Hooves

The action on that one looks to be pretty well rusted. The black looks to me like mold. I can see at least 1 reed is misisng a valve, although it is a high one so perhaps it doesn't really need it. With ,my very limited concertina knowledge, I estimate at least 200 GBP to restore it. Any 2nd guesses?

Sorry gents, I thought you were discussing a different box. I have removed my original message to reduce any confusion.

Morgona I'm shocked! After reading your excitement and anticipation of getting your mini, and now its up on the block. I hope you still maintain your tiny tina page. Do you plan to find another mini or has the glamour faded into novelty?

Was the "duck-call" a novelty George Jones introduced? I saw another box on eBay that also had a duck call sound. I can imagine a clown playing such a thing, do you suppose any duck-hunters also play concertina... Musical theatre perhaps.

I had to go and read some more on ol' Charlie. I didn't realize he had actaully worked in his father's music shop. I would expect that he then would have been very exposed to music at "an early age", and he did have some inventions which dated back to roots in his teens. Personally, I find the concertina a wondeful microcosm of music. You can not help admire a man who continued inventing till he was in his seventies. However, notes on pyschology and neurology may be stretching it a bit. I've done a lot of research on artifiical neural networks, and they have been in use for quite some time now (ever use one of those hand writing recognition PDAs?). In some respects, the pads and levers look like neural network diagrams, (much like the game of "twister" with its colored circles and tangled limber extremeties) unfortunately the simialarity ends there. Still, he was a remarkable inventor.

So, are you saying you won't be able to learn to play your concertina because you didn't start when you were but a wee lad, and worked those digits into a neural frenzy? "by an early age" is rather vague. It makes sense that people who do not learn to "see" in the thier childhood would have problems developing depth perception, but then I think of this story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/06/...in1977730.shtml and then you need to re-think that arguement. AND ol Charlie didn't invent the concertina when he was but a wee lad, with a brain itching at new neural pathways, but rather as an adult - so there!

Can we hear a sound clip?

I was thinking of a reed I had seen that was a triangle cut in a single piece of wood, where the reed was as described "flush" with the reed plate. I found this web page with some information on "idioglottal" vs. "heteroglottal" reeds, the first being the flush kind, and the other the ones we see in the concertina and accordion. http://www.patmissin.com/history/whatis.html The article mentions the need for a resonating chamber for the idioglottal reed. Thanks for all the additional information.

Hello again oh ye agile gods of the twisted digits, I have a question about reeds: from everything Ive read so far on how reeds actually produce sound, it looks like a single reed can sound in both directions of air flow if the reed is centered in its pan. So, in English concertinas, of which I have only one with accordion waxed reeds, there are 2 reeds per button, one for each bellows direction, but it seems like it should be able to still work with just one 1 reed. I could be misunderstanding what is happening with the reeds. Perhaps its so you don't have a pause when changing directions, forcing the reed to stop and then sound again as the air changes direction. That makes sense to me. Are or were than any English system concertinas built with a single reed for each button, other than eraly prototypes?

Yes, you got to start somewhere. But with all the scams going on the Ebay feedback is your only way to filter out possible scams. A person with a 1000 sales could also rip you off, so even that is not always an adequate gauge. My Ebay account got hacked, and the bastard ran an auction under my account to sell "motorcycle parts". I had to talk to an eBay employee on the phone to get my account reactivated. Fortunately, they had caught the auction (they sent me an email asking me to validate my account) and ended it. As for me, no way would I buy something on eBay for 4K. In person perhaps, but not all the way across the world from someone who has no history of selling. I see lots of items go up on eBay for large starting prices. I can't imagine why if an item is worth that much you would choose eBay as the forum to sell it. How did people sell thier instruments before eBay? Ebay is convienent with a broad audience so I can see the usefulness of selling in that forum. But if you got 4K burning a hole in your pocket, and you trust some ad that shows up online, then hey its your money, do what you want with it.

I can't imagine anybody actually paying that much for anything sold by an auctioner with zero feedback. That tells me this person has never sold or bought anything at Ebay. I never buy anything from a seller with zero sales, let some other fool loose his hard earned cash. Although I admit you have to start somewhere, a 4K price tag is certainly one giant leap.

C/G/D sounds like a great idea, though I wonder sometimes if it wouldn't be just as easy to have 2 concertinas and go with one of the standard tunings. I myself have been recently looking more at Duets than alternate anglo tunings. But if you have to sacrafice a kidney to get your own touched-by-an-angel crafted box, why not get it however you like?

Actually for the Hooves tuning I was not considering being fully chromatic, I was using the reference to B/C (or C#/D) as an example of a possible alternate tuning that might yield advantages, and in those cases achieve chromaticism with only 2 rows. The Hooves tuning is designed to emphasize specific keys I find myself in all the time. Although not fully chromatic, C, D, and G are prominent, also I would imagine this would yield many duplicate notes which would find benefit. I had also considered C/A: my real posting should have been less balistic and raised the query "Why always a fith?" Now off to find an abused 20 button and put concept into practice - soon the masses will be flocking for a "Hooves' Tuned" tina.

All valid points lads, excuse an old fool his sarcasm. I will look for those advantages. And I will commission a nice C/D concertina. They can call it "Hooves" tuning.

Ok, so I see C/G, G/D, even D/A anglo tunings. And a job to cram in another row to make it sort of chromatic. Then I see the irish button accordion with one row of B and one of C and I have to ask, why not make anglo concertinas this way? Wouldn't that be fully chromatic with only 2 rows? Fumbling away, one row at a time, perhaps as a failing concertinist I do not appreciate the artistry of finger athletics. Those digits knuckled under by years of creative dexterity would scoff at such a thing. Why not C/D? For irish music wouldn't this be just dandy? You would have a nice solid C, a very accessible D, and lo and behold a G mixed in the works. No fussing about F# and no whining about losing D Dorian. Tradition be damned I say.

Bob and Colin, dare I ask the price of these beuties as I ponder the long painful waiting list?

And the guitarist in the photos isn't John Williams either Edit: Or is he?!?! Sorry, that is Dean McGraw (Guitar) with John Williams. Dean is on the Raven CD, but I'm not sure if they together constitute the band "Solas" or are both members of it (need to read some liner notes). I haven't bought the "Raven" CD yet, but alot of people confuse Ravens, Crows, and Black Birds, perhaps they should have named the CD "Magpie" and changed thier name to "Heckel and Jeckel". That would end all confusion, and perhaps attract a different audience...

Here are some photos of two different performances of John Williams. One shot is of John with his concertina in an informal "workshop", the other was a daytime concert with his guitarist.

Just got back from the Sebastopol Celtic festival in California. I got a chance to see John Williams play. Mostly he played his button accordion, but he did play a few tunes with his concertina (which looked to me to be a lachenal, but I suspect it is a custom job). He played several songs from his album "Steam" and with his guitarist played a few songs from his newest album "Raven", which I would have bought and got signed, but I was tapped out (I waisted 8$ on the worst fish n chips I have ever had). Although I took several photos, virtually none of the photos of John came out, just a blur of the metal end of his accordion, and couldn't get in close for a concertina shot, but it was still fun to see him there. ~Hooves

I bid on a Wheatstone that was described as "Unusually Smaller than Normal" or something like that. lots of people Bid, I got outbid, then the next day I got the 2nd chance offer at my highest bid, which was actaully several hundred pounds below the winning bid. I never bid a lot on Ebay auctions, as this has happend to me many times: I bid, I get outbid in the last few minutes of the auction, then I get an email saying I have a 2nd chance at my highest bid. So far I have never actaully done it because it looks pretty obvious to me somebody was jacking up the price. I had something like this happen once with a guitar, I turned it in and Ebay suspended the auctioner and his wife! She had bid repeatably on the item to max out my bid. Worse thing ever was recent, I fell for one of the Spoof emails, it looked like a standard message from Ebay (with a log in to go to "My Ebay"), and the person ran an add with my Ebay account to sell some motorcycle parts. Fortunately Ebay caught it but I had to actually talk to an Ebay representative on the phone to get my account re-activated.

I have almost given up looking for a smaller tina, I have also watched the Stagi go from $350 to now on some sites almost $600. With all the interest I'm surprised they are not more readily availble. Ebay seems to me to be a bad place to buy a concertina. Some of the best "antiques" I have ever found I found at thrift shops, including an old TS9 toaster I bought for 5$ and resold for a little over a hundred. I live in California, I dont imagine I will find many antique concertinas, but then again the gold rush may have brought in a bunch as I would think it would be easy to ship or pack. The Tedrow Zephyr looks to me to be exactly what you want, but at a price tag I'm guessing around $2K based on his other prices (not complaining, the instruments look incredible) that would probably cost about the same. On Morgana's Mini concertina site are some photos of a "Jones Miniature", thats what I'm trying to find, or one of the smaller Lachenals. But, I doubt very much a low price one will show up on Ebay. Hmmm, seems like a market niche that could be filled by an industrious concertina enthusiast. ~Hooves