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Hayden Duet With Real Concertina Reeds


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As announced at the Kilve Concertina Festival last weekend, I am pleassed to announce that Wim Wakker has now started making Hayden Duet Concertinas. Initially he will be making a batch of 10, 46 Button instruments in the popular 6.25 inch size using REAL CONCERTINA REEDS (not accordion reeds). The first two to be completed by the end of this year and the other eight in 2008. He has opened a "Hayden Concertina Book" for orders. Also in 2008 he expects to be makeing Hayden Duets in a larger size, again with Real Concertina Reeds; and anybody interested should put their name on the Hayden Duet book also.

Inventor.

P.S. Incase you think that I shouldn't be advertising on this Forum; I don't myself receive any personal gain out of these instruments.

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P.S. Incase you think that I shouldn't be advertising on this Forum; I don't myself receive any personal gain out of these instruments.

 

And why shouldn't you? :blink:

There is an advertisement and there is an advertisement. :D

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Surely Wim's going to have a huge list for the larger ones. The catch with Haydens seems to be friendly keyboard layout, available new, but nowhere to go to when you want more range apart from top flight makers with waiting lists years long.

 

If I was a serious would-be Hayden player I'd get my deposit down right now. I doubt you'd lose out even if you had to sell on, at least for a while.

 

Ooh perhaps I should buy some as an investment! (joke)

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As announced at the Kilve Concertina Festival last weekend, I am pleassed to announce that Wim Wakker has now started making Hayden Duet Concertinas. Initially he will be making a batch of 10, 46 Button instruments in the popular 6.25 inch size using REAL CONCERTINA REEDS (not accordion reeds). The first two to be completed by the end of this year and the other eight in 2008.

 

As a Hayden player, I'm glad to see this come to pass. But I'd be more excited to see the larger (more than 46 buttons) instruments come out first, and still more excited if they were of the more affordable hybrid (accordeon reeded) type.

 

My fantasy, of course, is a 50-odd note Hayden at the Jackie/Rochelle price range :lol:

OK, I mean, built in China with Rochelle technology (radial riveted action, accordion-style reed cells).

 

Seriously, my current Stagi already has 46 notes, and simply upgrading to a better instrument of the same capabilities doesn't make me want to start saving up. If I have to buy a top-line instrument to get more buttons, someday I may do that. But I don't think I'll rush to get my name on the list just yet.

--Mike K.

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I did recomend starting with a 65 button model (including the repeated D#/Eb and G#/Ab keys) but 46 is what Wim has decided to make at first. So I would suggest anyone wanting a larger Hayden put their names onto his Hayden list immediately. If sufficient did so perhaps he might start making these first.

Inventor.

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P.S. Marcus makes a 65 button Hayden with Accordion reeds, but does not advertise this because he has a lot of demand for his 30 button Anglos. Or why not buy a Jackie and a Jack and make one yourself. I estimate there should be enough space in the 7 plus inch bellows to take over 60 buttons if you lay out the accordion reeds wall to wall flat, and link the repeated #s&bs. This is how I designed the illfated Russian model.

Inventor.

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P.S. Marcus makes a 65 button Hayden with Accordion reeds, but does not advertise this because he has a lot of demand for his 30 button Anglos. Or why not buy a Jackie and a Jack and make one yourself. I estimate there should be enough space in the 7 plus inch bellows to take over 60 buttons if you lay out the accordion reeds wall to wall flat, and link the repeated #s&bs. This is how I designed the illfated Russian model.

Inventor.

 

Just out of curiousity, why the Russian model was ill fated?

The prototipe looked mighty nice, the idea of putting all the reeds in one big plate is appealing, it could be alluminium alloy plate to save on weight. If they made two reed octave tuned Hayden, I'd be very interested in one. It's like having regularly laid-out Bandoneon.

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The reed plates were the problem in the end. I didn't have the funds or expertise to order mass-produced pairs of plates, and didn't think it'd be cost effective (or fair) to ask the maker to make them all individually. I do feel bad to have raised so many expectations only to let everyone down.

Samantha

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The reed plates were the problem in the end. I didn't have the funds or expertise to order mass-produced pairs of plates, and didn't think it'd be cost effective (or fair) to ask the maker to make them all individually. I do feel bad to have raised so many expectations only to let everyone down.

Samantha

Sorry to raise it again, but could there be individual alluminium plates from any of the accordion reed makers? May be the whole project is not dead yet.

Perhabs some Bandoneon makers in Germany can produce the plates, like Harry Geuns, for example? Or folks at the BBox can come up with some solution now, that

they have aquired some more experience with computerized machinery.

Can the maker be contacted?

Thanks.

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P.S. Marcus makes a 65 button Hayden with Accordion reeds, but does not advertise this because he has a lot of demand for his 30 button Anglos.

Really? Any idea what the price range is, and the lead time?

Personally, I'd be satisfied with about 55 buttons.

Or why not buy a Jackie and a Jack and make one yourself. I estimate there should be enough space in the 7 plus inch bellows to take over 60 buttons if you lay out the accordion reeds wall to wall flat, and link the repeated #s&bs. This is how I designed the illfated Russian model.

Inventor.

Well, that would be quite a project! Laying the accordeon reeds had aginst one another is already done, more or less, in the Morse instruments, and certainly they are packed like sardines in the Hohner Preciosa miniature Club accordeon. Linking enharmonic buttons to eliminate redundant reeds is a good idea, also proposed by Morse.

 

Everyone cites the large number of reeds as the barrier to producing a great-than-46-note Hayden. Yet there are plenty of vintage Maccann and Crane Duets with more than 46 buttons. But then, nobody is making many of those today either.

 

I think we just have to concede that a 50-plus-button Duet has got to be larger diameter than a vintage EC or Anglo.

 

Rather than octave-tuned reed pairs like a bandoneon, I'd perfer a wet-tuned unison pair. But I'd be very pleased with one reed per note.

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Rather than octave-tuned reed pairs like a bandoneon, I'd perfer a wet-tuned unison pair. But I'd be very pleased with one reed per note.

 

Octave tuned is not personal preference, it's just the better overall combination for independent left/right. The "wetter" you go, the less possibility for harmony there is, the stronger and more sufficient single melody becomes. If any tremolo is to be used, just "swing" type tuning or almost dry, otherwise there is little reason to have Duet system.

Just try playing chords on the left and right of accordion with thick tremolo and hear the roar instead of harmony. Personally I like tremolo more. But that's all just dreams.

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The reed plates were the problem in the end. I didn't have the funds or expertise to order mass-produced pairs of plates, and didn't think it'd be cost effective (or fair) to ask the maker to make them all individually. I do feel bad to have raised so many expectations only to let everyone down.

Samantha

Sorry to raise it again, but could there be individual alluminium plates from any of the accordion reed makers? May be the whole project is not dead yet.

Perhabs some Bandoneon makers in Germany can produce the plates, like Harry Geuns, for example? Or folks at the BBox can come up with some solution now, that

they have aquired some more experience with computerized machinery.

Can the maker be contacted?

Thanks.

 

Italian reed makers will make sets of whatever reeds you want. They produce all sorts of oddball combinations for diatonic accordions with rows of accidentals. You might even get them to produce a single set if you could convince them that it was a prototype and further orders could follow. I have contact details for the (English speaking) sales manager at Cagnoni.

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It's not the reeds, it's the reed plates that were the problem. Reed-making is the Russian maker's speciality. Unfortunately I am no longer in a position to put up the capital required to invest in a batch of reed plates.

Samantha

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Sorry to raise it again, but could there be individual alluminium plates from any of the accordion reed makers?
To clarify a bit on what Samantha said.... They are ganged plates with scores of reeds per plate, not individual plates with just two reeds apiece as the way the Italians make them. Making ganged plates is much more difficult. Even the older traditional style of bandoneons which did use this method had only a dozen or so reeds per plate with much larger spacing between the vents. Samantha's Hayden was very efficiently laid out for minimum size.

 

-- Rich --

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Sorry to raise it again, but could there be individual alluminium plates from any of the accordion reed makers?
To clarify a bit on what Samantha said.... They are ganged plates with scores of reeds per plate, not individual plates with just two reeds apiece as the way the Italians make them. Making ganged plates is much more difficult. Even the older traditional style of bandoneons which did use this method had only a dozen or so reeds per plate with much larger spacing between the vents. Samantha's Hayden was very efficiently laid out for minimum size.

 

-- Rich --

 

I think the reason the Russian maker went with single plate was that he knew how to do it and didn't know how to use individual plates. Russians still make accordions this way.

It adds to weight, but perhabs more portable and airtight. For weight there could be alluminium alloys, but for easy assembly with ready details the design should have been more pragmatic and used individual plates.

Just out of curiosity, how much an individual plate would cost as compared to individual reed plates? And what exactly was problematic with ordering and making of large plates?

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Just out of curiosity, how much an individual plate would cost as compared to individual reed plates? And what exactly was problematic with ordering and making of large plates?

I don't even play the part of a concertina maker on TV, but I can gues a couple issues related ot making a large plate of reeds.

 

First, if one of the reeds is bad, you have to grind off its rivet and do it over again, or else throw the whole plate away. And placing and riveting one reed surrounded by other reeds has to be dicey.

 

Then you have to apply wind to just one reed at a time for tuning and voicing; some special fixtures would be required, that the tuner could shift the plate around on.

 

Final assembly would be pretty easy, once you *finally* got a 100% good and tuned plateful of reeds.

 

Note that *linear* plates (one long row of reeds) are pretty common -- harmonicas, Melodicas, and I have a junked-out 20-button Anglo with 4 zinc reed plates of 5 pairs each. These can be shifted along a single opening for blowing or drawing, to tune and voice.

 

But a two-dimensional array of reeds, maybe at right angles to one another, would be harder to handle (literally). Just my +/- two cents worth.

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