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Do these Jeffries buttons make sense?


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I'm selling my Jeffries (as in the Buy and Sell posting).

As a matter of curiosity do these accidentals make sense for a Bb/F instrument? I don't play much so am not able to judge the finer points. I can get some lovely chords out of the left hand but don't really know what they are.

The yellow ones are the extras that have been added to a 38 button to make it a 43. Why? Would those extras have been used for a particular style of music? I can get some quite jazzy sounding chords. Also, the drone doesn't seem logical to me.

 

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Thanks

Andrew.

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Andy

 

Your Bb/F doesn't conform to a "standard" Crabb/Jeffries 38 (or 39) key layout, but then most of such instruments I've come across have deviated in one or two places, either as originally built or as a result of previous owners modifying them to suit their playing requirements.

 

Some of the accidentals on yours make sense, for example to give note options in both push and draw, but others don't make much sense; for example on the left side, I can't see a reason why anyone would need 3 Bb3 notes all on the push and 2 Ab4 on the push.

 

The thumb button doesn't conform to either of the "standards". It neither functions as a drone, nor does it give the useful Bb3 on the draw and the Eb on the push. The Eb is available elsewhere, but I can't see the need for the G3. However, the specifier must have liked his "G"s to have the G2 down at the bottom.

 

On the right side, the story is similar - why have 3 B5 notes all on the push? Why have 2 E5s on the draw, one of them in an awkward place? Why have 2 A4s both on the draw, both playable by the same finger?

 

Some of the peculiarities may be explained by the original tuning being a meantone (which you've covered in another post) where 2 ostensibly similar notes were actually 50 cents or more apart to avoid the wolf notes in particular keys?

 

I'd imagine that it's possible to swap some of the notes around to get more of a standard layout and make more sense of the duplicates but I'd suggest you leave that to the buyer.

 

One other point; you've highlighted in yellow some notes which were added to the standard 38 key layout; look carefully at the chart I sent you in a PM - you'll see that a couple of these yellow notes are in the correct position for a 38 key.

 

Best of luck

 

Alex West

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Thanks for the reply Alex. I think your idea about temperament is probably right, I can't see why you'd need that many same notes but they could have been very slightly different. Unfortunately it was almost impossible to tell what temperament it had been. Regarding the added buttons, it was definitely as I've drawn it, the RH has two original buttons below the 3 rows and the LH had just the 3 rows of originals. The chart you sent had one button below the 3 rows on both ends, certainly not the case with this one.

Cheers

Andrew

Edited by Andy Holder
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I am such an idiot. I got many of the octaves wrong on the charts I posted. Partly to blame is the Cleartune iPhone app because it does make mistakes, but it's mostly my fault. Here are the proper ones, carefully checked against the piano!

They probably make much more sense.

 

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