Hasse

Thanks for trying!!! It can be a pain with all these online meetings, especially when you have to keep track of participants and dividing people into several different groups during the day, tiredsome and frustrating at time... Looking forward to seeing you LIVE again

well, I'm so sorry sir! I was just very tired yesterday evening after a looong day at home in front of the computer attending several Teams and Zoom meeting all day, and I had just recently visited the site and did a fast scroll down so I simply didn't reflect any changes then. My barin was off!!! That's why I with a questionmark wondered if that might have been a mistake on the website since I know Jim very much prefer end of April. And JIm answered, even in a mail wnich I didn't notice in my spam box untill later to day. I'm not a perfect person, but do never ever mean to offend or be an idiot! Hope to see you in a session some day with a concertina and a good beer, less misunderstandings that way So I'm very sorry and apologize to everyone who might have been offended by me yesterday and know suddenly remember why I do not post here very often... 😉 So I'm of to bed, good night dear fellow concertina players Edit: worst case spelling errors ...

Hmm? I think that must be a mistake? Jim normally sticks to the end of April for the SSI weekend...

Yes, what a great weekend and thank you too!!! We rally had a great time, and I think I got that "Hemköps schottis" of yours now , even though my phone didn't manage to record it! I would certainly have been happy to see Daniel during this years SSI, he is such a nice guy and a good musician with lots of tunes in his fingers!!!! Hopefully you can persuade Daniel to join you next year! And thanks to Sebastian for the GREAT FANTASTIC food and too Jim for making it possible for such great weekend to happen!

BTW: You got yourself a D/G Erica at home haven’t you!? Maybe it time to bring it out of the closet so you can finally start getting real serious about playing free reed boxes …

Aah! Theo just beat me to it!!!

Edit: Look above at Theo's post!

Me too! Looking very much forward to seeing all you concertina-heads

hmmm!? Working on other peoples boxes? Didn't you just recently mail me saying you didn't have enough time to do any repair work on your boxes... Now I clearly understand why!!!! About your question: Knowing you I guess you have already checked the most obvious, but sometimes small things round the reed often need a second or third look to be detected, like - minor issues concerning the valve, the reed shoe itself, hardly visible micro cracks/wrapings that slip tiny amounts of air - all small things that can make a single reed sound a little and make you go crazy In these cases it's often the first checked obvious that turns out to be the problem after all. but with a tiny twist! BTW. Are you fixing this box in Denmark or up north in Jämtland? Because that could of course be the cause of this problem - change in climate - from dry to more humidity

Inspired by this thread I asked a fiddler to go a floor downstairs and then stay in the staircase to try and hear which instrument he heard most clearly while we practised: 3 fiddles, 1 viola, 1 guitar, 1 double bass and my concertina. The concertina and the double bass came out clearest, the fiddles, viola and the guitar seemed to be blured together, but in the same room the fiddles and the viola is dominating the sound picture.

Great Susi! Will Daniel also be dropping by this year? I will be bringing a new C#/D Luukinen box for him to have some fun with (gonna arrive next week! ) But he might not dare come because I borrowed (tortured) his fine fiddle last year!!? In that case tell him I promise to not even look at a fiddle during this years SSI... See ya!

This is very interesting, looking forward to a recorded sound test! For a while I’ve mainly been playing a very nice AP James Anglo with accordion reeds, and also on occasion been able to borrow a rosewood ended steel reed Lachenal, but recently got a Connor with concertina reeds. The interesting thing is that: When I brought the Connor to a session one of the fiddlers/melodeon players commented on the pleasant loud sound from the accordion reeds in my new concertina, he preferred that sound to the harsh concertina reeds in the AP James concertina…? I explained that the Connor was concertina reeded like the Lachenal I sometimes had been playing. He was surprised, because he had always assumed that the old mellow concertina had accordion reeds and the AP James more loud hard sound was concertina reeds…! Well, in my opinion the AP James is fare more mellow sounding that the Connor, the Lahcenal could maybe be slightly closer in sound to the AP James. But of course this fiddler doesn't ever listen to lots of live concertina playing, mainly my concertinas and recordings I guess, so his ears probably have been calibrated to accordion reed sound.

Thanks for posting this Stephen!

Well put: The need to know which came first and thereby trying to decide who invented what, is often a rather uninteresting aspect, if you regard an objects development over time. What’s interesting is often what came after the first invention, all aspects of further development, successful and unsuccessful. A lot of good inventions never became anything, no matter how good they were, because the skilled people that’s needed to see potential and improve the invention never turned up or the wrong people tried to make improvements… and just look what you risk ending up with = instruments like CBAs and PAs

Well, you might have already guessed from my previous post that I think/suspect that this is a thread on the road to nowhere... So many different stories and variations concerning this subject have turned up, and so many claims are around that THIS is the inventor. The reason for claiming just that is, as already stated in posts above, often based on a nationalistic perspective with the normal motivation of who made the first, biggest and best. To be hornest how interesting is it really to know what or who was first? How interesting are all these never ending and hard to proof discussions of who was first, that are going on for ever and ever. In this case it's about accordions/concertinas, it could have been airplanes, cars, light bulbs, pens or whatever. What’s interesting about this aspect of history of our history, it not really the subject itself, but more often is it the history of the people going through trouble, researching to find or (as in case with accordions I suspect) constructing an appropriate history.

I think one of many story goes that it was a german organ builder, Buschmann?, who more or less incidentally constructed the first accordion like instrument in 1822. A instrument with bellows to get a long even tone as a mean of tuning organ pipes, and shortly after his invention one-row accordions are supposed to have started to show upp. I don't now if this is just another accordion tale. But if this story is true then the one-row accordion might have come first or not?

Actually, I think Pete would prefer that nothing be named after him, and certainly not some grandiose man-made construction, no matter how useful. Pete was never about getting people to know the name "Pete Seeger"; he was about getting people interested and involved in the things he loved... the music, the Hudson River, the greater environment, freedom, equality, peace.... For those who feel a need to "honor" Pete in naming this new bridge (or anything else, for that matter), I think a much better name would be "Clearwater" or "Hudson". (The name "Peace Bridge" is already taken; it joins Canada and the US above Niagara Falls.) Well, it's not a building but: Just before high school one of my guitar playing friends got a banjo from a uncle of his, (if I remember this correctly), but the important thing is that the banjo was named "Pete" and it was apparently very important for his uncle that he kept referring to this banjo as "Pete". First my friend thought it was named after some old dog or cat of his uncle, so I still remember my friends lightning face when I met him at the local library with a Pete Seger LP under the arm, the banjo wasn't named after a dog at all! And if that banjo is still around I'm pretty sure some one is still calling it Pete...

Great Jim! The SSI is a very nice event, and in many ways definitely different from other event I attend the rest of the year. It's getting addictive I think, must be something in the water...

I'm sending you a PM!

Well, I don't know about real melodeon sound, pretty close though, I think the newer models might have better midi-sound. I mainly bought the Streb so I could practis silently late evenings when the kids gone to bed and the cold winter makes it impossible to heat my tiny workshop. But as a bonus it's great fun playing, (not as fun as the real deal though!!!), kind of different feel to bellows and keyboard. But I'll bring it so you can have a go yourself.

Besides concertinas, (of course ), I'm bringing my D/G and a C#/D and maybe my Streb. If I get the time to do some reedwork before friday I could bring a G/C. But bring your own G/C if you want to be sure to have a G/C around, then you are of course welcome to borrow my D/G or try to get on terms with the Streb...

I'm on the look out for yet another 30 key C/G Anglo, preferably Wheatstone/Lachenal layout and round Skåne and Sjælland, mainly because I would like to try out before buying. I'm interested in hearing whatever you got far sale, (can't be too picky round here), both concertina reeded and good hybrid Anglos are of interest to me. And price... well, first let me know what you got then!

Get a house with walk-in size wardrobe. I do have a very small small practise room/workshop outdoor, but it's still far too expensive to heat cold winters like this. So I use this small walk-in wardrobe, which only got available space at around 1x 1.30 m, but it really works rather well, at least for a periode...

Great Jim!!! Springtime and concertinas a perfect combination! I'm already looking forward to this years SSI

A nice relaxing weekend with lots of concertina playing and fellow concertina nerds, who can say no to that!?? One strange thing about the poll though, I started with first having looked at the poll to see the voting results and then it claimed that I had already voted? I must have messed up somehow, but the results pretty much covers what I would have voted anyway, besides the last options where I in the future if attending a SSI probably would prefer a early weekend, but well thats all in the future.