LR71

Wow, a Jeffries knockoff. Were those common? I don't remember reading about them in the big article on the firm. And the stamps they used always looked quality, unlike the merely functional one seen here, aside from too many folds in the bellows. Still...being a copy of everyone's favorite company will it only sell for £2k or something? 🙄

I've been playing Anglo (Irish music) for a bit over a year and after a few months I started to get pains in random fingers. Ice/putting the thing down for a while/playing a bit more gently/not playing for hours on end seemed to help, for a while, but I'd always get aches again. Which finger would sting seemed pretty random. Strange to say but when they'd act up I could pick up the button box and start in, and it would mostly feel fine. Yesterday it occurred to me that maybe I was pushing buttons like you do on the box - flattish - and what's the point of doing that on the concertina? It's not like we slide from button to button. And sure enough, making sure my fingers were pointed straight down meant that all of sudden the aches and pains are gone, and I'm finding it easier to work the G row, too. On his instructional tape/DVD John Williams mentions only pushing from one side as a fault of box players who try and play the concertina, and perhaps this is another. Hope it's of interest.

I bought mine 3rd hand about a year ago and Dana honored the final tune up guarantee, too as well as swapping a reed. I live to your south, Joe, and have gotten many compliments on the Kensington's oh so sweet tone. I also have a Jeffries duet and really like Dana's going for a tone equal parts between Jeffries and Wheatstone.

Ah, no low Bb, that'd be missed as well. Maybe some new reeds could be made to fill in these gaps - I wouldn't want to retune the originals. By the time you're done it might cost as much as a 30 key Jeffries in the first place, of course...thanks for all the details!

Thanks, Stephen. Answers that question, that for sure wouldn't be worth the trouble. Am I right about which buttons are most likely missing?

Well, it's this lovely Jeffries Barleycorn are selling. I'm showing my hand by mentioning it, I guess...what a steal, only £3300! That's interesting, that Lachenals had extra room in there. Is the same true of Wheatstone or Jeffries?

I have my eye on an antique 26 key, and while I wouldn't much miss the low E/F and could live with just pull C# but not push, I'd kinda miss the 3rd octave d note, and definitely the middle G#/Bb. Would it be possible to add these notes - are there empty reed pans in there which could be put to use? Or would you need to build a new pan - which would probably mean you'd just as well buy a 30 key instrument and call it good. For that 3rd octave d you could always retune the 3rd octave e, too. There aren't really any solutions that come to mind for the missing G#/Bb. Well, assuming those notes are missing in the first place - I'm actually not sure.

They cost less, though, excepting the cheapest Suttner. Was the playability almost as good?

That first side was reissued by Rounder back in the 90s, sans the wall of needle scratches. The other one I have too. Other sides I found at the Comhaltas Archives, with their irritating little meep meep audio watermarks. It'd be great to have the booklet of course, but mostly I just want to hear him play, and this music is about as out of copyright as can be.

It's out of stock, and always has been when I've checked over the last couple of years.

Could anyone share these recordings with me? I have dubs of much of it, some of them good, some pretty low fi, and would like better versions.

I play Irish music on the anglo, and started out resting the base of my palms on the top of the rests, which are about 1" or 25mm high. Felt perfectly comfortable. A friend remarked the other day about how loose my straps were though, whereas his were much tighter; I don't think my hands are all that larger than the norm, and this got me to thinking that maybe my hands shouldn't be pushed through quite so far. Thus I gave resting the base of my palms against the edge of the concertina a try, instead of against the rest, and suddenly my fingers felt a lot more free to hit the G row buttons; before I'd had to arch over a lot to get there. It's a thousand times easier to work the F#, play in the lower range, play above D. It's still easy to get to the accidentals row if need be, too. "Palm rest" thus is perhaps a bit of a misnomer. The palm is just another word for the underside of the hand; which part are we talking about? Having a tall rest I think threw me off the trail of what to do. It isn't getting in the way of how I hold the instrument now though. The more typical dinky rest would force you to push against the edges - right? For more evidence I went looking for videos of good players showing this, and found this super clear shot of Mary MacNamara.

I don't tighten the straps much, either, it just isn't necessary. I still found it awkward to hit that one button on the Morse. Some other buttons might have been easier to get at, I didn't play it too much really. The friend who I swapped instruments with just acquired her own Kensington, which I got to play last night. It was interesting how it had its own personality; mine is 6 folds and hers 7, mine seems perhaps the tiniest bit brighter. Hers sounded great in its own right.

I trust these are representative of instruments from any era - it was really difficult to find end-on photos of the RH side. Now, the Wheatstone looks quite close to geometric - you can draw lines through rows of 3 buttons' middles. The Jeffries looks much more deliberately offset; perhaps the C and G rows match the Wheatstone design, but the accidentals row is offset. In fact, the groups of buttons almost look like equilateral triangles on the Wheatstone, and isosceles on the Jeffries. It would be interesting to hear from builders about this, as well as hearing more opinions from players.