Jake Middleton-Metcalfe

The tunes are the True Joak, the White Joak, the Yellow Joak and finally the hard to track down Blue Joak. I make that all in all a pale green Joak when combined. I hope you enjoy the video these are some of my favourite tunes from my youth, as would be heard in the streets of Hertford and the surrounding area when I used to go busking as a teenager with my melodeon. I would have included the black joak but the set gets somewhat long then.

What I should do is record some different tunes on each instrument, and post them on here and ask people to guess.

It sounds like we came to the same conclusion. I have been listening to the recording I made and at points in the tune there do appear to be subtle differences but it is very very subtle. What do you make of this recording? concertinas.mp3

I had the chance recently to compare two instruments of the same maker, same design and same materials except the ends were wooden on one and metal on the other. Honestly you would be hard pressed to tell the difference in sound. This sort of flies in the face of what I took to be true but that is what I noticed, it is very very rare to have two instruments identical in every aspect apart from the material of the ends in the same place but I can guarantee these instruments were both identical apart from that. At a guess I would have said that the amount of gap in the fretwork is more important than the material of the fretwork but that is a guess and has not been scientifically studied in any way. I have made a recording I will upload it at some point and you can make up your own mind.

if you get a tuner - or a tuner app on your computer or phone and get some way of sounding the reeds you can work out what pitch each of the reeds are. Then look at this chart of a 30 key Wheatstone anglo, only looking at the bottom two rows: https://concertina.info/tina.faq/images/finger3.htm With that information you can work out what reed and reedblock is supposed to go where. Good luck with the project, I hope it goes well.

Its all on their website here: http://suttnerconcertinas.com/ordering/ Wait times are quoted on the page I linked. Best of luck I hope you find something to suit you.

So far so good, we look forwards to what you draw. I hope to see you at consairtin again one day.

With a Suttner concertina your life will probably be made rather easier, they are good. The reason I say that is that although Jeffries made very good instruments, those instruments have suffered the ravages of time and hard use. Any Jeffries instrument will have been worked on outside the original business that made it by this point and sadly in many cases by people who don't necessarily have the skill of the original manufacturer which means you have some of these instruments being in good nick and others really not so good nick. It is a minefield. I don't know if it was always like that or not. I am not saying its not worth pursuing a good Jeffries but by comparison a Suttner is going to be reliably made to a certain high standard.

actually I have not seen that exact paper pattern one. It looks similar to other early patterns but the colours are different. Also it looks a different shape. Are those deep fold bellows? As in - is it anything over 1" deep? Its not bad really, I wonder if it was that colour originally though, some of those papers degrade over time - the typical one being Jeffries papers going green I have seen happening a few times. In any case I like the gold and dark red, it reminds me of a local and very old theatre! Best wishes and happy new year Henrik! It has been a while.

This is really really cool. Actually I hope one day to learn the 40 key C/G system (all I play I do so on a G/D 34 key). I have saved the link as it looks quite handy to help one think about arrangements and chord choices.

He always has used brass as far as I know.

Thank you, we have been playing local ceilidhs and events for some years but only recently managed to record a few bits. We hope to record more this year.

I would recommend trying to grip that very small amount of protruding thread with some very small pliers and just wind it out.

Also its known as drops of brandy, it seems it has many names!

Me, my wife and father in law recorded some of our music. Here is a set of three of our favourite slip jigs from the John Clare collection, which is the focus of our repertoire as a band, we just really love the John Clare collection. The tunes played in this recording are: Grinders, Roodlum Irish, and Drops of Drink. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo846PPHbW0&ab_channel=ChloeMiddleton-Metcalfe We hope you enjoy it! The concertina used on this recording was one of my own, a G/D 34 key.

I am sure you could purchase new ones from C.Wheatstone and Co direct.

That is good to know, thanks for sharing your findings.

It does sound weather related to me and as mike says possibly temperature related too. Concertinas generally don't like overly humid environments and the resulting expansion of wood that will happen. I have had similar experiences - though you normally have to push it a bit far to cause a problem. Once I played a set for a canal festival, it rained. I was playing my concertina in the rain next to a canal on a very muddy towpath and a reed started buzzing a bit and a button even started sticking... well I was sort of asking for it really in that situation.😆 As in your case I went home, put the instrument away and it was fine the next day, never again did I have the problem. The above situation is a pretty extreme environment to try to play any concertina in. I would just put it down to weather and not worry about it too much. I cant think of anything you could have done other than not to play it in that environment.

It can be really hard to advise without having it in my hands but that lever looks a little short - there is always a possibility that the pad needs a strap over the leather nut. Sometimes pads can catch on their pad holes or nearby pads if the lever is short and the button is released very quickly. Adding a strap stops this happening. I'm not saying that is definitely the problem it could well be some of the other things others suggest.

I like the black with the bloodwood Alex, its nice to have that contrast, it rather lifts it. totally black instruments can sometimes be a bit Indistinct visually I think.

I found an old print out of St Bernard's waltz which I was given at a session about 10 years ago and spent a few evenings learning it. Very fun tune, quite tricky to balance on anglo with an accompaniment as the melody goes quite low but the challenge was fun, I hope to upload a video soon.

really great to hear this, I have not heard this tune before, very developed arrangement, well done.

Phoenix Anglo by Mcneela? I think that is probably a step up in quality from the Jackie which would explain you getting on with it better. Comparable English models in the same price category would probably be something like a Morse Albion or Andrew Norman English concertina. To be honest though I would recommend just staying with the Anglo - you can play smoothly with practice on that system, you just have to pay attention to where the repeat notes are on the keyboard - many though not all of the notes are available in both directions, so you can adjust your playing of certain passages for a more legato feel. But that is just my opinion as an Anglo player. edit: in summary - I would say just more practice as opposed to wrong instrument.

hmm, its hard to say, what model of English did you have before? And what model of Anglo have you now? Some instruments are not as easy to play due to simply being made cheaply. With air button use on an Anglo it is a matter of practice. When I first started playing I would work out a tune like this: 1. learn the tune 2. work out the chords or otherwise accompanying harmonies 3. work out the best points to use the air button in anticipation of which parts of the tune might be 'on the push' for example. then 4 - go back to chords and think about the chords in relation to the use of the air button as it sometimes changes your approach. In time this process became not quite so laboured and dictatorial as that described above and you just learn to do it a bit more quickly and fluidly which is one of the joys of regular practice. I wish you all the best on your musical journey, but as for staying with Anglo or moving back to English its hard to advise on that without knowing if it was actually just the particular instrument you had which was causing the problem. - If you let us know the make and model of both of the instruments you tried - English and Anglo I maybe we could better advise you. But fair warning: sometimes English or Anglo questions are a can of worms, but its always worth discussing it in reference to your own particular desires as a musician.

C.Wheatstone and co use three reed scaling approaches - normal scale (the shortest reeds), best scale (longer than normal) and long scale (normally reserved for the likes of an aeola). All of these approaches to making the reeds will produce the same notes but the reeds are of different lengths. It sounds as if your 36 key English has maybe the next grade up in reed scaling, as to whether its best scale or long scale I don't know. To simplify it the general idea of this stuff: longer reeds = better reeds. You cant fit long scale into everything though. Maybe they cut down on the range of the 36k instrument so they could fit a better scale in there.