Martin Essery

A friend visited and was expressing how long it was since we last met and I responded, "It must have been several concertinas ago!" 😄

Can I place an order? I have a reed organ that was sold as playable, but is not, so I could harvest the reeds 🙂

I am! 🙂 But he makes the coffin shape, not the regular hexagon, which I would prefer. Mind you, he seems to be the only option to get my hands on one in less than two years 😄

Thank you so much, that is a great help, I wonder who I can get to make one? 🙂

I am trying to work out if Cormac's 'bass' is the normal G/D, or whether it is a 'contra-bass' in C/G? I have not come to a conclusion yet, can anyone do better?

Does anyone know what Cormac is playing here? Whatever it is, I want one!

Page 9 in the Rutterford Tutor 🙂 Rutterford-Duet-Concertina-Tutor-FourthEd.pdf I bought it to play the Bach cello works at pitch. Long way to go yet.

Excellent, so, even though a lesser quality, how can Startone make a concertina with 12,000 moving parts for 850 quid?

If we are into parts count, then it is 12,000 for a big accordion. They may have more space, but have a lot more moving bits too. I will accept the market forces argument though, and economy of scale. If this Startone tunes out to be even vaguely decent, I shall enquire if they want to start making concertinas, the cheap ones on the market that I have tried are unplayable!

Yet he does that all day every day for years and stillhas all his fingers 😄 Accidents only happen to people not paying attention, and no amount of safety procedures and equipment is going to stop that.

I thought I would reawaken this thread, as I am about to put my money where my mouth is. I played accordion in my youth and am curious how much has changed for me in the half a century since, but do not want to commit multiple thousands for a decent accordion just to satisfy my curiosity. So, I am getting a 120 IV bass Startone from Thomann's, 850 quid. So for the price of a top of the range Stagi, I get this monster. Now I am not expecting anything fantastic for sure, but I am expecting it to be playable. Thomann is a large company, also selling some decent stuff, and this comes with a 30 day money back offer, and 3 years warranty, so it would seem foolish of them to be selling these if they were complete garbage. I am not expecting the best tone, but I am expecting to be able to play music. Let me compare: there are 41 treble keys, and just one bank of reeds is more than the Stagi, but there are 4 banks of reeds selectable in 11 different sets plus two repeats, plus a master control, so, reed wise, already worth 4 concertinas! Then there is the 120 bass with another 4 banks of reeds, selectable in 7 different sets. Although 120 bass is not 120 reeds, that is still a lot of complex mechanism. Is Stagi a fair comparison? Maybe a cheap Chinese concertina for a couple of hundred quid would be better? But this instrument still has way more in it than 8 concertinas. When I first wrote this post, some were saying you could not get an accordion for the price of a concertina, well, here it is. It was also pointed out that economy of scale would bring the price down, but, really, that much? If this company was to make a concertina, I wonder how much it would cost? Already paid for, awaiting delivery, but sharing my thoughts ahead of time. Maybe, I should rephrase the question to, why are concertinas so expensive?

If I feel overwhelmed by the MacCann pattern, I look at a bandoneon and feel much better 😄

I am really hoping it was only oriented thus for the photos. Buying off the net from non-concertinists is always a gamble, but where is the fun in certainty? 😄 I am buying with the expectation of having to repair, then I can feel all cheerful if I do not have to.

Thank you for the response. You are indeed right, and I have spent much time staring at the charts 😄 Part of me would like one of each, excep the 62 which, for me has little point. However, I already have a 57 Edeophone Mac waiting for parts, and for me, the 55 going up that extra 4th to the top C is more important than the lower right hand end. Although it is a 'duet', I am actually going to be digging into the classical repertoires of violins, flutes, recorders, clarinets, ... so the cross over is not radically important. When I get them functioning, I shall spend time playing and see which I am more comfortable with. Maybe I will keep both, maybe I will exit one and get a 67. I already have two 81s to choose between when I get them both fettled, so a middle sized 67 might be good. Need more experience as only just starting with MacCanns. Exciting journey 🙂 I did try the English system, but splitting my brain in two was not comfortable for me, and once I got used to the pattern, felt more at home on the MacCann, except for that D#. I mean, what did he do wrong to be left out of the party? 😄

Thank you all so much for your advice and encouragement ❤️ I am buying off the net, a Wheatstone MacCann 55 on ebay, and have already found that a non concertinists assertion that "it works" is absolutely no guaranteed it is a playable instrument 😄 So, always a gamble. However, I have spent a life as a goldsmith, craftsman, and musician, tuning my concert harp every day, so I am pretty sure I can repair and tune a concertina. I am about to find out 😄 No repair cost, just my time. You never know, if I turn out to be good at it and enjoy it, you may have a new repairer on the block 😄 I have found that supposedly professionally repaired instruments can still have ugly quirks, so the only way is to play for a while. Yes, I had already found I can sell them on if necessary, so not a lot of risk, but this is not really a collection, just looking for a concertina I can gel with, and that can take a few weeks of playing. I find the fun with concertinas is that they all have different purposes. I have a MacCann 81 because I wanted and needed that deep deep bass for certain music, Cello Suites for instance, but a 55/56 is going to be more convenient, say for violin concertos or Van Hoff recorder works. My excuse for needing more than one. I am a widower now, so do not have to justify my purchases, though I think I can hear faint tones of complaint from the 'other side'! 😄 Thank you again for the encouragement, I made an offer and have been accepted, should be here in a few days. Born 1914, as I already have a Big Mac, I think I shall call this one Little Mac 🙂 Do you guys (generic non-binary title 🙂 ) name your concertinas?

I am at that point of decision that I am sure a lot of you recognise. I have seen a concertina that I want, but do not need 😄 I would be fascinated to hear how others justify making the decision? I know the yearning will fade if I own it and it will just be another instrument, so, do I not buy and enjoy the yearning, or do I seek satisfaction and buy? What goes through your minds making such decisions?

I must admit to finding the scale of Eb a little crazy 😄

Oh yes, I found that. What impressed me as a lifelong musician is that the tutorials are more like other instrument instructions, through music rather than secret finger codes 😄 It seems that with a little practice, a lot of piano and organ music can be played on a MacCann, probably more than on other types of concertinas. Not sure if I explained that well. Most concertina books feel somehow alien to me, but I immediately felt at home with the MacCann books. I thought it was going to be crazy difficult to remember where all the notes are, but it is becoming more obvious each day.

Thank you, I changed the spelling in the title 🙂 Secret finger jumper huh? 😄

I am just starting out with my first McCann (by whatever spelling! 😄 ), and feel like I have just joined the smallest club in the world! I read somewhere that only around a thousand McCanns were made and many of those must have gone to concertina heaven by now. I counted through the ledgers, and it seems less than a hundred 81 button McCanns, such as mine, were made. I wanted the full range of notes and this is the only concertina that has that range. Any advice from McCann players on how to proceed? Do the 4 fingers stay on the 4 rows? It seems, like the English, that, say, playing C then G, you would need to twist the hand round to avoid jumping the finger. Is that right? My little fingers do not seem to work well. Can it be played with just three fingers, or should I just exercise a lot to get the pinkies working better? When I was looking at the pattern of notes visually, I saw, apart from a stray note or two, that there is an upper pattern and a lower pattern, with a cross over of patterns around the G. I thought that was going to be confusing, but now I have my fingers on the buttons, I see that, in the commonly played range, that change extends the 1324 pattern actually making it easier to play. Is there a McCann group?

Thank you, so great to see when it was born. Silly me, of course the number is in the photo when I blew it up 😄 Having a look through that book from 1923 to 1935, around 20 other 81 key instruments were made, so, I am guessing in total that around 100 must have been made. I wonder how many still survive?

Wow! A church organ in a box!

The 81 is already copious in its breadth. I wonder which 3 notes were important enough to make an 84?

I am awaiting receipt of an 81 key Aeola MacCann. What a behemoth! I shall name him Brutus Maximus 😄 I was wondering how many of that size were made? Is there a record? This one comes with the original purchase receipt for Feb. 1925. Is that 29980 the stock number? Where would I look to confirm when I have the instrument?

Well, I just bit the bullet and ordered a Wheatstone Aeola 81 key McCann. At least I won't be wanting for notes! I can try the system, if I do not like or feel a smaller instrument would suffice, I can trade in. Will let you know how I get on 🙂