Stephen Chambers

According to the latest data from the Lachenal dating project, #74307 would have been made in 1882.

Hmmm... "The GI with concertina and turtles" 😲

It seems to depict "the GI as a busker" - in that street musicians (especially Italian ones) were typically depicted as having a macaca/macaque monkey to help draw/entertain the crowd.

Well, the one who told me three weeks does have the advantage of using Wheatstone/Lachenal's tooling, but your experience may vary Chris...

In fact those are both the same project. There's been a lot of discussion on the topic here too on Facebook: Concertina technology

There is this one: https://www.facebook.com/Electronic-Concertina-683463138700300

It was a budget model of Lachenal (model No. 1 on this 1905 Price List: http://www.concertina.com/pricelists/lachenal/Lachenal-Pricelist-All-c1905.pdf) when it was made in 1914, but it should still play reasonably well if the Button Box restored it.

There have been other threads about this in the past, like: Never Play Next To A Fan :) Unintended tremolo Doppler Effect

I see that some of the ,,Mastertone" accordions that turn up in an image search say "Foreign" beneath the name, like this concertina label, but others actually say "Made in Germany" instead! Case closed... 😉

There are certainly people in the US who repair the related Chemnitzer concertinas. Take a look at this thread for ideas:

The style of the instrument, and the "imitation woodgrain" cardboard box, is strongly reminiscent of Klingenthal in Saxony, a town located right on the Czech border. The factories there weren't bombed, but were mostly destroyed by practices of the GDR (East German) regime.

You wouldn't get a 4-digit batch number. I think we need photos of the fretwork, lever action, and reeds to try to identify it.

I hadn't mentioned it yet because the OP has been talking about an inexpensive hybrid instrument with accordion reeds, but the construction of the reed-pans for a traditional-style instrument, to precisely fit tapered, dovetailed, reeds is also a major undertaking for a maker. To add a little perspective, it takes a skilled craftsman three weeks to make one concertina of traditional English construction, using expensive materials, tooling and machinery.

I'd recommend the Excelsior 72-bass, but none of the others - only it's actually £495 more expensive than the basic Suttner, which is of comparable quality. But previously you were talking about 120-bass, and an Excelsior one of those is £1,250 more expensive than Suttner's top model. The second-hand piano accordion market is a whole other ballgame, very much affected by declining interest in the instruments and an over-abundance of outmoded models that cost more to service than they are worth. I used to sell a lot of the original Rochelle model because I considered them to be the best starter model on the market, but I have yet to see a Rochelle 2 - however, I've seen nothing but praise in consumer reviews of them. Possibly there is something wrong with the instrument, or perhaps with your technique - bellows control/use of the wind key is hugely important on a diatonic instrument.

Let me introduce myself - recently retired, I started making and repairing musical instruments 54 years ago. In that time I've repaired/tuned/bought/sold a large quantity of concertinas, run music shops, attended music trade fairs on two continents, dealt with concertina makers in England, Germany and the USA, also with accordion manufacturers in Germany and Italy, and I know a lot about the workings of the musical instrument trade around the world. In my experience you won't find a decent new 120-bass piano accordion, built wholly in Europe by a reputable manufacturer, for less than £3,000 - and for that price you can get a new A1 model 30-key Anglo, handmade and of traditional English-style construction, from Jürgen Suttner in Germany! The only new piano accordions you can buy for the £499 price of a Rochelle 2 are cheap Chinese products with 48 (or less) basses, and I wouldn't recommend going near any of them with the proverbial bargepole... £4,250 (€5,000) will buy you Jürgen Suttner's top-of-the range TC 31-key Anglo.

The only kind of new 120-bass piano accordion you can buy for the price of a Rochelle 2 is going to be a very poor quality and inferior kind of instrument. Decent new piano accordions cost thousands of pounds, and professional-quality ones cost tens of thousands...

In fact the latest tweak of the database estimates duet serial numbers from 2267 to 2358 to be from 1903, which (purely on averages) might suggest 2277 was made in February 1903. However, we know that instruments were not finished in serial-number order (and sometimes years later!), so it's impossible to be definitive. The only way we could be positive about the completion date would be if Lachenal's factory ledgers came to light, but we don't even know (for a fact) if they kept any, let alone what might have become of them in the meantime...

It sounds like a very interesting instrument Shay, presumably made in order to solve the problem of the tone difference between the reeds on the inside row, compared with the rest of the instrument, from the more normal (parallel-chambered) Jeffries reed-pans. Are you coming to Miltown, and will you have it with you?

Yes, it's a Jeffries that was made by John Crabb. This model is more-commonly found with 26 keys and they have a very nice sound, but the price being asked for this 20-key one is utterly ludicrous.

#31844 is listed as a model No. 4 in the ledger, in which case the reed-pan will be of uniform depth all around and it could have been put into the bellows frames 'a "notch" ( 1/6th rotation ) away from alignment with the other side.' You can determine the correct alignment by ensuring that the R or L markings on both reed-pans and bellows frames are lined up with each other.

Dan Worrall's paper The Concertina at Sea: A History of a Nautical Icon can be viewed and/or downloaded here: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/3988437/the-concertina-at-sea-the-anglo-german-concertina

I think he's probably sometimes changing harmonica to get the accompanying chord he wants at that given moment, rather than for melodic reasons.

Playing with two (or more) tremolo-tuned harmonicas, in keys a semitone apart (thus making the combination of the two diatonic diatonic instruments into a chromatic one - like a B/C, C/C#, or B/C button accordion) seems to be quite the style in the Far East, and the Japanese Tombo firm (the manufacturers of the instruments played in the video) facilitates this by offering tremolo harmonicas in every key possible. Here's another video of the same player, performing The Blue Danube, on various combinations of harmonicas: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1k54y1t7rQ/?spm_id_from=autoNext

The image on the concertina appears to be a simplified version of what's on the label - I wonder if it was the maker's trade mark? The maker's label in your link, Daniel, is printed with the initials G. G. K. S., which probably stands for Gebrüder Gündel, Klingenthal, Saxony - a harmonica, accordion and concertina factory founded in 1872, and still operating in 1961. I have a copy of the 1903 Musical Opinion & Music Trade Review Directory that lists "Gundel, G. (Klingenthal).-Concertina maker. Sole agent: R. Hahn, 81 Milton St, EC" John Henry Ebblewhite's address on the box label of the eBay one, at 4&5, High Street, Aldgate, was where he was located from 1883 until his death in 1901, and his executors continued to run the business (under his name) there until 1916.

It's called the Windharmonika, or Aeolsharfe, and their origins go back 200 years, or more, and before the invention of the concertina. They've been revived in recent times: https://www.guriema.de/windharmonika.htm This is the Google translation of the German text: Aeolian instruments The idea is old and spread all over the world. The basic principle can already be observed in nature. When a vibratory material is set in motion by the wind, a specific sound event can occur. If leaf tongues are exposed to the influence of the wind, as in the case of the Aeolian harmonica, you get an instrument for the soloist nature. According to its categorical classification, the Aeolian or wind harmonica is one of the first autophones, mechanical instruments followed much later as relatives - such as the punched-tape-controlled pianolas. These instruments had their heyday in the Romantic period, but can still be found in the lists of a few instrument makers up until the beginning of this century. The following can be read in a catalog from the Adolf Klinger company, Reichenberg in Bohemia from 1912: "Aeolian instruments are those which are not made to sound by the hand of an artist, but speak of themselves by exposure to the effects of a natural current of air or wind. The music thus conjured up has a special appeal to every receptive mind and Depending on the nature of the various Aeolian instruments, resembles either the sympathetic chords of distant choirs and organ tones, or a lovely, melodic chime." Instruments of this type were probably built between 1920 and 1930 by the Seckendorf company in Markneukirchen. After more than 60 years, we rediscovered the wind harmonica. Based on old catalog illustrations and the memories of some older citizens, we have made a new and functional instrument within two years. In the meantime, this unusual instrument adorns many a roof in Germany. Among other things, a wind harmonica from our production can be admired on the roof of the musical instrument museum in Markneukirchen and on an old listed powder tower in Großschirma. Depending on the strength of the wind, the wind harmonica emits humming sounds, at first softly, like distant organ tones, which seem to be getting closer as the wind strength increases, becoming stronger and stronger until they finally ring out in full harmonic chords. The sheet metal parts are cut by hand, rounded, beaded and then soft soldered. The blade, which automatically turns the instrument in the direction of the wind, is also hand-driven. The reeds are made especially for us in the foam factory in Klingenthal. They are made of a special brass alloy and are ground in individually and riveted to a plate on one side. Therefore, when it is windy, they only react to pressure and not to pressure and tension as with the harmonica. The elaborate tuning (in A major) is done by hand. Due to the sensitivity of the individual reeds, only the lower tones speak at low wind speeds. The reed plate is weatherproof and set in a special aluminum frame. The body made of titanium zinc sheet metal is polished to a high gloss and coated with instrument paint. All other metal parts are chrome-plated. Wind harmonica No. 2000 Body made of titanium zinc sheet metal approx. 66 cm long, diameter of the bell 31 cm, weight approx. 4.8 kg, height of the structure max. 107 cm. The wind harmonica can be equipped with different attachments. Our standard attachment is the lyre. Depending on your wishes (for an extra charge), the following motifs are possible: pennants with the year or initials, dragon, compass rose or motifs according to personal suggestions.