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On a recent trip to England several people commented on the difference in the sound (tone) between my Wheatstone EC and my recently aquired Wakker Hayden. Ordinarily this would not attract much attention from me. I have had many concertinas over the years, albeit mostly Wheatstones, and each one had its own tone qualities, however, the comments I recieved were more along the lines that the Wakker sounded more like an Accordion. This I found slightly puzzling because,although it was also the impression that my wife and I had when the Wakker first arrived, an examination of the internal features of the instrument show it to be very traditionally constructed... with Concertina Reeds etc. So, my point is "why should this instrument have a tone scape that suggests accordion ?" A theory formulating in my head is that the taper of the reeds affects the tone. I'm talking of the taper in the width of the tongues. With this in mind I have measured reeds from the various concertinas that reside here. On the one hand there are two instruments that have parallel width reeds and two that have slightly tapered widths (these are the Wheatstones).The Wakker has reeds that taper by approximately twice the rate of the tapered Wheatstones..... then there is the one Hybrid with its Accordion reeds which taper at approximately twice the rate of the Wakker reeds. In trying to describe the tone of these instruments I'd say the Parallel reeded ones sound rudely Concertina, the Slightly Tapered reeds sound a little more refined ( but then they are in 1920's Aeolas) and the very tapered reeds of the Hybrid sound distinctly Accordion... leaving the medium tapered reeds of the Wakker leaning towards an accordion-ish sound. What do you all make of this ? Geoff. PS: perhaps it is that the two parallel reeded Wheatstones come from a particular period when straight reeds were the norm. PPS; This is not a criticism of the Wakker Duet... I like the tone . PPPS; I realise there are many factors that must be considered when accounting for tonal différences... but just to isolate one, like this, could be interesting.