small ball pein. You don't need dozens after all.

1920's Wheatstone aeola Crane with a half decent range? Must be almost unique I'd have thought. If I played Crane I'd be contacting Beelzebub to arrange easy terms secured against my soul...

Yes very impressive. A Kate Bush song, of course. Not what I was expecting but instantly recogniseable. A unique take on it and extremely effective, I thought.

Yes well done. I look forward to you finding some creative uses for it.

Damn right but I didn't mention that because I assumed that was normal for the genre. Mine are flat as we speak; it does stop me using it. I don't do battle with Sal's filing system for things like new batteries when I should and in next to no time it's 'Oh blast, forgot the batteries were flat. Well I'll record it next time then...' I'll go and change them now. Well I'll just check my emails first. And get a jumper; the temperature's dropping. Oh, the new turf needs watering...