38 Button Mystery Ebay Concertina

[wntrmute]

Recently I purchased what was described as a 'Vintage 38 Button English Concertina' from Ebay. The seller updated the description to an 'Anglo' when someone asked if the notes were the same on the press and draw. However, this is not an Anglo at all; neither in terms of button layout nor construction.

 

This appears to be the button layout (stars are notes that don't play).

Left hand:

	D/C	G/D	G/A	B/C	D/E	G/F#
C/A	A/E	E/*	A/B	C#/D	E/F#	*/G
Bb/F	B/C#	C#/Bb	F#/*	D#/F	G#/*

Right hand:

	F/*	G/F#	B/A	D/C	G/*	D/C
*/G	A/G#	C#/B	E/D	A/F#	G#/F	Bb/G
Bb/*	F#/D#	B/G#	C/G	E/D	D#/B

 

I have some pictures, but I'm having some problems with posting them. I have posted a bunch of pictures HERE.

Basically, the action is made out of wood (therefore, logically, it's a witch), the lever arms are all straight pieces of wood of about equal length. The buttons are like dowels that are glued onto the levers. The buttons are in two parts, a hidden bottom part that is attached to the lever, and then a bone or plastic part that is glued to the dowel. A couple of the tops have since fallen off. All of the lever arms on each side pivot around a single metal wire that is threaded into a long, notched, wooden block. The lever arms are the exact width of each notch, so there isn't much play. The pads are rectangular. The reed pan is on the other side of the action pan -- it's all of one piece. The reeds are set into two long plates, and rivetted into place. The plates are held by metal hooks and screws. There is one pair of reeds for each button.

The outside is in pretty good shape, though the right hand side has buckled slightly at the flets and by the buttons. In terms of size, it is the same size as the El-Cheapo, and just one or two millemeters smaller than a Rochelle. The case is hexagonal, and is a very tight squeeze for the Rochelle. There are no maker's marks on the inside or outside of the instrument.

 

The sound is pretty mellow, closer to the El-Cheapo sound than even the Rochelle or any of the traditional anglos I've heard on CD. About half of the notes don't sound at all or sound very poorly.

 

This is definitely a German concertina; however, the number of buttons is the same on each side, while 76 tone Chemnitzers had more buttons on the right side than the left (from what I've seen on the 'net). Also, this is a six sided instrument which would be a bit goofy for a Chemnitzer. The seller of the item is based in New York state. Is there anyone familiar with German button layouts who can say if this is a standard Chemnitzer (or Karlsfelder) layout? Has anyone ever seen a concertina like this before?

Edited December 9, 2007 by wntrmute

[Daniel Hersh]

I don't have time at the moment to do a comparison myself, but here are links to layouts for Karlsfelder, Chemnitzer (on the excellent site of c.net member Ted Kloba), and bandoneon.

 

The internal construction looks typical for an older German-built concertina.

 

Daniel

 

Recently I purchased what was described as a 'Vintage 38 Button English Concertina' from Ebay. The seller updated the description to an 'Anglo' when someone asked if the notes were the same on the press and draw. However, this is not an Anglo at all; neither in terms of button layout nor construction.

 

This appears to be the button layout (stars are notes that don't play).

Left hand:

	D/C	G/D	G/A	B/C	D/E	G/F#
C/A	A/E	E/*	A/B	C#/D	E/F#	*/G
Bb/F	B/C#	C#/Bb	F#/*	D#/F	G#/*

Right hand:

	F/*	G/F#	B/A	D/C	G/*	D/C
*/G	A/G#	C#/B	E/D	A/F#	G#/F	Bb/G
Bb/*	F#/D#	B/G#	C/G	E/D	D#/B

 

I have some pictures, but I'm having some problems with posting them. I have posted a bunch of pictures HERE.

Basically, the action is made out of wood (therefore, logically, it's a witch), the lever arms are all straight pieces of wood of about equal length. The buttons are like dowels that are glued onto the levers. The buttons are in two parts, a hidden bottom part that is attached to the lever, and then a bone or plastic part that is glued to the dowel. A couple of the tops have since fallen off. All of the lever arms on each side pivot around a single metal wire that is threaded into a long, notched, wooden block. The lever arms are the exact width of each notch, so there isn't much play. The pads are rectangular. The reed pan is on the other side of the action pan -- it's all of one piece. The reeds are set into two long plates, and rivetted into place. The plates are held by metal hooks and screws. There is one pair of reeds for each button.

The outside is in pretty good shape, though the right hand side has buckled slightly at the flets and by the buttons. In terms of size, it is the same size as the El-Cheapo, and just one or two millemeters smaller than a Rochelle. The case is hexagonal, and is a very tight squeeze for the Rochelle. There are no maker's marks on the inside or outside of the instrument.

 

The sound is pretty mellow, closer to the El-Cheapo sound than even the Rochelle or any of the traditional anglos I've heard on CD. About half of the notes don't sound at all or sound very poorly.

 

This is definitely a German concertina; however, the number of buttons is the same on each side, while 76 tone Chemnitzers had more buttons on the right side than the left (from what I've seen on the 'net). Also, this is a six sided instrument which would be a bit goofy for a Chemnitzer. The seller of the item is based in New York state. Is there anyone familiar with German button layouts who can say if this is a standard Chemnitzer (or Karlsfelder) layout? Has anyone ever seen a concertina like this before?

[Pete Dunk]

Interesting that the first query was from Harry Geuns. If you get his email addy from his website he will probably be able to give you a lot more info.

[wntrmute]

A little background for this post: I had downloaded and printed out the old anglo tutors that are posted on Concertina.com. Several of those are from the 1800's. One of them, from 1860 or so, indicated that the original 20 button concertinas were tuned in C, but a minor third low: if you pushed the C button you actually heard an A. The 'tuned in C' part, I suppose, means in terms of the notes' relations to each other -- I think maybe this was before equal temperment had become the standard.

Other tutors from the 1880's included button layouts for 22 and 28 button instruments. What is interesting about the 28 button layout is how wildly different it is from the 30 button layout we are familiar with now. The top row was 5 buttons in Bb, with the C row largely unchanged, and one button subtracted from the G row on each side.

Why I mention all this is that when I take the button layout for the 28 button arrangement, and lower each note by a minor third, I end up with the core button layout for the mystery concertina. Obviously there's 5 extra buttons on each side, and also the G row (or E row, if you lower it a minor third) is greatly different, but most of the buttons match up exactly.

That just seems significant to me. It seems like at some point, the Anglo and the German concertinas diverged, with the Anglo retuning itself to the C scale, while the German concertinas renamed the notes to match what was sounded. I suppose this may have been around the 1880's or 1890's, or whenever Jones came up with the Anglo-chromatic, which I think was the first of the 30 button style with which we are familiar. Though I'm certain I'm just stumbling onto a path long ago mapped out by others already.

 

At some point I'd like to fix the thing up. I've found a couple of springs that have moved out of position, so the buttons don't close right, and as noted above some of the bone button tops have fallen off -- those things should be easy enough to fix. The reeds may be a different kettle of fish, but one step at a time. I'm wondering if the leather flaps may just be stuck on the notes that don't sound or hardly sound at all -- there doesn't appear to be much corrosion.

[Daniel Hersh]

Re the non-sounding reeds, have you tried running a slip of thin, strong paper (such as a new currency bill) under the reed tongues to clear out possible clogs from dust etc.? This is a standard technique on a British-style concertina reed -- I've never tried it on a long-plate reed. though.

 

Re history, what you've written is close to my understanding, which is as follows (others may post corrections):

 

The original German concertina was a square instrument that initially had one row of 10 buttons, then two rows tuned a fifth apart. The two-row version became very popular as an import in England by the 1850's. English manufacturers (possibly Nickolds, originally) decided to try to capture the high end of this market by making 20-button "Anglo-German" concertinas with hexagonal ends and English-style construction and the German note pattern. A bit later, the English makers (possibly led by Jones) began to add additional buttons in a third-row layout of their own design to make the instrument more chromatic, creating the "Anglo-chromatic" concertina and leading eventually to the fairly standard 30-button layouts often associated with Wheatstone and Jeffries and to Anglos with as many as 50 buttons. (Info on Nickolds and Jones from Stephen Chambers's article here.)

 

Back in Germany, manufacturers focusing on export to the British Isles and the US soon adopted the hexagonal design, though they primarily continued to produce 20-button concertinas. But the German manufacturers who were aiming at the domestic market took a different approach, keeping the square design and adding more and more buttons on larger and larger instruments in what eventually became three distinct systems: Chemnitzer, Karlsfelder and Bandonion. It's my impression that the first step in this path was the three-row 28-button concertina that you mention. The original two rows on a 20-button concertina were a fifth apart, as they are today. The third row that the German makers added was a whole tone below the center-row, yielding, for example, a G/A/E concertina. But that still wasn't fully chromatic, so the builders started looking for buttons with duplicated notes that could be re-assigned. They found them on the highest row (the E row on the G/A/E example) and made so many changes to that row that the G and A rows became the home rows, and the old E row a chromatic row, though it retained some of its original E-row notes (at least on a Chemnitzer, which is the only one of the German systems I know much about).

 

So where does your newly acquired concertina fit in? It seems to be a hybrid between the German export and the German domestic concertina, with the hexagonal shape (and single-reed design, though some export concertinas were double-reed) of the export and the extra buttons, key layout and air lever rather than air button of the domestic. It's interesting that it was found in the US -- though perhaps not surprising, since the export-style German concertina was very popular here at one time (see Dan Worrall's article here) and one of the "domestic" systems, the Chemnitzer, wound up being played almost exclusively by immigrant communities in the US.

 

Daniel

 

A little background for this post: I had downloaded and printed out the old anglo tutors that are posted on Concertina.com. Several of those are from the 1800's. One of them, from 1860 or so, indicated that the original 20 button concertinas were tuned in C, but a minor third low: if you pushed the C button you actually heard an A. The 'tuned in C' part, I suppose, means in terms of the notes' relations to each other -- I think maybe this was before equal temperment had become the standard.

Other tutors from the 1880's included button layouts for 22 and 28 button instruments. What is interesting about the 28 button layout is how wildly different it is from the 30 button layout we are familiar with now. The top row was 5 buttons in Bb, with the C row largely unchanged, and one button subtracted from the G row on each side.

Why I mention all this is that when I take the button layout for the 28 button arrangement, and lower each note by a minor third, I end up with the core button layout for the mystery concertina. Obviously there's 5 extra buttons on each side, and also the G row (or E row, if you lower it a minor third) is greatly different, but most of the buttons match up exactly.

That just seems significant to me. It seems like at some point, the Anglo and the German concertinas diverged, with the Anglo retuning itself to the C scale, while the German concertinas renamed the notes to match what was sounded. I suppose this may have been around the 1880's or 1890's, or whenever Jones came up with the Anglo-chromatic, which I think was the first of the 30 button style with which we are familiar. Though I'm certain I'm just stumbling onto a path long ago mapped out by others already.

 

At some point I'd like to fix the thing up. I've found a couple of springs that have moved out of position, so the buttons don't close right, and as noted above some of the bone button tops have fallen off -- those things should be easy enough to fix. The reeds may be a different kettle of fish, but one step at a time. I'm wondering if the leather flaps may just be stuck on the notes that don't sound or hardly sound at all -- there doesn't appear to be much corrosion.

Edited December 10, 2007 by Daniel Hersh

[wntrmute]

I do kinda wish Messrs. Worral and Chambers would comment on this beast, if they had seen or heard of any like it.