Raised ends versus flat ends

[Little John]

13 hours ago, HansQ said:

The variations between an average and an extra light box seem to be usually ca 10%.

 

That's not my experience. I once had two duets of very similar size and note-range. One weighed 2 3/4 lbs and the other 4 1/4 lbs - more than a 50% increase. The difference was very noticeable. The lighter one I could play standing up with ease; the heavier one barely at all.

 

Does it matter? It might be worth noting that the Crabb family were both makers and players of concertinas. They made their instruments light by the use of aluminium reed frames, end plates and action. Why would they depart from the standard brass/nickel silver unless they saw some advantage?

 

Another observation: John Kirkpatrick is noted for playing his concertina standing up and even swinging it around. It's a very lightweight Crabb. Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne plays resting his instrument on his knee, even when standing. His is a heavy Jeffries.

[fred v]

Does weight affect playing due to the mass that has to change directions often? I play the EC and I reverse the bellows as much as an Anglo player. When I removed 24 reeds from mine the difference was noticeable. Snapping the free end back and forth was much easier and less tiring after playing non stop at a session for 2.5 hours.

[Anglo-Irishman]

1 hour ago, fred v said:

Does weight affect playing due to the mass that has to change directions often?

I would say, "Yes!"

Weight just has to be held up, but mass has to be braked and accelerated at every change of bellows direction. The faster you're playing, the more energy you need to do that.

What I remember from physics at school is, "Work is done when a force moves its point of application in the direction of the force." So holding up a concertina is not work, but pulling and pushing the bellows is!

Cheers,

John

[Jake Middleton-Metcalfe]

HansQ can you clear one thing up for me, just something I have been wondering about: is your real name Goran Rahm? 

 

 

 

[Steve Schulteis]

1 hour ago, HansQ said:

What surprises me is the concern about very small variations reported in earlier discussions, so small that you are expected to just about, or not, noticing them at all. 

 

I don't think anybody said the single change by itself was significant. What was said is that many similar small changes may add up to a noticeable total. It's the same idea as an ultralight backpacker sawing half of their toothbrush handle off. It only saves a few grams, but if you can save a few grams in many places, it can result in a worthwhile total weight reduction.

[Steve Schulteis]

Back on the subject of raised ends...

 

It seems to me that raised ends make a lot of sense in the context of metal ends. They add structure that makes the sheet metal more rigid. They make room for a bushing board while minimizing the perceived bulk of the instrument. If you're already using a press to form the edges of the sheet metal, they perhaps don't add a huge amount of extra labor to production, at least at scale and compared to carving or laminating wooden ends. This leads me to wonder if raised metal ends appeared first before being copied in wood. Anybody have historical evidence to support or reject that theory? I'm not familiar enough with vintage models to have a clue.

[Cathasach]

On 1/20/2024 at 7:52 AM, Anglo-Irishman said:

I would say, "Yes!"

Weight just has to be held up, but mass has to be braked and accelerated at every change of bellows direction. The faster you're playing, the more energy you need to do that.

What I remember from physics at school is, "Work is done when a force moves its point of application in the direction of the force." So holding up a concertina is not work, but pulling and pushing the bellows is!

Cheers,

John

Holding it up does require energy to resist gravity even if it isn't technically work in the physics sense of the word. Not that weight won't also affect the energy needed to change bellows directions, but it's probably more energy to resist gravity if you're not playing on the knee.

[Jake Middleton-Metcalfe]

Just to explain something that happened on this thread: HansQ is someone who was banned from this forum in the past who just made a new profile. He is banned again now. Hence the comments disappeared.

 

Ehem, back to raised ends. 

 

Edited January 21 by Jake Middleton-Metcalfe

[Łukasz Martynowicz]

9 minutes ago, Jake Middleton-Metcalfe said:

Just to explain something that happened on this thread: HansQ is someone who was banned from this forum in the past who just made a new profile. He is banned again now. Hence the comments disappeared.

 

Ehem, back to raised ends. 

 

And I thought I was imagining thing when I recognised some of the characteristic phrasing and expression styles of his. 

[Jake Middleton-Metcalfe]

I have been re reading this thread a bit. Firstly sorry I got a bit heated in my discussions with Goran Rahm (HansQ) This is a good forum, I don't mean to dis the forum generally.

 

In relation to the weight idea though personally I have never actually done a precise weight test, to see what the actual difference would be in grams. It would actually be quite hard to precisely measure the weight saving unless you made two identical action boxes except one had raised ends (with slightly lower frames) and one had flat ends but both were designed to encase the same action and then weigh them both (before the action is built inside) and see the result.

 

The reason for doing it that way is if you weigh an entire concertina (especially an old one) there are so many other variables in hand made instruments and the designs varied so much for example: is the diameter of the pad board holes the same im both the instruments? Or are the reeds the same size for a given pitch? Reed scaling is incredibly diverse in older instruments. Or did the wooden frames get machined to exactly the same thickness - or indeed the action levers in Wheatstone concertinas for example were just clipped to size by eye - someone might clip the lever with more overhang over the centre of the pad, someone with less - and all this could give difference in the weight - and you would weigh two seemingly similar complete instruments and see there is a difference in weight but you would have no idea what actually caused it. 

 

So its actually a bit hard to test that - if I ever do it... I will report back! Gosh this is going into it deeply though, we must remember the simple joys of enjoying playing some lovely music.

 

 

[Jake Middleton-Metcalfe]

On 1/20/2024 at 7:07 PM, Steve Schulteis said:

Back on the subject of raised ends...

 

It seems to me that raised ends make a lot of sense in the context of metal ends. They add structure that makes the sheet metal more rigid. They make room for a bushing board while minimizing the perceived bulk of the instrument. If you're already using a press to form the edges of the sheet metal, they perhaps don't add a huge amount of extra labor to production, at least at scale and compared to carving or laminating wooden ends. This leads me to wonder if raised metal ends appeared first before being copied in wood. Anybody have historical evidence to support or reject that theory? I'm not familiar enough with vintage models to have a clue.

I am not sure which came first, the metal or wooden but it sounds to me that the metal end would most probably be more rigid, though I am not an engineer. 

[RAc]

Alex once gathered experiences about this while Mullering an EC where he replaced the wooden end plates with metal ones. The results, I believe, were sobering as hardly audible. I had pondered ordering both metal and wooden plates for #3 but moved away from that idea due to his previous results

[Jake Middleton-Metcalfe]

1 hour ago, RAc said:

Alex once gathered experiences about this while Mullering an EC where he replaced the wooden end plates with metal ones. The results, I believe, were sobering as hardly audible. I had pondered ordering both metal and wooden plates for #3 but moved away from that idea due to his previous results

As in there was no or hardly any difference in sound between the wooden or metal ends? I have to say I found the same thing, I made 2 instruments to the same design and tuning one with wooden ends and one with metal and was astonished that it was incredibly hard to tell any difference. At a guess I would say it is probably more to do with the pattern of the fretwork and how large the holes are .. somewhere on here I posted a recording of it but I'm not sure I could find it now 

[RAc]

4 minutes ago, Jake Middleton-Metcalfe said:

As in there was no or hardly any difference in sound between the wooden or metal ends? 

yes, we are on the same page! 🙂

[alex_holden]

3 hours ago, RAc said:

Alex once gathered experiences about this while Mullering an EC where he replaced the wooden end plates with metal ones. The results, I believe, were sobering as hardly audible. I had pondered ordering both metal and wooden plates for #3 but moved away from that idea due to his previous results

 

That was flat wooden ends replacing flat metal ends though. Although I could barely hear any difference in person and recordings of the two sounded pretty much identical, my client did say he could hear something. It certainly wasn't a huge change though. There is a much more noticeable tonal difference between that Wheatstone conversion (with Wheatstone reeds and radial pans) and the new instrument I made for him later with Holden reeds, parallel pans, and flat metal ends with quite open fretwork. Which is to say that there are a lot of factors that combine to affect the sound of an instrument and changing one detail in isolation may not make a big difference.

[Little John]

13 hours ago, Jake Middleton-Metcalfe said:

In relation to the weight idea though personally I have never actually done a precise weight test, to see what the actual difference would be in grams.

 

I think most of us would agree that the difference would be negligible. In fact, zero in some cases. The raised metal ends shown by @alex_holden in an earlier post were beaten from a flat sheet; so flat or raised would have been the same weight unless it caused the fretwork to be cut differently, which seems unlikely. In this case Alex raised the ends first then cut the fretwork. On an earlier instrument the did the reverse.

 

The tiny amount of wood saved on the action box sides is countered by the taller hand rests. All pretty negligible. 

[Little John]

58 minutes ago, alex_holden said:

That was flat wooden ends replacing flat metal ends though. Although I could barely hear any difference in person and recordings of the two sounded pretty much identical, my client did say he could hear something.

 

For another comparison, I have two very similar instruments made by Alex. The biggest difference in the ends - wooden on one and metal on the other. There is a small difference in tone, though it's hard describe. Hard, too, to attribute it to the ends: contrary to conventional wisdom the wooden one is the brighter. 

[Jake Middleton-Metcalfe]

29 minutes ago, Little John said:

 

I think most of us would agree that the difference would be negligible. In fact, zero in some cases. The raised metal ends shown by @alex_holden in an earlier post were beaten from a flat sheet; so flat or raised would have been the same weight unless it caused the fretwork to be cut differently, which seems unlikely. In this case Alex raised the ends first then cut the fretwork. On an earlier instrument the did the reverse.

 

The tiny amount of wood saved on the action box sides is countered by the taller hand rests. All pretty negligible. 

good point about the hand rests. Perhaps its more significant in an English where you have no hand rests but still - on its own raising the ends (or indeed lowering the frames which is what is really happening) would be a very small difference in weight. Really the weight saving approach has to be applied to the whole design rather than just the ends if its to be a significant difference. 

 

I really have no idea about the differences in sound some people talk about with raised ends, but that is interesting to hear about.

Edited January 22 by Jake Middleton-Metcalfe