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cocoa111 on eBay is Chris Algar. I thought that this had been established long ago.
Inventor.
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Goran Rahm who lives in Sweden is the man you should contact. He plays the English Concertina, and has written extensively in the I.C.A, Publications. I have met him on several occasions at Concertina Weekends in England, and I am sure there is not much he doesn't know about concertinas in Sweden.
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Wheatstone Crank & Hook action:
The first batch of 46 button Hayden duets were made just after Steve Dickenson had taken on an aprentice to work with him, and he was looking for extra work for him to do. I arrived at just the right moment with an order for ten to be made. Wheatstones had a set of tools to make the crank & hook action, which could be operated by anyone with only a minimum amount of instruction. This first batch of ten were all made using this action. It took in the end two years for the whole batch to be completed, by which time his aprentice had left. During this time Steve also made one or two 46 button Haydens for other buyers who may have specified rivetted action, and subsequent instruments would have been made with rivetted action anyway.
Bastari 46 button Concertinas:
There were actually two batches of ten made, plus the prototype sample making 21, I have no idea how many of these still survive.
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I was very sad to hear of the passing of Lou Killen. I first met him in 1961 at a folk event run by Tony Foxworthy as part of the University Arts Week in Newcastle upon Tyne. Tony told me about this wonderful new singer he had discovered. We (the King's College Morrismen) were performing Rapper, and later Lou came on and sung accompaning himself on the Banjo! He was truly a stunning singer.
Later that week there was a Film evening showing films made by the "Goons". We spotted each other in the queue and sat together. The films were absolutely appallingly awful, mostly out of focus; we agreed that the instrument they called a *Muckineese Battle Horn" was in fact a Serpent, (the instrument now played so ably by Colin Dipper). Afterwards we went out for a drink together, and that is when I started to get to know Lou.
He later introduced me to Jonny Handle another local singer, who played guitar and piano, and they were both starting to look at more traditional "English" instruments to explore for song accompaniment, such as concertinas and melodeons.
I left Newcastle around a year later but we ran into one another on infrequent occasions. At one event, by which time he had become a very compitent English concertina player I particularly remember him playing "The Lament for Auchrim" a tune quite unlike any other with long sustained but pulsed notes which I can only describe as the wailing of of women for their lost menfolk: in my mind I can hear him playing those notes now. Perhaps that is the slow air mentioned above.
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I was not refering to a 62 button Jeffries Duett, but a 44/45 button instrument of the 6"/6.25" size. The one that I saw on eBay, I am fairly certain was the same instrument that I had spotted on Chris's stall at Sidmouth about 6 months earlier.
Note that Gavin Atkin has been superbly playing a Jeffries Duet of this size for many years.
Inventor.
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The lack of an air button (with mechanism) suggests that it is probably a Jeffries Duett concertina. Testing the buttons as suggested above should confirm this.
I note that the last similar Jeffries Duet that was sold (on eBay), about a couple of years ago from a highly respected UK concertina dealer, went for £1800.
If it is an Anglo Concertina it should fetch more than that even in an unrestored state.
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Tom Jukes was the Musical Director of the West Country Concertina Players from it's very beginning over 30 years ago, until his death. I remember him bringing his Accordiophone along to a meeting on one occasion and playing it.
So far as I know the instrument went to another member of the WCCP who used to bring Tom from Basingstoke to the meetings. (I do know his name but will not put it on the website for security reasons)
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The 9mm between the rows is measured at a right angle to the lines through the centres of the buttons. If the rows have the slant that I reccomend then obviously measured at right angles to the hand rest this will be a little more. No doubt Mr Pythagoras will work it out for you if you really want to know.
The distance between buttons on English, Crane and Maccann above each other is usually 10mm, which makes it dificult to make the buttons any larger than 4mm dia.
With the distance of 12mm between the buttons you can make the buttons somewhat more comfortable size - 6mm or 6.35mm in the case of the Beaumont. This is a big advantage when you wish to play two adjacent buttons with one finger. Every (or almost every on the smaller instruments) Fourth and Fifth available on the instrument may be played with one finger.
So far as I know all Hayden Duets, with the exception of Stagi's, are made to the 16mm, 9mm, 12(+)mm standard.
Inventor
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I don't know if there may be any connection, but you might be interested to know that the Folk Song club mentioned above was started by (?Peter) Abnett who was a teacher at Maidstone Art College; where Peter Bellamy was an Art Student. Mr Abnett played a long-neck 5 string banjo and sung Bob Dylan songs (Hard Rain, Times Changing era). I am trying to remember, I think he also played a neck mounted harmonica like Bob Dylan, or perhaps that is false memory syndrome.
He brought along Peter Bellamy with him who sang a couple of songs, accompaniming himself on a guitar. One was Kosher Bailly, a typical student song of that time, and about the only student song that was just about respectable enough to be sung in a gathering of non-male students; together with another (I think) American folk song. The songs were nothing to write home about, but that distinctive voice you could never forget.
Inventor.
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I can and do read music from the tonic-solfa on a Hayden Duet, however I have never pushed this as it is not universally used. In addition (unlike the standard music notation), by itself it only gives the (relative) pitches of the notes and not the individual length of each note. For this you need in addition the "Tafetefe" notation which I was also taught along with the tonic-solfa at Primary School, but have never found in any music book which also gave the tune in tonic-solfa.
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In reply to Anglo-Irishmans earlier enquiry about doing something similar for the Crane Duet. You will find a diagram of just this in my "Duet Concertina Workshop Tutor", where the button pattern for the Crane duet has to be slightly distorted (less distorted if you have a Crabb Crane); and also (undistorted) for the Hayden Duet. It is not possible to do something similar for either the Maccann or Jeffries duets.
Inventor.
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I knew Peter Bellamy from the early Sixties, and was at his first public performance at the opening night of the Rochester Folk Song Club.
A few years later he got an Anglo-concertina in London. His first attempts at playing the Anglo consisted pressing several adjacent buttons and simply waggleing it in and out. Although his later accompniments became a little more sophisticated it always retained this waggle quality. He was such a fine folk singer that any accompaniment was always secondary to that distinctive voice.
I have no idea how this might be done on an English Concertina; I couldn't do it on my Duet. If you really want to emulate the "Bellamy" style the best solution is to buy a cheap 20 button Anglo and experiment on the lines that I have described above.
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P.S the "GermanNameIForgot" - I like that idear as he never seems to have produced any!
Inventor
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The LINTON system is not strictly a duet system, but a split octave system (like the English concertina) A row of six buttons on the left hand side and a corresponding row of six buttons on the right hand play between them all the notes of a chromatic octave but they are not in semitone order.
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Regards Concertina FAQ i think it is about time they updated their information about the Number of Hayden Duets in existance. It must be at least 30 years since I may have said there were about 60 Hayden Duets in existance. Each batch of Wim Wakkers "Elise" is 50 instruments and he produces several batches every year.
It is well worth looking at Wim Wakkers beginner instruments - the JACKIE (English system) ROCHELLE (Anglo system) and ELISE (Hayden duet system). Not only are these inexpensive and very good value for the money but he offers an upgrade path for better quality instruments at no loss on your original perchase.
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I am very pleased to see that Judy is getting notes on both hands as soon as possible. This is why I wrote this into my little Duet tutor right from the first page, even inventing and modyfying tunes to get only 1, 2, 3, & 4 notes on both hands at once. Wim Wakker also naturally does this in his Tutor for the Elise.
On another matter I tryed very hard to keep the instruments as standard as possible, however as I am not a manufacturer or maker this has been very dificult.
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On my larger Hayden Concertina I had the natural button tops made with a white material, and the sharps and flats made with a black material. I am sure I suggested this to Rich Morse. Had Button Box considered this option ?.
On the Bass of a Piano-accordion the Bass C is indented and some others have criss-cross patterns, might that be an option ?
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I do not give a specific fingering for the "Golden Hexagon", because I am a great believer in flexability. I recomend starting with the 234 because it strenthens up the little finger, and gives another less obvious option.
In my youth when I took up the melodeon, hardly anyone played them, so nobody told me that you were only supposed to use just the middle and fore fingers to play the Bass. There were two rows of 4 buttons one above the other, I had four fingers so I played the "G four" with my little finger and ring finger and the "D four" with my middle and index finger. As most of the tunes that I played were in G this strengthened my little finger quite considerably. It reminds me of Lewis Carols poem "You are old father William" - the muscular strength it gave to my little finger has lasted the rest of my life!
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This is in the Wheatstone 1844 Patent. Horniman Museum have one and a half instruments in this system, I didn't know any others existed.
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The Golden Hexagon
---(g") (a") (b")
(c") (d") (e") (f#")
---(g') (a') (b') (c#")
-----(d') (e') (f#')
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Regards tutors for the Hayden Duet, I would like to point players in 3 directions:
1) The "Elise" comes with a very usefull 50 page Tutor, with lots of diagrams, and a little bit on reading music.
It takes you through the early stages of with lots of usefull diagrams of the keyboard. Perhaps Wim Wakker might make this book available as a stand alone item ?
2) When Hayden Duets first became available I started doing a series of tutorials for several people (up to about 9) who had taken up the system; we used to meet on several occasions a year. Most of them asked specifically about how to use the Left Hand. So over a period I produced a series of sheets of music. One of the problems that beginners encountered was reading the Bass Staff, so I simply wrote the left hand an octave down in what English Concertina players know as the "Baritone" staff. These sheets were combined together to form a little book which is available from the "West Country Concertina Players", and you will also find it on the web on the "Maccann Duet" site. As the sheets always came with me as well I simply showed pupils where to put their fingers on the instruments. I will come back to this later, to expand it further.
3) I had noticed over the years on my duet that a very large number of Traditional tunes used what I called the "Golden Hexagon" of buttons. 3, 4, 4, 3. (I will write this out later as I am not sure if it will print out well). And selected a good number of tunes which used only these 14 buttons. Then at Sidmouth I picked a book and to my surprise found that another person had discovered the same set of 14 notes. This is "Easy Peasy Tunes" by Dave Mallinson; I cannot more highly reccomend this book for beginners and improvers.
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The "layered reedpan" has been used before in the "Hohner Preciosa". These are minature button accordions, and extremely loud.
These were a 2 voice accordion; the reeds on the two adjacent (long and short) reedpans were tuned to almost the same note and always sounded together. I suspect that the timbre of the two voices may be different, which could cause a problem if you were using them individually to play different notes.
"Ukebert" who writes extensively on "melodeon.net" might know the answer to that, as he has a "Preciosa", which incidentally has a Bass converted to a very basic "Hayden system". He has gone deeply into the structure of button accordions, and has writen about them on his personal website.
The darker section of your button diagram is almost the same as the Bandoneon style concertinas that I had made by Bastari some 30 years ago, these were a 2 voice (octaves) instrument and came out at an 8 inch square instrument; the reeds were set up in the conventional reed block form as is used normally in accordions. Maybe this is a larger instrument than you envisage?
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I am always pleased to hear of anyone who is interested in building Hayden Duetts. Wellcome to Concertina Net. On the internet for security reasons I prefer to remain anonymous but you can probably work out that I am neither Mr Wheatstone, or Herr Eulig and most certainly not "Professor" Maccann.
I have studied Accordions, Bandoneons, and Concertinas for many years, and have designed and helped in the design of several Hayden Duetts. I would be very pleased to help you in any way I can.
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Congratulations to Button Box for finally bringing out a Hayden Duet. It must be over 20 years since Rich Morse, Doug & Dana visited me to discuss the project. I know that Rich was especially keen to include the key of Bb into the set of "easy-peasy" keys, especially for the American market.
The instrument nicely fills the gap between the 42/46 button and 65/68 button instruments.
Inventor.
Wanted: Concertina Case
in Buy & Sell
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Why don't you pop along to Colin Dipper's ? He always seems to have several second hand cases knocking about.
Inventor.