d.elliott

On Traditional concertinas, the very high reeds were often not valved, this could leave them breathy and weak sounding. The reason for not valving was that the reed would not start sounding as the valve choked air flow instead of opening. The solution was to clip the tip of the related valve to permit initial air flow when starting the reed. Yet there would be enough of the vent covered, on bellows reversal, to prevent breathiness or dual note sounding. You might wish to consider this for an experiment.

I follow Frank in this. I tend to leave the bulk of the old gasket in place and use the reed pan as described, just to space the bellows frame sections out better around the reed pan 'jig'. I then replace all the gasketing before fitting the bellows, I also use card as a shim under the new gasket if needed, The glue I use to repair the woodwork is PVA it works well with old animal glue traces. Then a light glue, gum Arabic, as I have it to hand, to attach the gasket chamois. This facilitates the removal of the gasket for access to plate nuts or re-packing by subsequent and future craftsmen.

On the English Bass, to save weight and improve responsiveness, the majority were single action. The reeds were big enough, and there was space to screw the reeds to the underside of an enclosed chamber section, there being no reed pan as such. The padboard formed one side of the chamber section, and the reeds being screwed onto the other. On some of the really big bass instruments a manifold block was fixed where a reed might be expected, this lead to a bigger chamber pipe which was mounted above the top of the other surface mounted reeds. These instruments are responsive, the constraint bei

Mayfair's are good instruments and a lot more maintainable than many accordion reeded instruments. I tend to feel that the price is a tad on the high side, it would need to have been serviced, all the tuning tweeked as needed etc to justify that sort of money

excellent news,

Well done Ciaran, nice site, easy to navigate and enough information on each instrument to give the prospective buyer a good idea about what they are choosing

There was usually a series of card shims between the top of the spacing pillar and the underside of the action box cover, often these get lost or omitted. It has nothing to do with any baffles as the material has to be incompressible to be effective. Baffles are nit dust filters, or screens. Their purpose is to attenuate or mute as necessary. Where gauze is fitted then it is intended to stop fibres, hair, even insect ingress. The number of pads and amount of felt work that I have seen that has been attacked by moth larvae is staggering. I agree that the action box screws sticking o

I cannot say that I have ever seen baffles as such being fitted to an Anglo. Lachenal used to fit a sort of fabric paper as a dark cherry red trim, and some sort of gauze could be fitted as a dust barrier. Baffles were fitted to English systems to modify tonality, and in some cases horseshoe shaped baffles, sometime spruce some times leather, I think sheepskin was popular to balance the sound energy of the deep notes against the upper end squeakers. So why do you want to fit baffles to your Anglo? Dave

A well respected Dutch Concertina player and Teacher is Paulina de Snoo, google her and try and make contact, she has done a lot to help concertina beginners, and will have a good handle on what is around.

A couple of thoughts: 1. how do you define a 'tutor' instrument? 2. there are variances between two instruments of the same model, in tone, responsiveness, and feel comparisons between models can only be general and need to be built up over a number of examples 3. I think that comparisons should be more about features and their broad brush characteristics, then it's up to each individual machine on it's merits. Often the Wheatstone cat. numbers defined the 'grade' of instrument rather than it's playing qualities. Like a car's go-faster stripes and leather

Wolf, a duller and less abrupt sound, softer in feel.

Valves can have an extraordinary effect on tuning and playability. They can mute notes, slow notes and flatten notes. but they tend not to click as much as 'plop' as they close on reversal of bellows. if they click I would probably think more about a loose reed that has not started to rattle yet.

Rod, that is what I think of as an aperture or window, some instruments had a piece of rod bent into a 'U' shape, inverted then both legs cut sharp. These are then pushed/ hammered? into the action board for the lever arms to hook under.

I have never tried to extend arms as you suggest, It sounds like you have the ferrous type of arms rather than the more common brass, that will make soldering even more problematical. I would use salvaged brass arms as I have many times before. Which type of pivot have you got, staple or aperture? and what state are they in? one concern might be that the wearing portion of the pivot post's inner face may be damaged and that the new or reclaimed arm my not be held true and thus be unstable. This in turn can give problems with the pads.

1mm drill bit is a bit large and a bit aggressive, I made a 'prong' out of a fine watch maker's screwdriver which is dressed to about 0.75mm. The watchmaker's screwdriver has the benefit of a rotating head and a pad to apply pressure through. Trying to get the old stub of the broken string out can do more harm than goog, I just leave it and put a new hole in the action plate beside the old one. Dave