concertina vs accordian reeds and their sound profile

[Ed Nardell]

Being new to the concertina world, it took me a while to understand that some concertinas are made with more readily available accordian reeds and are properly called "hybrid" instruments, whereas true concertinas are built with concertina reeds.  I have found that finding a high quality 46 button true Hayden duet concertina to buy, new or used, is nearly impossible at this time.  Many of us will need to settle for hybrid instruments. This prompts several questions that no doubt have been asked and answered on this forum: 1) What are the differences between accordian and concertina reeds?; 2) Are concertina reeds that much more difficult to make (I understand that they are hand-made) that they are that much more expensive or less available?; 3) What is the sound profile of instruments with accordian vs concertina reeds? I believe that true concertinas tend to be softer in sound, but given the wide variety of sizes and designs of concertinas, even among just Hayden Duets, is this uniformly true?  If these questions have already been addressed here, a referral to that discussion would be appreciated. 

[Cathasach]

I'm relatively new to concertinas but my experience has been that the sound from accordion reeds is more abrasive or brighter than the more mellow concertina reeds. They can be louder but are harder to play at low volume.

 

Weirdly, my cheap Chinese concertina with accordion reeds seems to be an exception to this, although it's bad in different ways.

[David Barnert]

4 hours ago, Ed Nardell said:

... some concertinas are made with more readily available accordian reeds and are properly called "hybrid” instruments ...

 

What “hybrid” means in the concertina world is a little more complicated than that. Concertinas with accordion reeds have been made in Germany, Italy, China and other places for quite some time and these instruments are not called hybrids. In the late 20th century, places like The Button Box started making concertinas with accordion reeds using the British manufacturing techniques associated with vintage concertinas. That’s when the word “hybrid” entered the lexicon, to differentiate these instruments from the cheaper accordion-reeded instruments that had existed before.

[alex_holden]

You need to consider both the reed tongue and the metal plate it is attached to. Accordion reed plates were designed with mass-production processes in mind from the start. Concertina reed assemblies were initially fully hand-made, with labour-saving methods incorporated to varying degrees later on. Some features of the traditional concertina reed frame design, particularly the tapered vent relief, are difficult/expensive to fully automate.

 

Note that not all concertina reeds are created equal: the best ones still take a lot of time and manual skill to make. The vintage makers like Wheatstone and Lachenal sold a range of models at different prices and reed quality was part of the equation. The same is also true with accordion reeds, which are sold in various different quality grades.

 

The rest of the instrument's construction also affects the sound, e.g. accordion-style perpendicular reed blocks tend to sound different from accordion reeds mounted on a flat reed pan.

[Jim Besser]

I'm hardly an expert in reed dynamics, but I play both traditional and good hybrid Anglos, and I've thought a lot about the sound.

 

Traditional reeds produce a very pure sound; accordion reeds produce sound with layers of overtones.  They sound different, and they project differently.  I remember an experiment we did many years ago at an outdoor pub during a Morris tour.  A friend played his Jeffries with traditional reeds, and I played a Morse hybrid Anglo. Both were GDs.

 

Sitting near the instruments, the Morse hybrid was clearly louder. Across the pub, people could hear the Jeffries, but not the Morse.  At a noisy session, a  good traditional concertina is likely to cut thru the noise more effectively than a similar hybrid.

 

So which is 'louder' has no straightforward answer. 

 

I greatly prefer the sound of traditional reeds, but I've had bandmates who like the sound of the accordion reeds better. It's subjective. Playing solo, I almost always prefer the traditional instruments, but there are some tunes that just sound better with the more overtoney sound of the accordion reeds.

 

And when highly amplified, it's difficult to hear any difference.  Last week I played in a big band at a contra dance.  With the powerful PA and cavernous hall, I chose to play the hybrids since the sound would end up being about the same and the light weight of my hybrids would be easier on my arthritic hands.  In terms of playability, my hybrids are as fast and as easy to play as my traditional instruments.

 

As other have noted, traditional reeds are not all of the same quality.  Even among Jeffries, there are significant differences, more so among the lesser brands.  I suspect there is less variation among accordion reeds - they are mass produced, after all - but I'm no expert.

 

[Tiposx]

I mostly play the concertina alone. I prefer to tone of the traditional reeds for this, either brass or steel. Accordion reeds are less satisfying, especially after a long session.
When with other musicians I sometimes can’t hear what I am playing, I find that a good hybrid cuts through better. This might simply be because the ones I have played were very loud.

[Chris Ghent]

Accordion reeds produce more higher partials and the higher up the partials you go the less they are in tune. This encourages discord and to our ear discord is like bad news, it sounds louder.  This is described as perceived volume as it doesn’t necessarily show on the VU meter. 

[Don Taylor]

A couple of points:

 

1) I remember reading about a Czech accordion reed maker offering some 'concertina' reeds that were in a concertina type of housing but they had rectangular accordion style tongues and they did not have the tapered vent relief that Alex describes.  I recall that makers who tried them said that they still sounded more accordion-like than concertina-like.

 

2) There has been a topic here recently about Frank Edgley's ' New Model' concertina, in particular his new reeds.  AFAICT Frank is using an accordion style housing with tapered concertina reeds and maybe with tapered vent relief?  Frank says that 'the New Model having a stronger fundamental tone with fewer upper harmonics i.e. concertina tone.'

[Tiposx]

I have an Anglo that was built with those Dix concertina-style reed. It doesn’t sound like traditional reeds or accordion reeds. As one would expect perhaps.

They look very pretty, but the sound and overall performance is “ok” in this concertina at least.

[Jake Middleton-Metcalfe]

On 1/14/2025 at 12:27 AM, Ed Nardell said:

Being new to the concertina world, it took me a while to understand that some concertinas are made with more readily available accordian reeds and are properly called "hybrid" instruments, whereas true concertinas are built with concertina reeds.  I have found that finding a high quality 46 button true Hayden duet concertina to buy, new or used, is nearly impossible at this time.  Many of us will need to settle for hybrid instruments. This prompts several questions that no doubt have been asked and answered on this forum: 1) What are the differences between accordian and concertina reeds?; 2) Are concertina reeds that much more difficult to make (I understand that they are hand-made) that they are that much more expensive or less available?; 3) What is the sound profile of instruments with accordian vs concertina reeds? I believe that true concertinas tend to be softer in sound, but given the wide variety of sizes and designs of concertinas, even among just Hayden Duets, is this uniformly true?  If these questions have already been addressed here, a referral to that discussion would be appreciated. 

 

Concertina reeds are less available, though one manufacturer, harmonikas.cz does supply then I have no idea of the quality. They are somewhat more difficult to make.

 

At one point I made a series of recordings of hybrid concertinas and ones made with concertina reeds. Here is a link where you can listen to these recordings and come to your own conclusions: https://wolvertonconcertinas.com/sound-samples/ take note that in this link the recordings listed as "standard model" means accordion reeds and "advanced model" means concertina reeds.

 

I hope this is of some help to you and wish you all the best on your musical journey.

 

[alex_holden]

9 hours ago, Gary Sanders said:

Accordion reeds are naturally larger and produced on a larger scale than concertinas reeds; the latter are of smaller size, individual hand made, and more fragile.

 

It's slightly misleading to say that accordion reeds are naturally larger. The reed tongues for a particular pitch might be larger or smaller or about the same size depending on the scales used. Accordion reed plates mounted on a flat pan generally take up slightly more space than pairs of concertina reed frames in a pan with parallel chambers, because you can't overlap the plates like you can with two frames mounted on opposite sides of a board (at best you can butt two plates up side-by-side, but that isn't always practical). Also it can be difficult to tessellate the rectangular frames in a way that makes very efficient use of a hexagonal pan. Because concertina reed frames are wedge shaped, you can pack them in even more tightly if you use a radial reed pan design, which isn't really feasible with rectangular reed plates. Some accordion reed plates do appear to be excessively large relative to the size of the reed tongues mounted on them: this seems more common with small, high pitch reeds than bass reeds.

 

Accordion reeds mounted on perpendicular reed blocks rather than a flat pan seems to me to be a particularly inefficient way to build a concertina because either they have to all fit into the centre space inside the bellows folds or the bellows frames must be unusually deep.

 

I don't agree that concertina reeds are more fragile, though the traditional dovetailed frame friction-fitting method can be more sensitive to humidity changes, sometimes requiring occasional adjustments. Waxed accordion reed plates have a different weakness in that they can come loose if the instrument gets too hot.

[aeolina]

Some interesting stuff here. As a player of a lovely Wheatstone Aeola and a bespoke accordion reeded instrument I appreciate their differences. Both have their place in the free reed instrumentarium and across different genres and playing contexts. Some of my thinking and media in the thread "Caledonian Concertina" might be of interest.

 

Stuart

[Ed Nardell]

Thank you, gentlemen (no ladies responded) for that in-depth discussion of concertina and accordion reeds and the sound each produces. I especially want to thank Jake for the link to examples of concertinas played with either concertina reeds or accordion reeds for a direct comparison.  In some pieces the differences are striking and in others (e.g., The Quarry), much less so to my ear.  As primarily a singer, tone color comes to mind - another way of saying overtones.  A tenor and baritone may sing the same notes but sound very different due to many other acoustical differences (resonance, etc) - often lumped together as tone color. It looks like my playing will be limited to accordion reed instruments, while I keep an eye out for an opportunity to buy a high quality concertina reed instrument with Wiki/Hayden fingering. 

[Jim Besser]

Here's another data point: a quick and dirty comparison of a hybrid and traditional concertina, back to back.  Can you tell which has traditional reeds?  Both CGs - one a Morse hybrid, the other a Lachenal / Dipper instrument with excellent traditional reeds. (Note: It's undoubtedly true that recording - like amplification by a big PA system - attenuates some of the differences)

 

 

[Tiposx]

The first one sounds like accordion reeds to me.

[Stig Bubblecard]

Re Jim Besser. Sorry. They could be the same instrument to me. Just saying.

[Jim Besser]

1 hour ago, Stig Bubblecard said:

Re Jim Besser. Sorry. They could be the same instrument to me. Just saying.

 

That reinforces one of my points: recorded, or played through big speakers, the very real differences that I hear with I'm playing are minimized.

 

[David Barnert]

3 hours ago, Tiposx said:

The first one sounds like accordion reeds to me.

 

I’ll go out on the other limb and say the first one sounds more like concertina reeds.