Planning a first build- reed question

[Rayune]

Hello, all. I'm new to the forum, but I've been doing some reading on here and watching videos on building a concertina of my own. As a little background, after spending way too much time with technology in the first part of my life, I've been doubling down on going analog (right down to coffee in an urn on the stove, shaving with a safety razor, and using cloth napkins and handkerchiefs) and learning new skills (repairing my own drywall, beekeeping, etc.) over the last few years. I recently took up the piano accordion, but I did NOT want to shell out a bunch of money, so what did I do? I got a broken-down one from eBay and fixed it up. I then took it a step further and found somebody who was re-selling broken, store-returned instruments on eBay, and I taught him to fix some common problems with his store returns in exchange for a 72-bass SofiaMari accordion. Yes, I know that neither an old beater or a SofiaMari are necessarily great instruments, but they're fine for me as a learner. So I wound up with two accordions that I am learning to play: one for $100 after shipping, and another for free. I decided that the building and the repair were extremely rewarding.

 

Fast forward a couple of months, and I found the Anglo concertina. I like the sound of a piano accordion better, to be honest, but the concertina has its own charm, and certain genres of music seem to be particularly well-suited for it. However, the prices of these are pretty steep, as you are all aware (particularly when I am currently averaging $50/instrument). I thought I'd take it upon myself as a next project to build my own, going off of some of the plans and posts around here. One question that I had, though, was around which kind of reeds to use. I've already resolved to use accordion reeds, but if I am building an Anglo concertina, then am I going to need to (or even just benefit from) harvesting reeds from a diatonic accordion instead of a chromatic accordion so that they are already arranged to produce different notes on push/pull? Or is it a situation where, depending on how I construct the reed pan, the type of accordion wouldn't really matter? Let me know if I'm not making sense with that question. Of course, as a follow-up, I know that some of you have even made your own reeds, and I am wondering what degree of difficulty and expense this has posed for you (I believe I know the answer to this already, but it's still worth asking).

 

Thanks!

[mChavez]

Hi,

 

I've dipped my toe into squeezebox making, but it's quite low down on my priority list at the moment, so can't boast that I've finished a box yet.

It sounds like you are only discovering the squeezebox world, so have a good go at playing any type you can find. I've started on a CBA, then discovered a unisonoric bandoneon, then fell in love with a diatonic accordion/melodeon. As I found out for myself, bando and large diatonics are a lot closer to what I want the squeezebox to do, while I can't say that I care that much for the CBA now. (of course, when I was starting out, I just had a general idea of playing "an accordion".)

So do give all of them a try before you commit to a very long & expensive build.

 

Some thoughts:

 

- Making a bandoneon might be easier because you get a lot of space to work inside the box. Everything's bigger. You are not chasing a small & lightweight target. Bellows are easier to source. Bellows technique will most likely be a lot closer to accordion than to a 'tina. Bando doesn't have to be bisonoric - unisonoric ones also exist. You can just build a single voice one, which will put it into concertina territory sound wise, but will still have lots of the bandoneon timbre charm.

- You can make your own reeds...Nothing difficult about it, but it is very time consuming - probably not good for your first project. Custom reeds can be ordered, but that's expensive.

- There's a huge amount of unforeseen issues that you run into while building, so don't expect a fast result. Most issues seem to arise from the lack of space, hence, see thought number 1.

- Being able to do some modelling for laser cutting & (potentially) 3d printing is very handy.

- There's very little information about squeezeboxes, so you're on your own.

 

Imho, it makes a lot of sense to make something that's not widely available. Otherwise you are better off buying old & fixing. E.g. making a Hayden 'tina, Kusserow/Wiki bandoneon, or some wild diatonic build (I want to try a Darwin bass end with bayan-sized reeds 🥺, and perhaps a single cassotto MM in the right) makes sense, as you can't buy them. Making a standard-sized stradella CBA does not, as there's tons of old ones available at semi-reasonable prices.

Whatever you design needs to be quite simple. Do not go for a 5-voice double cassotto treble with a converter bass. You'll never finish it.

 

Edited February 14 by mChavez

[Łukasz Martynowicz]

Regarding reeds for an Anglo, it will border on a miracle to source exactly what is needed from anything other than an Anglo. You not only need specific pairs of notes, you also need coherently sounding set, so mix-matching from different boxes will most probably result in quite chaotic timbre, response and volume. The easiest option would be to cut accordion reeds from two dry tuned M voices of one accordion to singe tongue reeds and build with that. 
 

Be aware, that building your own instrument from scratch is vastly different than restoring an old one. There are two layers of free reed inatrument construction. First one you can easily see, understand, copy or design - the material/mechanical layer. It is not harder than any other wood-, metal- and leather- working in similar scale and with Anglos it is also relatively not very time consuming. But… You are pretty much guaranteed to build a poor sounding, unbalanced box the first time you do it, because understanding of the invisible aspect of free reed instruments - the acoustics, can only be learned by experience. My advice here is - build slightly oversized endboxes and bellows, and design the interior in a way that allows repeated rebuilding and refitting of the reedpan. Preferably also re-designing and refitting the fretwork. This will allow you to re-iterate your design and fix inevitable sound-impacting mistakes/bad choices without the need to build multiple whole instruments.

[Theo]

It is entirely possible to build a decent sounding anglo using accordion reeds.  The late Paul Harvey made may such concertinas and built up quite a successful small market selling them under the name Flying Duck Concertinas.  The trick is to take an accordion reed that has two tongues of the same pitch and tune one up and the other down to make the note combination that you need.  It takes some experience to do this but you need only simple hand tools and some trial and error.  Expect to wreck a few reeds as you learn.   Eddy Jay who specialises in 3D printed concertinas also stared off with salvaged accordion reeds. 

[Rayune]

Good advice so far. I'm definitely feeling that making my own reeds is not the way to go, which leaves me with either (A) scavenging them from a busted-up instrument, or (B) purchasing the set of them somewhere. My fear with getting a "donor" instrument is that I will get some that are out of tune or flat-out unusable, adding additional complications into the mix. On top of that, if I find a donor concertina, then the obvious question becomes, "why are you building a hot mess of a concertina when you could've just fixed the higher-quality one that someone gave to their local Goodwill?"

 

From other posts, it sounds like harmonikas.cz is about the only place where I can reasonably source a set of reeds as an individual. In this thread, the user Fraxinus looks to have gotten a quote out of them on a full set for 30-button Anglo. Their lower-end accordion reeds would run in the 20-50 Euro range, which is far cheaper than I anticipated. I'm wondering if the Mechanika class at around 20 Euros is going to be perfectly serviceable, or whether it's going to sound as bad as my kids' toy accordion! If those are fine, then it's probably cheaper, even with shipping, than finding a donor accordion in most cases.

 

From there, though, I'm not too concerned about sourcing this part or that part. My intent is to build from the ground up, stealing ideas from others all the way and probably basing my construction off of what the user charleschar has done with his 25-button Anglo and later his Crane Duet. I may do some upgrades from there, using ragboard instead of cardboard, for example, but I don't need to care too much about finding bellows or reed plates that will fit. I'll just build it so that it does, but I welcome pointers to improve my odds.

[mChavez]

In my mind I compare reed sound to wiping my behind with sandpaper. The best of the best hand made reeds that I've heard are about 2000 wet.

Cheap reeds on entry level instruments can be as bad as 80 grit dry, and a set of brand new reeds for 20 eur (if such sets exist...I think you've lost a zero there somewhere) will be an equivalent of gluing broken glass to a canvas rag...

 

If you are thinking of saving money by building your own - don't. It won't work out.

[Rayune]

Model Concertina-30 button.pdf

Here's the quote sheet that Fraxinus posted. You can see how the true DIX-series reeds are indeed 200+ Euros, but there are certainly those that are low-end, as well. For reference, the accordion that I got for free is the one that Liberty Bellows features in this video, except that mine is blue. To hear the player on actual songs from the halfway mark, it's not something like a Beltuna, but it's fine as a learner's instrument, although many would call it kind of a garbage instrument. I bring this up to say that, if I am looking at something like that with the Mechanika reeds (so called because they are entirely machine-made and machine-tuned to within +/- 5 cents), then I am perfectly happy with that. There's just no way of knowing where it'll land on quality without hearing it, though. That's where I kind of struggle.

[charleschar]

1 hour ago, Rayune said:

Good advice so far. I'm definitely feeling that making my own reeds is not the way to go, which leaves me with either (A) scavenging them from a busted-up instrument, or (B) purchasing the set of them somewhere. My fear with getting a "donor" instrument is that I will get some that are out of tune or flat-out unusable, adding additional complications into the mix. On top of that, if I find a donor concertina, then the obvious question becomes, "why are you building a hot mess of a concertina when you could've just fixed the higher-quality one that someone gave to their local Goodwill?"

 

From other posts, it sounds like harmonikas.cz is about the only place where I can reasonably source a set of reeds as an individual. In this thread, the user Fraxinus looks to have gotten a quote out of them on a full set for 30-button Anglo. Their lower-end accordion reeds would run in the 20-50 Euro range, which is far cheaper than I anticipated. I'm wondering if the Mechanika class at around 20 Euros is going to be perfectly serviceable, or whether it's going to sound as bad as my kids' toy accordion! If those are fine, then it's probably cheaper, even with shipping, than finding a donor accordion in most cases.

 

From there, though, I'm not too concerned about sourcing this part or that part. My intent is to build from the ground up, stealing ideas from others all the way and probably basing my construction off of what the user charleschar has done with his 25-button Anglo and later his Crane Duet. I may do some upgrades from there, using ragboard instead of cardboard, for example, but I don't need to care too much about finding bellows or reed plates that will fit. I'll just build it so that it does, but I welcome pointers to improve my odds.

I'm glad that my videos have been inspiration to you. I consider the first concertina I built to be badly and cheaply constructed and the second to be significantly better but still rough in areas due to lack of attention, research, experience, or skill. Regardless, both instruments still play today (second has held up especially well) and while they aren't good instruments in comparison to professional ones, I think they represent that concertinas can be built relatively cheaply and still be playable (under $200 and $300 in raw material for the 1st and 2nd respectively!), especially if you aren't a newbie to metal/wood fabrication and didn't know how to make a complete design beforehand like I was when I built them. While I am not an expert in concertinas like many members of this forum, I used reeds from old accordions in both of my builds and would not change this were I to make another one. They can be perfectly functional and sourced cheaply if you know where to look and are willing to put some time into their refurbishment, although they produce a different timbre than concertina reeds which some find undesirable. If you have enough time/desire, I encourage you to try building your own as it is satisfying and a great learning experience. It seems to me that a low demand for concertinas and their mechanical complexity has caused them to become significantly expensive, making constructing them yourself a great project. I feel happy with and enjoy playing my second concertina, and that's coming from someone who did a half-baked job on many parts of it!

[Rayune]

7 minutes ago, charleschar said:

I'm glad that my videos have been inspiration to you. I consider the first concertina I built to be badly and cheaply constructed and the second to be significantly better but still rough in areas due to lack of attention, research, experience, or skill. Regardless, both instruments still play today (second has held up especially well) and while they aren't good instruments in comparison to professional ones, I think they represent that concertinas can be built relatively cheaply and still be playable (under $200 and $300 in raw material for the 1st and 2nd respectively!), especially if you aren't a newbie to metal/wood fabrication and didn't know how to make a complete design beforehand like I was when I built them. While I am not an expert in concertinas like many members of this forum, I used reeds from old accordions in both of my builds and would not change this were I to make another one. They can be perfectly functional and sourced cheaply if you know where to look and are willing to put some time into their refurbishment, although they produce a different timbre than concertina reeds which some find undesirable. If you have enough time/desire, I encourage you to try building your own as it is satisfying and a great learning experience. It seems to me that a low demand for concertinas and their mechanical complexity has caused them to become significantly expensive, making constructing them yourself a great project. I feel happy with and enjoy playing my second concertina, and that's coming from someone who did a half-baked job on many parts of it!

Glad to have you weigh in! I was really intrigued to see how some of the solutions were reached, and the total cost was something that I'm glad you volunteered, since that's something I was sort of wondering about. With it running a somewhere less than $300 for the second one, if the goal were simply, "Acquire Concertina," then I'd be tempted to just pick up a Hohner D40.

 

But, of course, that isn't the point. What parts have you found that haven't held up as well over time with each of them? Given that cardboard, electrical tape, paperclips, etc. aren't generally considered "quality materials," I am curious as to what has held up well and what has not, and whether the glue that you used has done the job. Which components were most costly in your build?

[Łukasz Martynowicz]

About harmonikas.cz reeds. The lower the class of the reed, the less air efficient and responsive reeds are - in terms of concertina building, this translates the most to how long single bellows direction phrases you will be able to play. So if you go for mechanika reeds, make the bellows with more folds. They also have less rich sound due to softer tongue steel used and have lesser tuning stability. Mechanika class is perfectly fine for a first time build, as you won't have to worry about destroying a top quality reed worth a quarter of the full mechanika set  However, given that Tipo A Mano are only 50 euro for the set, I would highly recommend going straight for this class, as you don't really need classic accordion reeds of higher quality in a concertina. DIX reeds are a different breed and you pay premium for the brass frame/shoe sound - way more like traditional concertinas (or bandoneon if you go for the zinc plate option). They are pricy, but worth every cent.

 

 

 

[Rayune]

1 hour ago, Łukasz Martynowicz said:

About harmonikas.cz reeds. The lower the class of the reed, the less air efficient and responsive reeds are - in terms of concertina building, this translates the most to how long single bellows direction phrases you will be able to play. So if you go for mechanika reeds, make the bellows with more folds. They also have less rich sound due to softer tongue steel used and have lesser tuning stability. Mechanika class is perfectly fine for a first time build, as you won't have to worry about destroying a top quality reed worth a quarter of the full mechanika set  However, given that Tipo A Mano are only 50 euro for the set, I would highly recommend going straight for this class, as you don't really need classic accordion reeds of higher quality in a concertina. DIX reeds are a different breed and you pay premium for the brass frame/shoe sound - way more like traditional concertinas (or bandoneon if you go for the zinc plate option). They are pricy, but worth every cent.

 

 

 

Great insights! Thanks for sharing those, and I am glad to hear from someone who has dealt with them.

[mChavez]

Forgive me for my ignorance, but how many reeds are we talking about for a 30-button Anglo?

While Dix never bothered replying to my questions on several occasions (geez, if you don't want to reply to emails, just put up a price list for you products, like the rest of the vendors in the world), the quotes that I was getting for Italian sets of ~3x35 reed pairs (so, ~200 "individual" reeds) from other suppliers would typically run into 500 EUR for tipo and closer to 900 for a mano. The attached file suggests ~100 EUR for various a mano grades.

 

@Theo - in your experience, how far can one safely push a reed? I imagine going heavier is the right direction, as going lighter requires taking off some meat off the tip, and the tips tend to be quite thin on higher end reeds.

Edited February 15 by mChavez

[Theo]

How far can you take a reed?  There is not one simple answer.   The biggest factor is the starting pitch. In very general terms there are two extremes with gradual change between. Very low reeds with thick or weighted tips can be tuned up, often by several semitones,  by removing metal from the tip.  Very high pitch reeds can be tuned down by several semitones by removing metal from the lower part.  Reeds of any pitch can also be lowered by tip loading.  But any of these changes can degrade the performance of the reed, so you have to learn by experience how far is acceptable.  Too much tip loading and the reed starts more slowly and volume is reduced. Too much filing to lower the pitch, and the pitch becomes unstable, going flatter as the reed is driven harder. 

Edited February 15 by Theo

[charleschar]

On 2/14/2024 at 2:44 PM, Rayune said:

Glad to have you weigh in! I was really intrigued to see how some of the solutions were reached, and the total cost was something that I'm glad you volunteered, since that's something I was sort of wondering about. With it running a somewhere less than $300 for the second one, if the goal were simply, "Acquire Concertina," then I'd be tempted to just pick up a Hohner D40.

 

But, of course, that isn't the point. What parts have you found that haven't held up as well over time with each of them? Given that cardboard, electrical tape, paperclips, etc. aren't generally considered "quality materials," I am curious as to what has held up well and what has not, and whether the glue that you used has done the job. Which components were most costly in your build?

Both concertinas play pretty much as well today as they did when they were first finished, so for my original post to imply that they waned over time was misleading. Paperclip springs were very wonky and don't provide a consistent spring tension so I switched to phosphor-bronze wire with a spring-making jig. The cardboard in the bellows worked fine for me, though I would use something stiffer and stronger in the future, and the electrical tape combined with felt to capture the pad hole profile worked well for sealing the pads. The leather I used for the bellows was a bit cheap and I don't think the PVA glue worked that well for sealing it. In the future I would use hide glue and good sheepskin leather. Although using aluminum for a pin on the aluminum action levers isn't the best material choice, I have had no issues with the action levers and they still operate smoothly.

 

The cost was an estimate of how much my build would cost for someone who didn't have a lot lying around like I did. In my case, the most costly things were the reeds from the old accordion I bought for $80. 

[Jake Middleton-Metcalfe]

The chart stating the prices of various reeds is interesting. Does anyone know which historical manufacturers the harmonicas company copied? Wheatstone? Jeffries? I never asked them I'm just interested though.