Fixing Concertina Reeds With Accordion Reeds!

[accordionmagic]

Hi all,

 

There's much discussion here about reeds, not surprisingly, but I've not read a thread regarding reed repair although I know some people are making new reeds for concertinas.

 

I've been experimenting with reed making and reed making materials and it occured to me that my big pile of old accordion reeds might be suitable as a source of cheap good quality spring steel for occasional repairs where a replacement reed could not be found.

 

And so I started; take a look at the photo..

 

 

Take 3 spare brass concertina reeds and remove the brass tongues, I used one G#3 and 2off G3 for the experiment.

Take the steel tongue from 3 accordion reeds B2, G3 and B4. These were chosen because B2 is of similar thickness, B4 is of similar size and G3 is the same note!

 

File to size and tune.

 

B2 started off promising but to get down an octave or so! I removed a lot of material so making it thin at the base.

G3 was the same but I removed more material and its even thinner at the base.

B4 tongue wasnt filed at all, weight (solder) was added to the tip and then filed down to get G3

 

Which one sounds the best??

 

Well they all make G3 but B4 is brighter by some considerable amount.

 

Conclusion (for the moment) use a steel tongue and add weight to the tip, dont file the base away.

Its easy to trim to size and easy to tune.

 

Comments please

 

Regards

 

Roy

[tony]

Brilliant! Well done. If you can get hold of an old clock mainspring of a suitable size the result may be interesting.

[JimLucas]

If you can get hold of an old clock mainspring of a suitable size the result may be interesting.

Hmm. If you file the spring thinner, will the clock run faster... or slower?

[tony]

If you can get hold of an old clock mainspring of a suitable size the result may be interesting.

Hmm. If you file the spring thinner, will the clock run faster... or slower?

 

 

Depends which end you file. Come on Jim, you know the pendulum controls the speed.

[Dave Prebble]

Hi Roy,

 

Have you any recommendations as to type of flux and solder ?

 

I have used whatever came to hand in the past - with predictably 'mixed results'

 

Dave

[stella24]

to stay away from adding solder to the tip i believe you need to start with a longer reed plate, then you need to take away less metal at the belly to achieve the lower note. in bringing down older tinas to A440, the reeds that have too much filed away in the belly go slighty flat when played loud. i suppose i should've added solder to these or as i suggested, use a longer reed plate. maybe start with a thicker reed? wes.

[accordionmagic]

to stay away from adding solder to the tip i believe you need to start with a longer reed plate, then you need to take away less metal at the belly to achieve the lower note.

 

Yes thats true but I did start with B2 as above which is probably 4 times the size of the concertina reed and still needed to drop the resulting note a whole octave!

 

Adding solder to the tips is used in accordion circles to re-tune whole banks of reeds when the player fancies a change.

 

As to the solder type I simply use traditional lead/tin flux core solder from my electronics toolbox.

 

Cheers

 

Roy