LR71

My first concertina, after playing the box for some years, was a brass reeded Lachenal; I figured they were a big company, I don't have to have steel. Well, what a chore to get music out of that thing I figured out the scales at least; and then basically broke a few notes trying to make it work better. A few years later I bought a Kensington, almost as an impulse purchase - the seller had cut the price a few times. And have been at it ever since. Really stumbled onto something grand. I've played Carrolls and Suttners, and they left nothing to be desired playability wise; but mine is simply the cream of the crop tonally. Notes never fail to speak perfectly, either. I really prefer the Kensington's big delrin buttons, too; and Dana's general philosophy of building something that won't crack, that can be taken apart easily, that's free of extra added decor that jacks the price up, to make an instrument that's affordable to as many as possible. And the strap system, where you can adjust the tension in seconds so your friend can give it a try. Adjusting conventional straps makes me think of those pit crews at the Indy 500, getting the tires off the things ASAP... I've been thinking that it'd be nice to have a G/D eventually, and figured I'd do business with Dana again - he's been very helpful with advice and repairs - reed swap, new handrests. Shame to see you go! But you gotta do what you gotta do.

$20, and $15 shipping to the states, youch. Glad it's on the shelves again of course, just ordered my copy, and thanks for bringing this to our attention!

How many has he built? Cost? Options - different keys, drone, extra buttons? I've read that he has a variety of choices for papers etc. Everyone else has a website, except Jose Claro, who I imagine doesn't need one, living in Ireland and all. Is one in the works?

Guess I'll respond on a 19 year old thread with some observations. I play Irish music so this is all centered around that genre. I've always taken the warnings about not playing the bellows on the leg seriously, and no end of great players don't do that. Nevertheless some do, like John Williams, the only American to win the All Ireland. Don't know what they do when holes form in the bellows; cope? Get a replacement? I never liked playing with the bellows on the leg, anyway; it's great for stability but creates all this drag at the same time. The advice I've always read is to put the left side on the left leg. To my surprise quite a few players do the opposite - right side on right leg: https://www.concertina.net/images_peter_laban/batch2/healy.jpg This is Hugh Healy, I have his CD, great musician. This photo is from a a page hosted here of photos taken by Peter Laban. The majority of snaps there actually show players like Hugh holding right-on-right, or as I'm going to joshingly refer to it, playing the concertina backwards. Or how about righties and lefties? The next photo is of Brid Meaney, also a righty. Here's a video of her with fiddler Síle, her sister I assume. Terrific music! Trying to find more about Brid I found that was Florence Fahy's first instructor, and Flo also is a righty. Another thing Hugh and Brid both do is to tilt the stationary end way over to the side at an outwards angle. Guess that helps the thing to do more of the work? It's far removed from Noel Hill's keep the ends parallel approach. I've never had luck with angling like this, it doesn't make things more comfortable. I've found that I need to keep the stationary left side basically upright, and angle the other side downwards, otherwise my right hand really begins to ache. Perhaps I have a sensitive nerve on top of my right hand, where the strap makes contact. Here's one more approach: 2014 All Ireland Champion Ciaran Hanna holds the right side on the left leg - with the left side hanging in the air. This is common with box players. Here's a video. Hope this is all of interest/help to people. Try anything - I believe that what's best for us in how we hold the concertina has a lot to do with our physiology.

I hadn't been playing very long when I started filling up a page from a drawing notebook with tune titles. I probably crammed close to a hundred on the one page - very small print, with red lines between titles to increase legibility. So, it didn't take me long to begin vacuuming up Irish music - but I'd been playing music my whole life, and had been very obsessive about other genres for a decade at that point. Almost 30 years later and I still constantly listen to this stuff, and learn new items. It's always fascinating to me how there's this batch of notes in my brain which wasn't there before. How'd it get in there? There are people I've known the whole time I've been playing who still churn out the same couple of dozen tunes every week. Good for them! They're happy to just get together with friends and have a good time. They have skills in other areas, too. As I said to some friends the other night, "Knowing thousands of tunes, great. That and 10 cents will buy you a cup of coffee!" That's paraphrasing a saying from days gone by, when coffee was a lot cheaper. So I'd learn whatever they're playing at your local beginner's session, for a start. Work on playing solidly, good time, lift, etc. And listen to it as much as possible, like Peter says. These things really do burrow into your subconscious.

The 40 button example on this page has one, looks just like Luke's layout though, maybe it's the source. From what I've read the layout on these deluxe instruments could vary a bit, though.

Florence Fahy plays Wheatstone, she's from north Clare and learned from Chris Droney so that figures. A friend was over last summer and said she really gets some decibels out of that thing, too. Liam O'Brien is another Wheatstone player. I read somewhere that Noel started playing Wheatstones simply because they're more durable... Let's not forget the sound, I simply prefer the tone of Jeffries style instruments, which I guess is mostly due to that parallel reed pan. I imagine a lot of musicians gravitated to them for that. The Jeffries pull C# gives you the ability to play a run legato around the middle D, or to play a B/C#/D triplet, having to push that C# would really gum up the works. I think. Those are some things that come to mind giving the Jeffries layout an edge for playability. Or they open up some nice possibilities, anyway; the Wheatstone layout certainly doesn't slow down a good player. The two different button box systems in use with Irish music have similar plusses and minuses, which are more like things that you can put to use in the music to create sounds; and certain things are simpler/easier on one system then the other. The differences between the two concertina systems are much more minor, by contrast.

There are Master Crowley's reels 1+2, E minor, the first is often played in D though. The second is also called the Roscommon reel. Then there are Crowley's reels 1+2, no qualifier. If you look these up on the Session (Dave provided the link to Crowley's #1) you'll find all the instances of those tunes on recordings. Looking on YouTube for 'Crowley's reels' will turn up clips, too

It's come up here before. The seller needs a reality check in re: this thing's value.

I've been playing music my whole life, my grandfather played all kinds of instruments including a 1 row Hohner button accordion, so I've always enjoyed trying new things out - it's genetic, seemingly. I'd learned to play all of the melody instruments in Irish music, and decided to get a cheap Lachenal, I learned the scales on that at least, before I screwed up the reeds. Then I was having new reeds put in one of my boxes, it was taking forever, so I splurged and bought my Kensington, and have been playing away since, practically every day.

Thanks for recording the Jones's bird whistle! Linked to it in another thread.

Takayuki YAGI has a sound sample of the bird's whistle on his Jones semi-minature. Sounds about like what you'd expect.

At the end of practicing today I had a notion - why not use my guitar footstool to bring the concertina closer to my ears? And sure enough it adds a decibel or two. I have it set up 7"/18cm. Even playing on my own I hope this will help - there's something about the concertina that just doesn't reach my ears. I have trouble hearing what people are saying in noisy places and I wonder if there's something aspect of that which also makes it hard to hear my hexagon. I play with the left side on left leg, right side airborne. Sometimes I've tried crossing my legs to add altitude, too. There are box players who play like that.

That's some page, Paul! I'll have to get an English someday to see what all the fuss is about.

I've played this one - this exact Eirú which is for sale - super responsive, crisp tone, pretty powerful if you want it to be, too. They use padded handstraps which was something I'd not dealt with before, but you could easily get used to that.