David Barnert

Surely that’s what’s going on here (but with more than two): The Sacred Harp Quarantine Chorus - pg. 146 Hallelujah

Very nice. I’m isolating at home these days, but my wife is also home and is working. She’s the CFO of our local public TV and Radio station, and with the current state of finances she’s got some serious work to do, so I don’t get much time to play.

This seems to me the most plausible answer, yet. Can anybody confirm or refute that it is only present on instruments with more than 30 buttons?

I feel the same way. I’ve avoided FB this long. I’m not going to start now. Sorry, Jim.

We’re not on lockdown or quarantine here, but we might as well be. Everything’s closed or cancelled. I haven’t been out of the house all day (Saturday) and any plans I had for tomorrow have vanished.

Is this the kind of thing you’re looking for? https://youtu.be/wqwDnMXrY9Q

I’ve always seen it spelled “Garryowen.” The tune was used to great effect in the 1970 Dustin Hoffman film, “Little Big Man.”

It looks, from the web site, like the only 3D printed parts are the ends. Unlike the one from last autumn that Roger linked to.

Bob Tedrow, of Homewood Music used to have a service where he “Hot Rodded” Bastari Haydens, replacing the buttons, bushings, and other flimsy original parts. Several folks on these forums took him up on it (not I). Later, Tedrow (an Anglo player) started producing his own line of hybrid Haydens. My friend, George Davis (lived in Hudson, NY and then retired to New Jersey), had a 46-button Bastari Hayden. He died a few years ago. I don’t know what became of the instrument. Maybe you just bought it. There was also a guy from Rochester, NY who used to come to the Squeeze-In (I don’t remember his name) who had one.

Thank you all for your sound advice. As soon as I read Malcolm’s: ... I realized that MUST be it, as the chambers involved are all in one corner of the hexagon. Sure enough, when I took it apart again I found that the little triangular piece of wood that acts as a shelf and holds up that corner of the reed pan had come unglued. I have now glued it back in place and am waiting for the glue to dry (white school glue). I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to add a shim to the top surface of that piece of wood, as I tried to err on the side of gluing it too low rather than too high.

My 35-year-old (Dickinson) Wheatstone concertina is sick: a few adjacent notes bleed into each other. You press one key and two or three notes sound. On taking the side off, it is apparent that the chamois between the involved reed chambers is likely letting air leak from one chamber to another and could use replacing. So the question is: how do I replace it? How do I remove the existing chamois? Do I replace it with the kind of chamois you can buy for waxing cars? If not, where do I get the kind I need? What kind of glue do I use? Should I replace all the chamois on both sides or just where it’s causing problems (most of it looks to be in good shape)? Anything else I’m not considering? Or should I just take it to the Button Box and let them do it? Thanks in advance.

Yes, I have one that I still use as a spare. It plays very nicely, although the buttons stick through the endplates at all sorts of cockeyed angles. I’ve had to patch the bellows in numerous places and reinforce the insides with silicone caulk in the valleys to keep it from blowing out and I’ve had to replace the veneer on the ends. It’s the one on the right in this picture:

If it is “rustling and wheezing a bit” in addition to being out of tune, the problem may not be the tuning of the reed, but that air is leaking past it. If it were constructed like a classic English concertina, my first instinct would be to open it up and press the reed shoe firmly into its dovetail joint with my thumb, which would likely solve all the above problems. Stagis don’t have dovetail joints. I’m not sure how the reeds are held in place, but I’d want to see that whatever is holding it is good and secure before trying to retune the reed.

I have heard of a guy in the American southwest in the 1970s or so, when there was nobody playing concertina anywhere around. He acquired an anglo and taught himself to play it in a vacuum, only realizing years later when he finally met another anglo player that he was holding it upside down (with the left hand playing the higher notes and the right hand playing the lower notes).

My brother just sent me these ancient “Nancy” comics that a friend of his unearthed.