Don Taylor

Have you considered a Striso board?

Looking at this picture from your earlier post, it looks like the buttons are also glued both to the rubber grommets (the brown discs) and to the lever arms. I don't think that this is right

I think that you are building a Crane midi concertina. Can you get the Gaterons close enough together to match a vintage Crane button layout? I thought that they might be too large.

Just a thought... If your own code is based upon that sample in: Create a MIDI Device and you are debouncing your switches using that delay(50) call then that might be the cause of your problem. See: why is using delay bad? So, what to do about it? You could write you own non-blocking timeouts in your code using the millis() function, or you could use a task scheduler library or a timer library to do that for you. All of these techniques make your code grow a little 'hair' and become harder to read - which is why that example code uses delay() - to keep it simple. If you are using 50ms debounce delays in your code then you could try reducing that delay time to see if it makes a difference. I believe that you are using reed switches for your buttons, if so then these usually need much shorter debounce times than mechanical switches. I don't think that adding delay()s into the midi library is a good solution.

RAc: I am interested in knowing more about your 'gussetless bellows'. Pictures? Maybe a link to a maker site on how to make them. I have a VL53L0X in my parts bin and might try your idea myself.

They are all separate reeds. I was told that they tried to do what you say but that the result was not reliable. They were really strapped for space on both sides and had to resort to using an accordion-like reed block for some of the reeds.

But, to be clear, this idea was not pursued by the Button Box when they designed the Beaumont - if you want to play a D#4 on the LHS of a Beaumont then you have to reach over all of the other buttons to press an Eb4. Anglo players would say that is no big deal ...

The iPad version is based upon the Beaumont with an added D#4 on the LHS so it is a proper superset of the 46 button Stagi. I supplied the images for Michael's app and I wanted to make sure that a 46 button Hayden layout was supported. FWIW. Morse omitted the LHS D# because they could not find the space for the reed, but D#4 can be played as Eb4 on the LHS on a Beaumont.

Or you could use the Fluidsynth app on an Android* phone and load your own sondfonts. For example Phil Taylor's concertina soundfont (see below) or you could sample your own concertina and build your own soundfont using Polyphone. * I think that there is a way to use Michael Eskin's concertina sound samples on Apple devices, but I have not used an Apple device in many years.

Richard: Which buttons are these?

Randy Stein recently posted that he used chord charts: I had never heard about using chord charts when using a concertina. For guitar and piano, yes, but I never thought about using them for the concertina. Randy told me that he uses chord charts like these jazz chord charts: https://standardrepertoire.com/all-of-me.html There are other forms of chord charts, some with chords set against song lyrics, but AFAICT they are all very similar in principle. So, my question for Randy and anyone else that uses chord charts is how do you go about doing it? What are the processes involved in learning and playing a tune using a chord chart?

Columbia's web-site is not operational:

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Chris: I don't see this one as an option.

I would like to get a current estimate of the date of manufacture of a 55B New Model Crane, #389. (Sorry about the upside down images, I can't seem to correct this). Don.