tuning Flattening reeds by 50 cents?

[Julian Macdonald]

Hi folks. Newbie here. Thanks for all the lovely advice.

I have some old Viceroy C/G Anglo concertinas (reeds on long plates) that are about 50 cents sharp of A=440 (old high pitch?)

Is it a reasonable prospect to tune them down 50 cents? Ie possible without damaging the reeds or the response too much?

What about detuning by 150cents? That's one that's about 50 cents sharp of E flat B flat, which I would like to take down to D/A as being more useful keys.

I know how to tune reeds but to date have only done fine-tuning.

Thanks.

 

[Tiposx]

I have detuned plenty of reeds down by around 50%, both steel and brass, using files. No problems to report. I wouldn't go any further than that though.

I have soldered the tips a few times on big reeds where absolutely necessary to go more than a tone downwards. Again no problems.

[Alex West]

1 hour ago, Julian Macdonald said:

Hi folks. Newbie here. Thanks for all the lovely advice.

I have some old Viceroy C/G Anglo concertinas (reeds on long plates) that are about 50 cents sharp of A=440 (old high pitch?)

Is it a reasonable prospect to tune them down 50 cents? Ie possible without damaging the reeds or the response too much?

What about detuning by 150cents? That's one that's about 50 cents sharp of E flat B flat, which I would like to take down to D/A as being more useful keys.

I know how to tune reeds but to date have only done fine-tuning.

Thanks.

 

I agree with what Tiposx has said, if you want to get from C/G old (high) pitch to C/G with A=440Hz.   To get to D/A from C/G is sharpening by a full tone, not flattening.  If the original tuning is from C/G in an old, sharp pitch, then it's not such a big step, but the top reeds are going to be very thin.

 

I'm confused by you saying that your C/G instrument is currently 50 cents sharp of Eb/Bb.  That would indicate that the original instrument keys are Eb/Bb?

 

Alex West

[d.elliott]

My experience is the same as Tipox and Alex.

[Julian Macdonald]

The last concertina I mentioned is a different one that's actually about 70 cents sharp of Eb/Bb (in my first comment I rounded the numbers for simplicity).Unless it's meant to be a low E/B. I have seen references to old concertinas in E/B, but that seems like a very odd arrangement and I wondered whether the commenters actually had an old high Eb/Bb.

I can't imagine any natural process that would cause a whole set of reeds to lose 30 cents with age and wear. Is that right?

The project would be to take that one down to D/A 

[Alex West]

Wes Williams knows more about the range and variety of vintage concertina keys than I do so perhaps he might give an opinion.  Bb/F and Ab/Eb are common flat keys, arguably suitable for playing with brass bands so why not Eb/Bb? (albeit in one of the old high pitches like A=454 or higher)

 

Having said that, I've heard of and had in my possession an instrument in B/F# which was apparently a known variant.

 

High pitch Eb to A=440Hz D would be possible, but you'd have a lot of metal to remove from the root or a bit of solder to add to the tip (which isn't terribly successful for the high reeds in my experience).  You might have to look carefully at the profiles and stiffnesses after the changes

 

Alex West

[wes williams]

Thanks for the mention Alex. I wrote something amost 25 years ago that you can access at archive.org, but give it a little time to find it. It's a bit inaccurate as I wasn't aware that cents were logarithmic, not linear, but it gives you an idea of pitches pre 1930. It sounds like the concertina in question is a Bb/Eb in an old pitch. The Salvation Army used A=452.4 Hz until 1964 for all brass (see here) so perhaps that's a clue to its heritage.

[Stephen Chambers]

Let me add a couple of comments about old German tunings:

 

1) They didn't tune their concertinas/melodeons/harmonicas to Equal Temperament (like a piano), they used tempered tunings, more like Just Intonation - which sound sweeter than Equal Temperament.

 

2) Older German instruments can be as low as half a semitone flat - which confused my late friend Nils Nielsen, the ace accordion tuner, when he converted my c.1905 Hohner D melodeon to A-440, 40-odd years ago, but assumed it must be sharp and gave it back to me in C#. I was not best pleased (to put it mildly), but when he said "But it doesn't say" I simply turned it over to where a lage letter D was stamped into the underside of the keyboard, and he responded "Oh, I'd better do it again!"

 

3) I've long regretted ever changing that Hohner to "concert pitch" (it sounded so gorgeous in its original tuning) - but it was the only one I had at the time and I wanted to be able to play with other people.

 

Today I would treasure that perfect original tuning.

 

 

Edited May 29 by Stephen Chambers
Edited typo

[Stephen Chambers]

 

Oh, and "Viceroy" was a brand name of the London musical instrument wholesalers Rose Morris & Co., which was put onto various of their cheap lines and toy/educational instruments, including many inexpensive imported accordions and concertinas that were made for them in Klingenthal, Saxony.

 

The 'VICEROY' trade mark was a play on the names of Rose-Morris company director Victor Morris, and his son Roy. (see:

https://rosemorris.com/pages/rose-morris-always-with-pleasure-1920-to-1970-part-1  )

 

[wschruba]

Actual temperament systems were in use long before Equal became the "norm" (and only then, it might be seen as a convenience...but to whom, it is difficult to say).  The large sum of music pre-20th century having up to 3 sharps/4 flats would seem to indicate that the best tuning systems could only really accommodate travelling so far from the 'home key' of an instrument before it started getting squirrely*.

 

I prefer using the Young system, personally, which does a good enough job having everything "equal", while still maintaining an amount of sparkle to each distinct key.  Some 20th century music (from the serialists) really does demand the use of Equal temperament, but even at the time, that system was not in super wide use.  Any piece that called for an organ, for instance, could almost guarantee that the instrument was NOT equally tempered.  Pythagorean sounds absolutely wild and grungy when you start playing triads in it (and in turn, gives some life to Late Medieval-Renaissance music that Equal temperament just makes sound...bland).  I am fortunate in that I have a modern electric console organ that is programmed with a library of different temperaments, some theoretical, some actually copied from historic instruments--and the difference that can be effected in a piece of music by doing nothing other than changing the temperament (at the spin of a dial) is stunning.  If you had to sit and physically re-tune every pipe/string/etc to change temperaments, you would likely never know.

 

[personal opinion incoming] I view Anglo concertinas (and tin whistles, and lap dulicmers, and any number of instruments like them) as the direct descendants of Renaissance instruments, in that they were never intended to be played in every key...so make them sound good in a handful of them.  Just because you can play in C# on modern copies of folk instruments, doesn't mean you should be able to.

 

*There are notably only a few pieces written by J.S. Bach as part of the Well-Tempered Clavier [NB, there's a Thesis out there that the 'doodles' on the cover are actually explaining the means of temperament to play it] that have 7 sharps/6 flats, and then not much more for the next 100ish years.  It also didn't help that an 'A' in Dusseldorf was different from an 'A' in Munich, and so on.

[Julian Macdonald]

To tune a 20 button  C/G concertina to just intonation would be quite feasible with the wrinkle that  A on the C row and A on the G row would be slightly different and not interchangeable.

With one row only (say a one row melodeon in C) the problem with just intonation is that the D-A fifth is very bad.

With two rows tuned in just intonation, to play a chord on the pull that includes A you use the A of the other row and it works.

[Chris Ghent]

Julian,

are you suggesting tuning the C row to base C and the G row to base G? This had not occurred to me as a possibility.  I have two instruments in 1/4 comma meantone and both are tuned with a single base note, one in G and the other in D.

[wschruba]

6 hours ago, Chris Ghent said:

Julian,

are you suggesting tuning the C row to base C and the G row to base G? This had not occurred to me as a possibility.  I have two instruments in 1/4 comma meantone and both are tuned with a single base note, one in G and the other in D.

 

This would be my assumption of tuning, too.  The thought of having two distinct temperaments (one with C, one with G) on one instrument would be strange, but...an interesting exercise none the less.  Intentional discord could be interesting...

 

Typically you would tune to the "home key" of the instrument, or to A440 if it's chromatic.  Using A as a reference is an attempt to keep different instruments from drifting too far apart, even if they're in different temperaments.

Edited June 1 by wschruba

[Julian Macdonald]

A just major scale in C in cents is: C 0, D 204, E 386, F 498, G 702, *A 884*, B 1088, C 1200.

The same scale starting on G is G 702, *A 906*, B 1088, C 1200, D 1404, E 1586, F#1790, G 1902.

So it turns out that the notes are all the same on both rows except F & F# of course and A. So you can do most of your cross-row playing except: 

You would use the C row's A when playing in C, E minor, F and  A minor (makes a good A-E fifth).

You would use the G row's A when playing in G   and D major or minor (makes a good D-A fifth) and I guess B minor (but not sure about that last).

I haven't done this, but it's a project.

[Stephen Chambers]

9 hours ago, Julian Macdonald said:

I haven't done this, but it's a project.

 

Just intonation is still normal on some models of harmonica. You might like to explore the Tuning section of my harmonica-technician friend Pat Missin's website: https://www.patmissin.com/tunings/tunings.html

[Chris Ghent]

On 6/1/2025 at 10:52 PM, Julian Macdonald said:

A just major scale in C in cents is: C 0, D 204, E 386, F 498, G 702, *A 884*, B 1088, C 1200.

The same scale starting on G is G 702, *A 906*, B 1088, C 1200, D 1404, E 1586, F#1790, G 1902.

So it turns out that the notes are all the same on both rows except F & F# of course and A. So you can do most of your cross-row playing except: 

You would use the C row's A when playing in C, E minor, F and  A minor (makes a good A-E fifth).

You would use the G row's A when playing in G   and D major or minor (makes a good D-A fifth) and I guess B minor (but not sure about that last).

I haven't done this, but it's a project.

Still thinking about this…

[Julian Macdonald]

Just to clarify: when referring to those other keys, I'm still assuming a 20 button C/G concertina. Naturally in the more remote keys you have to work around the missing notes of the scale, but that's another issue.

I haven't thought about what the implications would be for the accidental row of a 30 button concertina.

[Little John]

On 6/1/2025 at 2:39 AM, Julian Macdonald said:

With one row only (say a one row melodeon in C) the problem with just intonation is that the D-A fifth is very bad.

 

I understand it's quite common for Cajun players to take a factory-tuned instrument (presumably in equal temperament) and have the thirds and sevenths flattened by 14 cents to make them sound more acceptable.