Steve Mansfield

Another vote for the cases The Music Room sell (the Acoustica ones). I've had one ever since I got my EC and it's perfectly sturdy enough for anything my everyday usage throws at it, including sessions, festivals, morris tours, a drunk standing on it at a concert for a better view because they thought I wouldn't mind, and packing it in the car for gigs with the concertina piled in with the PA and all the other gubbins. I've made it a snugger fit with a couple of beer towels to prevent any movement inside the case. I probably wouldn't entrust it to airport baggage handlers, but I don't think any hard case would give me sufficient confidence to do that!

Steve, despite all the CDs he's been involved in, I'm surprised to find only one YouTube which includes Robert's playing! I presume you mean solo clips, because there are quite a few of him playing in the trio with Nancy Kerr and James Fagan: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YDl4XVV2G7Q and http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mMRtH1EWpfA are both nice examples, and the 'Related Videos' links from either of those will turn up several others. Lovely stuff.

Another vote for Robert Harbron from me - I've obviously been aware of the EC ever since I got into playing traditional music in the late 70s, but Rob (particularly his lovely ensemble stuff with Dr Faustus) was the first player to make me think 'I want one of those!'

Here's the link, but I've drawn a blank: http://www.concertina.com/ledgers/lookup/index.htm Aha.. that's the page.. and yeah, it's not in there. Odd. Maybe it was a demo model? A workman took one home? Mine (5892) isn't anywhere in the Wheatsone ledgers either - this is probably a FAQ, so apologies if so, but what's the general theory about why some Wheatstones missed out on getting recorded in the ledgers? Did they, for example, sometimes get sold in batches, in which case how is that recorded in the ledgers?

Um, like that little Scottish concertina maker, Wee T. Stone? Chris Aha, another devotee of El Reg - I for one welcome our six-sided free-reeded overlords ...

(Much snippage, so apologies if the attributions have gone bonkers) "Get fed up tripping over them" would be an exaggeration, but there are certainly individual regions, towns, and even homes which have a concentration much higher than "average", while there are others where none will be found. (The same can also be said of anglos.) My own personal "guesstimate" is that the number 546 is far too low. More than once I, or rather my Wheatstone, has been one of 5 or 6 ECs in the session at the Crown in Worthington a few miles north of Bolton. I would be astonished to learn that that one session would represent 1/100th of all the active concertinas in England, especially as I personally know at least 5 or 6 other EC players as well. Am I really on first-name terms with 1/50th of the EC population of England? Doesn't sound likely to me Don't get me wrong, I'm not having a dig, I'm thinking out the likelyhood of the maths. Anyone know if the ICA have any figures on geographic spread correlated with concertina type? That would be a partial estimate (I for one am not a member of the ICA) but it would perhaps get us slightly closer to an estimate ... And if anyone really is fed up with tripping over a decent loud steel-ended 56-key EC (not accordeon reeded), I'll happily move it out of your way at no charge whatsoever and give it a very good home

I play flute, fife, whistle, the rauschpfeife, and bouzouki, and only took up EC about four years ago. There are loads of theories about how people choose which instrument or instruments they play, and I'd love to know why I'm such a musical flibbertigibbet when others happily devote their whole playing lives to just one instrument ...

IIRC a lot of the tunes Gay used in the Beggar's Opera were pre-existing tunes, and had already been published as dance tunes in various editions of Playford's Dancing Master from 1651 onwards. Where Playford sourced his tunes from, of course, is a whole other area. If you're not already familiar with it could I introduce you to the splendid work of the Village Music Project at http://www.village-music-project.org.uk/: to over-summarise wildly the raison d'etre of the VMP is to try to answer precisely your sort of question, and provide historical accuracy and ownership in place of conjecture. I don't know whether there's been a particular study of the sources of the Beggar's Opera, but the VMP is probably the place to start if you want to do your own!

Nearly, it's rauschpfeife. A fine Renaissance wind instrument of strident tone and spectacular volume, http://www.lesession.co.uk/rauschpfeife for anyone whose interested.

Heres' Simon Thoumire at full pace on a couple of reels: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LiSnLR6Ojuk

Thanks for the website plug Chris, I feel like a proper concertina player now I've been namechecked on concertina.net! I find Frederic Paris' tunes sit beautifully on the English concertina, there's something about the way he puts tunes together that flow under the fingers much easier than equally lovely tunes by other accordionists (I love Andy Cutting's tunes, for example, but they don't always sit as easily). Mind you I play flutes and whistles as well and FP's tunes just flow out of them too, so maybe it's a musical, rather than a concertina, thing ...