Stephen Chambers

I too have always found that dubious since, like I said, most Irish button accordion players had yet to work out how to play their instruments (in various key systems) in "concert pitch" D, G and A. But, for that matter, were "concert pitch" G chanters for Northumbrian pipes being made, let alone in general use, then? My past experiences have always been with sets that were pitched between F and F#...

No, you could never buy them in DIY shops. They have always been made specially for concertinas. I see there is another type, which might be suitable (depending on the diameters of the thread and the knurled top - what sizes are they?), on that website: https://www.yodobashi.com/product/100000001001931661/ I have found I can get suitable ones, in brass or stainless steel, by post from a UK supplier, but they have a metric M3 thread and can only be bought in packs of 50.

You'll find a lot about the subject in this post from 2004: https://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?/topic/1807-piano-accordions/&do=findComment&comment=17264

Oh, but there was Daniel, a century earlier in fact - in that Bastari officially started out in 1952 (rather than 1949, which Dr. Marcello Bastari said in that interview). Before accordion manufacturing started in Italy pioneers of the business, such as Giacomo Alunni from Nocera Umbra in 1850, Giovanni Cingolani from Recanati in 1856, and Lorenzo Ploner from Trieste in 1862, started making concertinas.

Steve Dickinson would have used brass because it's the best material for concertina springs. I find there's too much resistance in steel or phosphor-bronze.

Yes, that's what I thought it would be like. Similarly tropicalised "campaign furniture" was made too, generally collapsible, or stacking, typically for army officers, missionaries and colonials.

That's a Rock Chidley (1825-94) baritone English-system concertina, made by the grand-uncle of Kenneth Vernon Chidley (1892-1964) who devised the Chidley-system duet that's the subject of this thread.

Yes, they appear to have used aluminium for the long levers that needed to be bent to get around buttons that were in their path.

They're made in China and similar to the Wren, or Scarlatti, etc.

Golly, I haven't seen a "Manchester board" since the early '70s, when I was a student there myself...

They look far too smooth, artificial, and uniform in colour, for them to be the roughly turned, pitted surfaced, bone used for buttons in these cheap models of Lachenal.

That would make it from 1927 then, when casein plastic first became available in rod form and Lachenal's started to use Erinoid (casein) to make concertina buttons, and before they changed to using black and gold Art Deco bellows papers in their final years.

I have an 1850's Wheatstone English concertina that was played on the light cruiser H.M.S. Isis, also deployed off Ireland, as well as in the Atlantic, in 1914-16. Whilst Jacqueline McCarthy has the semi-miniature 22-key Wheatstone Anglo that was made for Ken Loveless in his Navy days. In a British seafaring context, English-made concertinas seem to have been played mostly in the Royal Navy.

Only your link is to the "the-saleroom.com" website, not Gardiner Houlgate's. The auctioneer's own website lists prices realised, £3,400 in this case: https://auctions.gardinerhoulgate.co.uk/catalogue/lot/08c1854fb60b02fd8866697280c9feb6/63b778f7668dabe928d3800924a99077/musical-instruments-lot-1534/

Yes. No. I'm afraid that ledger is missing, quite likely burned in Boosey & Hawkes' bonfire - along with Wheatstone's stock of sheet music etc. Fortunately Harry Minting saved what he could.

This is the latest news of Don Nichols:

The best estimate is late in 1905.

It's more than enough money for a pig in a poke...

They're not supposed to be permanently fixed in RogerT, but I'll warn that they have sometimes become so, through rust - so that they will break off flush with the reed frame, if you try to turn them... 😕

Thanks, I thought it would still be Louis Lachenal. Only it's an additional point of reference for the Lachenal dating project.

It was made about 1873 then, around the time the firm's name changed from Louis Lachenal to Lachenal & Co. - so I'd be very interested to learn which formulation of the Lachenal name it is, if you'd like to share that...

The Salvation Army, and the concertina makers, were using what was then the commonest pitch in Britain Fred, which was half a semitone sharp of 440. Though it's not so much a question of pitch, but of key. Your 36-key was made as a transposing instrument, to play in the key of Bb when fingered as though it was in C. So the reeds must have been tuned up by a semitone and a half, from high pitch Bb to 440 pitch C.

Yes indeed, it would also help explain the bigger chambering, and longer reeds. I guess I must have posted while fred v was editing his post and adding that information...

I see there was a pair of them, with consecutive serial numbers, made together in 1929 and, though the ledger entry doesn't mention it, it has the Edeophone-like cut-outs between the buttons that seem to sometimes be associated with the designation "81 fret" in descriptions.

It's like I suspected then, bigger chambering and bigger reeds.