Stephen Chambers
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Any thoughts on what this might be?
Stephen Chambers replied to Bill N's topic in Concertina History
Lachenal's were probably sending them to South Africa until they closed down in 1933 (and were taken over by Wheatstone's), thereafter there was only Crabb's and Wheatstone's (on a much bigger scale) to supply the market. The extended bellows were replacements that were made later in South Africa, the concertinas would have left their makers, in England, with only 5-, or 6-fold, bellows. -
A rare treat, on Facebook, the late Andrew Blakeney-Edwards playing Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" on his four-row, 51-key, Jeffries Anglo. https://www.facebook.com/222125851133214/videos/166924951820773
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I wonder if the lead digit might be a poorly stamped 2 that has been misread as a 5? Though (according to Dowright's calculations) 27473 would suggest a date of c.1887
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Hmmm, so now we seem to have two anomalous Maccann duet serial numbers that look like they might belong to the English system number sequence: 57473 (circa 1919) on a supposedly 1883 "Prototype" instrument and 43438 (circa 1905) on an instrument in the Wayne Collection at the Horniman Museum... However, the catalogue description of the latter contains a further anomaly in that it states that the instrument has a "Circular reed pan label: 'Lachenal & Co, 8 Lit James St, Grays Inn Road, WC, London'. Serial number: 43438." - and such re
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No, Paddy couldn't play it the "right way up" - he only borrowed (fellow button accordion player) Raymond Roland's one to try out, and it made more sense to him "upside-down". He always played it that way, and wasn't the sort to "show off".
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That's nothing! 😉 My old friend Paddy Hayes borrowed Raymond Roland's Wheatstone Anglo but (being a button box player) found it handier to play it upside down, so he could use his right hand on the low notes. He went in for a competition, and won it, finishing up qualifying for the All-Ireland Fleadh - and won that too!!! Here he is on a Jeffries, playing with "The Godfather" Brian Rooney on fiddle:
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Intriguing indeed! The Provisional Specification for Maccann's Patent, dated 11th March, 1884, states "They are made in either shape hexagonal or square with 39 to 58 keys." Whilst the Patent drawing shows a hexagonal instrument with the same button layout as this one, including the two offset buttons (one each side) which are given no note values - so quite likely they were for a whistle and squeaker on both. But the claimed serial number makes no sense for 1883 - perhaps there has been a misreading?
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Frankly, we've no way of knowing what Bastari were doing at any given time, but they seem to have frequently altered their designs, whether to try and make "improvements" or just to make their instruments less costly to manufacture. But you've reminded me of another (earlier?) "Wizard by Bastari" that I got going again last year for a friend. It's a 20-key one this time, and I don't know where it was sold originally (the only "provenance" is that it was found at a rubbish dump in County Clare!), and the lever mechanism is a more-complicated and (probably) e
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Whoops, that'll teach me to post in a hurry (we were just about to go out at the time), without looking hard enough at my source (which suggested it was for Ab/Eb, and I took it at face value) - though I never saw such a thing as a Jones Salvation Army 26-key in anything but Ab/Eb. The Salvation Army tutor book that I'm familiar with is H. H. Booth's 1888 Instructions for the Salvation Army Concertina (which I discovered on a research trip to the Bodleian Library, Oxford) that is basiclly a chord book for a 26-key Jones in Ab/Eb. But I guess the 1905 C/G diagram may have come as as
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This is the official Salvation Army 26-key layout, from their 1905 tutor book, so drop everything down by a semitone for G/D:
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Brass age hardening
Stephen Chambers replied to Ben Thackeray's topic in Instrument Construction & Repair
I went through a lot of the same thought processes myself 35 years ago, when I started tuning to Meantone after buying a copy of Charles A. Padgham's (then newly published) book The Well-Tempered Organ. But my conclusion (very much confirmed by examination of Jeffries' Anglos in unaltered original tuning) was that they were transposing instruments, and that (for example) if you wanted to play in flat keys you should get a Bb/F or Ab/Eb instrument that was intended for the job, and not expect those instruments to be perfectly in tune with (say) a "concert pitch" (Irish useage) C/G o -
I'm confused, and maybe others are too - what "corner fabric parts" do you mean? The accordion bellows tape that runs all around the bellows? Or the white bellows gussets, that should be made of leather, but have sometimes been made out of impregnated cloth? A picture could be worth a thousand words... The soundboard/action board, with the reeds on the back of it, should be attached to the ends of the instrument, not to the bellows frame, and it should lift off easily. The simplest answer, if you have easy access to one, might be to buy another Scholer of the
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Oh well, it was worth checking if there was a smudged name stamp there - it was unlikely, but by no means impossible. Before German concertina production shifted from the (expensive) industrial city of Chemnitz, where it was invented, to the (inexpensive) Vogtland region (especially Klingenthal), the only maker's marks you'll find were their pencilled signatures (sometimes) inside the ends. However, the pencil markings inside your great-grandmother's concertina are only the batch number 57 and D for Descant, and it'll be B for Bass in the other end.
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Am I seeing things, or does it have a name stamped underneath the end? It's very difficult to make out, but might it read F. A. Rauner? (They were the biggest factory at Klingenthal.)
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The reedpan is evidently from a typical 2-row French accordion, something similar to the one in this YouTube video:
