paulbrennan Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Hello all, I'm new to the forum (and to concertina repair) and my topic title is meant to be a little bit tongue in cheek. But I do have a serious inquiry - reading through the excellent discussions, it seems that people have replaced reed plates in older concertinas/bandoneons/chemnitzers by ordering a newly made set from Harmonikas in CZ. I'm not sure how easy or cheap it is, but it seems to be possible. Therefore, it should in theory be possible to change the layout of an instrument and also it's wet/dry tuning by changing the plates of an instrument. But could you also change its bisonoric/unisonoric status? Eg, could I take any Chemnitzer (bisonoric, wet, crazy layout) and change it up to my required specs (unisonoric, dry, CBA layout)? I guess the first issue is that if you did this, the resulting instrument would have half the range, but maybe that's okay. All thoughts welcome.... Thanks, Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Łukasz Martynowicz Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 First, the price: cost of a set of 62 DIX reeds from Harmonikas.cz for my Hayden was 400 euros. When it comes to wet/dry tuning, then it is a matter of tuning, not changing plates - dry tuning is just two very closely tuned (a spot-on or couple of cents apart) reeds playing the same note at once, while wet tuning are those same two reeds when tuned wider apart. But it is not a simple matter of changing the reeds if you want to modify the layout. You have strict chamber sizes on the other side of the lever when you press a button… So it is possible to make unisonoric instrument from bisonoric one, but the resulting layout could be even more bizarre. Reeds come in sizes, here is a size chart for harmonikas.cz: http://www.harmonikas.cz/admin/files/ModuleText/16-sortiment-sizes.pdf So if you want a strict layout after your modification, it might need tampering with chamber sizes also. That can lead to a mayour rebuild on the reedblocks/reedpan and depending on instrument may or may not be easy or even possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulbrennan Posted February 10, 2015 Author Share Posted February 10, 2015 Of course, the chamber sizes must be somewhat specific to the note so you can't just move them around randomly, that makes sense. Thanks Lukasz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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