Don Taylor

I vaguely remember reading that the air hole (and maybe the pad over it) on the early Rochelles was small. I think that Bob Tedrow used to enlarge it on the ones that he sold. Worth contacting Wim at the Concertina Connection - he is usually very responsive to questions about his concertinas.

Stagi, as a company, has a checkered history. The early years they made reasonable, low-cost concertinas, not great, but usable. Over the last few years the business has changed hands several times. The most recent change of ownership seems to have resulted in large price increases, late deliveries and poor customer service. At least that is what I understand from several posts here on the forum. It would be nice to be proved wrong as there are now so few companies making new concertinas. If you do decide to go for a Stagi then you should find one that you can buy 'over the counter' at a music store or from another player. You can then inspect it and check it out before committing. I don't think that it is a good idea to just order one from a US retailer as you may finish up waiting months for it to arrive from Italy and it might not be in a playable state when you get it. For your choice of music, I suspect that a G/D Anglo would suit you better than a C/G, especially if you want to accompany your own singing. Others more knowledgeable than me might chime in.

Here is Kathryn's 20B Anglo concertina Youtube playlist. Wonderful playing and what a smile!

I suspect that most folks here would advise against buying a Stagi - especially a new one. I don't play Anglo but I have heard some wonderful stuff played on old (really old) 20 button Lachenals, maybe somebody here has one to sell to you. What sort of music do you want to play?

From Wim's web-site: Due to our extensive waiting list, We are forced to temporarily close our order book.

Just a suggestion: Make some (very) leaky but nice looking fake bellows for the cosmetic effect but inside have an air-tight industrial rubber bellows with your sensors inside: Jim MacArthur made a midi EC using some rectangular rubber bellows about 10 years ago, I don't recall him saying the bellows were a problem. Here are some pics of Jim's midi concertinas along with a warning about the future of midi concertinas... And here is a link to one of Jim's earlier posts with some details about his bellows: I think that these might be the bellows he used (the part number is a little different): https://www.mcmaster.com/9742K34/ McMaster has other sizes of the same type of bellows: https://www.mcmaster.com/products/bellows/rectangular-bellows~~/

I have used a 'stick sander' that I bought from Lee Valley: Amazon sells them as well. You can simply move the sanding surface to a fresh area once it gets worn, or replace the sanding belt with a new one. I have made my own replacement belts out of wet and dry sandpaper, you need to use a strong adhesive tape to join the strip of sandpaper into a loop.

Does this really matter? The squirrel cage cage tuning box settles down to give you a constant tone which is reprodcuible when you turn it off and on again to the same setting on the rheostat. (I built one based on your design). If you first measure how far out of true the reed sounds when it is in the concertina (how many cents +/-) then you can use the tuning box to change the reed up or down by the same number of cents. It seems to me that what is important is that that your tuning box makes a steady and reproducible note for you to adjust. Your squirrel fan box does this very well. I don't think that you can expect to get the exact same note from a reed if it is in concertina or on the tuning box.

Not just chords but scales and intervals will be mirrored on each side of the uni-directional layout. I suspect that Wim Wakker thinks of the Hayden keyboard in a similar fashion to an EC keyboard where the notes go up from top to bottom rather than across from left to right. At least that is what his puzzling diagrams say to me. I guess that you could get used to it but your already very limited upgrade options in the Hayden world would be severely restricted if you go uni-directional. That plus I doubt that you could sell a uni-directional model on the used market.

How long do they wander? Long enough to be noticeable? Also, I assume that you are using your squirrel fan based tuning box and maybe the initial fan startup time before it comes to a steady speed has some effect on the reed.

I would like to glue some fabric inside the ends of a concertina to act as a dust guard but I am not sure what to get. I am thinking about using some speaker grill cloth like this: https://www.amazon.ca/1-7mx0-5m-Speaker-Fabric-Dust-Proof-Protective/dp/B07SKZPBRR/ref=ast_sto_dp_puis Added: I have ordered one of these and will post my opinion of it when I get it - it was cheap.

You too can make your own Stagi using genuine Stagi parts for only 1600 euros!

A piano tuner is different from an absolute tuner like your Peterson strobe tuner because pianos are 'stretch tuned' at the high and low ends. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stretched_tuning, in particular: "Solving such dilemmas is at the heart of precise tuning by ear, and all solutions involve some stretching of the higher notes upward and the lower notes downward from their theoretical frequencies. "

I don't know if Edward Jay has restarted making 3D printed concertinas now that he has moved to Australia, but he made Hayden layout concertinas when he lived in the UK. You could try contacting him - see this thread:

Here are some labelled pictures. As you can see, they are pretty complicated and it looks to me like Morse had to make some compromises to get everything to fit. If you can afford it then I would recommend that you buy a Concertina Connection Peacock - while you still can. You will be able to sell it when/if you succeed in building your own bigger concertina. Added: I have tried to get the note names correct, but it is easy to make mistakes when mapping these things out. If there are any errors then let me know and I will try to correct them.