Search the Community

I'm not 100% until I have the embassy visa letter in my hot little paw, but it looks like my new job may be sending me down to Cartagena for the rest of the year. Colombian port/naval/holiday town on the Caribbean. I'm fixing to take a concertina, but leery of taking a $3800 Morse Beaumont with, so I was thinking instead my Elise. Not a bad box, just a bit bulky, buttons a little mushy; lacks many chromatics but for a folkie that doesn't vex much. However, I just recently bought a small Lachenal Crane Duet from another Cnet'er, and it's not much more expensive than the Elise, nice and compact, plays pretty well (just a few reeds a bit slow/stuffy), decent action. I didn't know Crane layout at all, but finding it passing intuitive, though very spoiled by Hayden duet's scale-agnosticism. I pulled up a couple older Cnet posts about coastal towns, and consensus seems that rust is only particular danger to your steel reeds if you hang out right near the beach/docks, and the sea is frothy enough the wind is catching salt. So for either playing in my apartment, or a public square a few blocks inland, or maybe a balcony a few stories up and a few hundred metres from the sea, that shouldn't have undue corrosion risk? Elise advantages: maybe I could find an accordion repairman who could do some modifications/hot-rodding of it, of the sort that would be too labor-costly in the US/UK but cheap down there. Also I know Hayden system very well, though the key-changing advantage of Hayden is much diminished on a 34-button. And I wouldn't be risking a vintage. And I doubt anyone in that nation is qualified to clean/tune true concertina reeds. In the Lachenal's favor, it'd be a "true" concertina, and if in the end I find Crane layout to be perfectly easy to play despite being non-isomorphic, I can buy a really good Crane for less than half (maybe 1/3) of what I'll pay for a Hayden once I reach the top of Wim's waitlist in 2017. And though clearly I won't be negligent with it (and no disrespect meant to the previous Cnet owner), if disaster strikes, it's a small student Lachenal, not a dinosaur egg or Stradivarius. I'm just musing out loud, so not demanding anyone decide my life or anything, but if you have opinions my ears are open. I hope to do just some casual jamming down there with a local guitarist or vocalist. By hook or by crook I must have an instrument, and I do dig playing concertina. Overall stoked about new job, Colombia is absolutely gorgeous and so are colombianas.