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Stagi Hayden Duet handrails


bogheathen

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I have a Stagi 46 button Hayden Duet with the apparently Hayden-designed slanted keyboard, offset from the handrail so the thumb side buttons are closer than the pinky side buttons. I didn't know duet keyboards came any other way until I saw the Concertina Connection Wicky/Hayden hybrids...with the hand rail in line with the keyboard. No slant. Now the slant on my Stagi keyboard bugs the hell out of me, and I know why my pinky is practically useless on the upper rows.

 

Anybody changed the handrail position on a Stagi? Any experiences, caveats, etc?

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I believe that the Stagi Hayden's hand rail is neither a Brian Hayden nor a Wicki hand rail, but something dreamed up in Italy after a few too many glasses of vino.

 

See:

 

I have not seen a Stagi Hayden, but if the hand rail is attached like other Stagis then, if you are prepared to drill one, maybe two new holes in each the face in of the concertina then it is very easy to relocate the handrail to a new orientation or position.   The new holes will be invisible, but the old holes will now be on show.  Tell folks that they are there to let the sound out.

 

Take an end off (just one at a time , please) and you should see two tiny wood screws holding the action board into the back of the end.  Remove those screws and carefully pull out the action board (the board with the reeds on the inside and the buttons and levers on outside), set that aside being careful not to dislodge anything.  Look inside the end and you should see two wood screws that attach the handrail.  Remove those screws (or maybe just one if you just want to pivot the hand rail around to a new angle.  You will need to drill new holes through the face that will line up with the existing holes in the handrail.  I would probably us a strip of masking tape over the old holes and punch/mark the existing hole on the tape, you can then use the tape to locate the centers of your new holes.  Drill from the outside in to avoid splintering the face of the end.  Screw on the hand rail in its new position.

 

Now comes the tricky part: getting the action board back in place and the buttons located in their proper holes.   Some folks do this by holding the action board with the buttons hanging down and offering up the end on to the buttons.  I use a long, thin stick (e.g a wooden kebab skewer) to shepherd the buttons into place as I slowly drop the end down onto the action board.  A bit of wiggling might help - that is of the concertina face, not you. If you are lucky then this works first time, are you feeling lucky?  No, then you will just have to be patient, maybe very patient.

 

Screw everything back together, do not over tighten the end bolts or they will sink into the wood and look ugly.  Just snug and a bit will do.  Tighten the end bolts like you would the cylinder head on an engine - opposite to opposite working your way around until they are all home.

 

Now repeat the process on the other end.

 

Do NOT take both ends off at the same time or you might never figure out the correct orientation to put them back on again.

 

If you can, then I would be interested in seeing some photographs of the insides of a Stagi Hayden and of your final result.

 

Good luck,

 

Don.

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Thanks, Don. This makes sense...I've gotten to the the "take off the action plate" point and stopped already. I've been inside accordions, but the thought of putting all those little concertina buttons back where they belong in the end plate stalled me. I'll give it a go.

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On 6/16/2020 at 9:12 PM, Don Taylor said:

I believe that the Stagi Hayden's hand rail is neither a Brian Hayden nor a Wicki hand rail, but something dreamed up in Italy after a few too many glasses of vino.

 

Yes, Brian Hayden was very specific about the slant of the keys in relation to the hand rail:

 

Quote

16mm between the centres of buttons along the rows 9mm between one row and the next above - to give an equal spacing of 12mm between the nearest buttons along the diagonal. The rows to slope down at an angle of 10.5 degrees towards the thumbs. Large flat top buttons are preferable.

 

The Stagi folks had no access to this specification when they cobbled together their instrument.

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It is just that you want the new holes in the end of the concertina to be spaced the same distance apart as the original holes so the the screws go through the new holes and back into the existing holes in the hand rail.

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On 6/17/2020 at 3:12 AM, Don Taylor said:

Now comes the tricky part: getting the action board back in place and the buttons located in their proper holes.   Some folks do this by holding the action board with the buttons hanging down and offering up the end on to the buttons.  I use a long, thin stick (e.g a wooden kebab skewer) to shepherd the buttons into place as I slowly drop the end down onto the action board.  A bit of wiggling might help - that is of the concertina face, not you. If you are lucky then this works first time, are you feeling lucky?  No, then you will just have to be patient, maybe very patient.

Have you seen Paul Draper's little invention?

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I tried taking the slant out of a Stagi Hayden over 10 years ago.  The problem is that taking the slant out of the handrails throws the instrument out of balance and makes it more awkward to play and rest flat on the knee.     

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Jim, I aligned the handrails with the button rows on each side and discovered the same thing.  THE BUTTON ROWS THEMSELVES ARE AT DIFFERENT ANGLES ON THE FACEPLATES! If you line the handrails up parallel with the bottom button row on each side, you don't get the same hand angle relative to the box as a whole on each side. You get two different angles. Frustrating.

Edited by bogheathen
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Stagi was sloppy in building these instruments with the different row angles between sides and asymmetrically staggered button rows.  The only practical solution is to move on and get an instrument without the slant.   Even with a slant, the instruments work and are manageable, but I'm convinced they work better without the slant.        

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While moving on may well be the best for the long term, perhaps just improving the Stagi non-Hayden might work. 

 

The goal of making parallel hand rails may not be reasonable, and perhaps not even desirable given bogheathen's observation that the buttons are not oriented identically. Why not just try to reduce the excessive slant? 

 

If this were mine, I'd try making it new rails.  The Stagi rails are probably about 4" long, and 1" tall, and about 1/2 inch thick. I'd grab the maple I've used for past handrail experiments on my Beaumont and make a pair the same height and length, but change the thickness - 1/2 inch on one side, but 1 1/4 inch in the other, forming a tradizoid which would mount with the original screws and holes so that the thicker dimension reaches toward the buttons on the side where the slant has separated the rail from the buttons, that is, on the little finger side of the right side and index finger side of the left side. Then I'd sand away wood at an angle from the wrist side of the 1 1/4 section so that the bottom of the rail remains 1 1/4 at that end, and the top of the rail would be a half inch throughout its length as before. 

 

Rough measurements suggest this would reduce the functional slant about 5 degrees, enough to bring the Stagi to 10.5 degrees or less.

 

With luck, this reduction would prove functional to you.  I know it would work for me since I can swap between my preferred parallel grip Beaumont and accurately slanted Hayden instruments without much adjustment. 

 

Yes, there are other issues like the non-standard Stagi button placement and the change of position in the lap (I have a suggestion about that if anyone cares!) but this might get some use out of the Stagi and in any case would be completely reversable. 

 

Happy squeezing! 

Daniel 

Edited by W3DW
Clarity
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