Don Taylor

Check out you local thrift stores. We just bought a newsed LowePro camera back pack for C$12.

I received this from Piers Titus van der Torren, the maker of the Striso boards: The note buttons are force sensitive resistor based, on top of the circuit board is carbon foil of which the resistance lowers when more pressure is exalted on the buttons. Each button has 3 pads underneath to create the direction sensitivity. I do not have any experience using FSRs (force-sensitive resistors) so I do not know how good their longevity would be, but I expect that they would be better than electro-mechanical switches.

FWIW. Reading the various write-ups on the Striso board I gather that it has a motion sensor that can be used to change the overall volume and maybe the attack. This might require some way to hold the instrument in mid-air. The buttons can also be used individually to change the volume of that note alone and to bend that note. I think that the sound you hear in Didie's videos is from the built-in synth which has a 3.5mm audio jack for output which can go to headphones or as input to a recording device like a cell-phone. It also has a Midi MPE output jack and so you could feed into an iPad, for example, and access a wide variety of instrument sounds. I think that you can also use a foot pedal with it. Power is from a 5V USB source, so you could use an external battery pack for a phone to provide power. I am curious about what kind of button/joystick switches are used as these are the obvious points of failure. Each board (Didie has two to make up his duet) costs 400 euros - I suspect the switches are the driving factor in this price. Each board is about 7" square (192x174x26mm) and has 61 buttons so Didie has a 122 button Hayden! So, is it a concertina or is it a midi synth? And what would Sir Charles make of it?

See: https://www.striso.org/ It seems that each button can be used expressively and yes you can feed it into headphones or a midi board. Very tempted. Didie - do you have any problems switching between this and your Beaumont which would have somewhat different button spacing?

In an earlier post Everett said that the repair tech is in Wisconsin and that he was trained at that very school in Redwing, Minnesota - which is why there was a concern that a rare Wheatstone concertina could be ruined by the wrong hands, however well-meaning. It would be in Chad Walker's best business interest to introduce himself here and explain his background and techniques. Lord knows we could use another good repair tech in North America.

If the Elise-2 uses the same basic box as the Rochelle-2 then it will be a 6 1/2" box (vs. 7 1/2" for the standard Elise).

Yes, that is what I do. No tabs. Yes to the chordal notation spelled out, I have never tried using roman numeral notation. I rarely use more than a couple of notes of the chord in the left hand side as it is simply too loud to hear the melody. I have recently started to add occasional chordal tones on the right hand side but I have a long way to go on that journey. Transposing - wherever possible I try to imagine that I am still playing in the original key but starting at a different place on the keyboard. An alternative to the standard grand staff notation is to use (I think it is called) the octave clef instead of the bass clef. Basically it is the same as the treble clef except the notes are sounded an octave lower so for the Hayden duet the button locations (not the fingers used) correspond from side to side. This notation does have some drawbacks in that it kind of forces you to play a note on the side of the concertina that it is notated whereas the grand staff just tells you to play a note as it sounds wherever you find it. On the other hand figuring out intervals between the two side is easier with the octave clef. It is also only one clef to learn the note locations. Brian Hayden's All Systems Duet Concertina Tutor uses octave clef notation although he calls it something else.

The OP was asking about tuning a 1927 Wheatstone Model 21 which has concertina reeds, not accordion reeds or long-plate reeds.

I think that we are all concerned that someone unknown to the community who claims to be an expert repairman for concertinas and who hails from Wisconsin is actually an expert repairman for Chemnitzer concertinas which are quite different from English manufactured vintage concertinas . Chemnitzer reeds are accordion reeds and are tuned with a scratcher or a dremel tool type grinder whereas vintage concertinas are tuned using a fine file. It would be a good idea for the OP to simply ask the repairman what tools and techniques he uses to tune the reeds and if he does not say a file then to tell him not to to do any tuning.

I believe that he has made a Hayden duet so he is not totally Anglo-centric.

I would be very interested to see some photographs of the inside of a Rochelle 2 - the action board and the reed pan. (I doubt very much that Wim will make a Jack/Jackie 2 or an Elise 2 with a high button count. AFAICT he is using flat-mounted reeds which limits the number of reeds he can accomodate to something in the mid-30 range).

Lee Valley sell an easy to use fish glue, available by mail order in North America. https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/tools/supplies/adhesives/glue/20019-high-tack-fish-glue

I meant wood, but the foam works too.

My experience is that my (XL) large hands need a high hand/palm rest and that the actual button layout dimensions are not really a factor. On most concertinas, it is fairly easy to diy a higher hand rest that can be swapped for an existing low hand rest without damaging the concertinas. A easily reversible change should you later want to sell the concertina. Watch out for the occasional concertina that has an air button embedded in the hand rest as it is not so easy to make a high replacement.

But what, exactly, do you think that anybody here can do about it?