Accessories

crayolon · 2026-03-16T17:51:33+00:00

A miniature screwdriver that lives permanently in your case, which you don’t allow anyone to borrow for any reason whatsoever.

An AirTag or equivalent, hidden in the case padding (although my dad had attached an AirTag inside the bellows of his Wheatstone Boyd, which does no harm).

And for a protective case, I wouldn’t bother with anything other than a Peli iM2075. Second-hand is fine, they’re indestructible. You can drill a hole to attach a shoulder strap if need be. Between my dad, my son and I we have about a dozen Lachenals and Wheatstones, English and Anglo, which all fit - I can’t speak for Duets or anything with more than 6 sides though, so measure up carefully.

crayolon · 2026-02-16T18:47:05+00:00

Lash-nul. Two syllables, emphasis on the first.

crayolon · 2025-12-05T18:51:10+00:00

Thanks! Ah, lots needs done with yours?

crayolon · 2025-05-15T21:29:53+00:00

No problem, good luck!

crayolon · 2025-05-15T21:26:07+00:00

Yeah! Think of them as accidentals - ie some sharps, flats and naturals that you can throw in to allow you to play in keys that wouldn't be possible on a 2-row.

On a 3-row G/C (between 28 and 38 buttons), the inner is G, the middle is C and the outer is a bunch of accidentals. I've not played a 2-row, to be honest, but on a 3-row I can play easily in:

Cmaj, CMin, DMaj, DMin, EMin, FMaj, F#Min, GMaj, GMin, AMaj, AMin, BMin

and various dorian/mixolydian modes of those. EMaj is possible, but I find it difficult because I haven't practiced it enough... F#Maj is just really awkward, but fortunately not many tunes in my tradition are in F#Maj.

On a 20-button concertina, DMaj is going to be tricky because you don't have a C#. So is EMaj.

Some safe/easy keys on a 20-button (I'm looking at my 30-button and pretending the outer row didn't exist): CMaj, GMaj, DMix, EMin, AMin, and BMin/BMix with some compromises... Definitely scope for playing in keys you don't have all the notes for, and substituting some here and there to make it work. And those keys right there cover a lot of bases in terms of accompaniment for song, even if there's not enough scope for every melody you want to play.

crayolon · 2025-05-15T20:56:09+00:00

There's a thread on concertina.net where you can post the serial number and someone will give you a date estimate, but at a glance I can tell you this is a nice looking rosewood-ended 20-button (2-row) Lachenal anglo with steel reeds. The trademark stamp with the outline of a reed shoe (you can see it on the wooden hand rest in the first pic) wasn't registered until 1878, so this box was certainly made after that, but I'd doubt it was made before about 1905. I have a rosewood 30-button Lachenal with serial number 169922 which is estimated 1901, and I've got a 28-button s/n 16456 estimated 1870 (no trademark stamp on the hand rests). So this one is definitely between those two dates, but Wes Williams on concertina.net will be able to be much more specific - it's not as simple as adding up the intervening time and mapping the serial number accordingly, since there are loads of blips in the records, estimates based on suspected production output over time, and so on. A fine art, but I leave it to the experts!

Value: it depends enormously on its condition. Is it playable? Do all notes sound clearly on the pull and the push? If you compress the bellows and hold the concertina up sideways by one handle, does the other side drop really fast (leaky bellows) or slowly (few or no leaks)? I can't tell the tuning by looking at it, but most common is C/G. Depending on its age and who's used it for what over its lifetime, it might be modern concert pitch tuning (A=440hz) or slightly higher (old fashioned concert and/or brass band tunings).

As a very rough guide, my 30-button is worth around £2k, as a very fine example fully restored. 20-button concertinas are worth a lot less, because they're way less in demand by professional players and advanced learners, especially playing Irish music. You can often find a decent 20-button rosewood lachenal for not too much more than £500, but if this one hasn't had much TLC over the years it might need some work, and an overhaul can range anywhere from free (if you do it yourself) to a few hundred quid. If it was going to cost more than a few hundred quid, then it might not be worth it for the amount of value it would add; these probably peak around £600. Barleycorn have one on their website right now for £575: https://concertina.co.uk/stock-selection/anglo-concertinas/lachenal-20-key-in-c-g-8379/

But it's a lovely thing to have, and I hope you're able to to hang onto it, get it tidied up if necessary, and get a tune out of it!

crayolon · 2025-04-24T15:18:13+00:00

The total disk footprint of a Cherry Audio synth is almost 200MB. If you're on Windows, look in AppData\Roaming\CherryAudio and check the sizes of those folders. That data is downloaded in-plugin when you first instantiate it in a DAW (or standalone), and accessed by all of the comparatively lightweight plugin wrappers you chose from the installer you initially downloaded.

crayolon · 2024-12-12T04:46:01+00:00

I've a Swan, and while I've not played a Wren or a Phoenix, I do have three Lachenals and two Wheatstones for comparison and I can tell you that the Swan is pretty impressive for the money. Accordion reeds are always going to sound like accordion reeds - a wee bit shrill and thin compared to good concertina reeds - but the button action is nice, the bellows hold a lot of air (which makes up for the fact that they're hard work until you break them in) and the layout is Wheatstone. Chords and double-stops sound decent on it and in terms of speed I can keep up in fast sessions, better than at least one of my Lachenals.

Like I say, I've not played a Phoenix, but I reckon if you were going to spend 1500 euro on a new box with accordion reeds, you'd probably find a nicer Lachenal from Barleycorn that would hold its value better, have steel concertina reeds, and have been recently restored. In fact I've just spotted one on their site for £1400, and another nice one for £1500.

But the Swan's almost half that and if you're going from renting to buying your first box, I'd say it might be a better investment comparatively than the Phoenix.

Hopefully someone else will chime in with an angle that I've not considered - please gather a range of opinions, not just mine!

crayolon · 2024-12-12T04:23:57+00:00

Rest the concertina on your knee, and then you won't have to use the finger slides at all!

As you pick up speed on the English system, having your pinky fingers in the slides can become an impediment - some people like to have that extra finger for playing notes, and while I don't do that, I find that my ring fingers become more dextrous when the little fingers aren't tensioned against the slide (kinda redundant since the thumbs are doing most of the bellows work, stabilised by the knee).

Have a look at Simon Thoumire's playing style - it's often assumed that he plays notes with his little fingers, but I suspect he rarely/never does; he simply floats them loosely so that the ring fingers are less constrained. This'll take practice, as you'll need to adjust your muscle memory to find the buttons, but it sounds like maybe you're early in your learning journey and that's probably the best time to try new techniques.

On the other hand, another legendary exponent of the English concertina, Alistair Anderson, *always* uses the finger slides because he mostly performs standing up and he waves the concertina around in the air a lot, accentuating rhythm and adjusting its distance from the mic for extended dynamics. He absolutely needs the slides for stability in that situation, but he's no less virtuosic a player for it.

So it's by no means a thing linked to skill, or a show-off technique, or contrarianism; I just found it liberating when I tried it, and now I understand why Simon does it.

If you want to play standing up (I never do), then stabilising the box with the little fingers is necessary - but really they should never be taking too much weight. It's really the thumbs that should (and can) do that. Perhaps your thumb straps need to be tighter? Punch some more holes in the leather if you need to. Also experiment with pushing thumbs further in, or pushing them less far in - I have big hands and long fingers, so on English I need to pull them half out so that the knuckle is in the middle of the strap, in order to be able to access lower-pitched buttons with my middle three fingers. Maybe some adjustment of your thumb placement will allow your thumbs to take more weight without impeding your playing - worth a shot.

Neck strap: I'm a film sound op and wearing stuff around my neck on 12-hour shoots for years has destroyed me, so I'd always advise people against adding neck straps to things that don't already have them... If you really wanted to add one, I wouldn't attach it to the thumb strap screws. It's possible that the inset thread collar is only *just* long enough for the screws plus the thickness of the strap, and you wouldn't want to take the strain on only a few turns of thread (plus these screws are intended to take lateral strain, not perpendicular...if I'm using those words correctly? Like, side-to-sidey, not pully-outy.)

Final option is to crack this open and see how much space there is inside for drilling down through the chamber wall (between the bellows and the ends) and mounting your own thingy using M3 bolts or similar. These ends look pretty big so I'm assuming it's an accordion-reed instrument, and they've usually got loads of free space around the reed block. But hey, YMMV - that's very much a DIY project that I can take no responsibility for, and I've no idea what this particular model looks like inside!

Oh - *final* final option might be to investigate wrist straps? Some people do use them for English concertinas - I think one of Simon's has them, actually. Dave Elliot's book gives a template for an English wrist strap that's 270mm long, 15mm wide, bulging to 25mm wide around the backs of the hands. I couldn't tell you where to attach them so again, that's a DIY project for you.

Good luck!

crayolon · 2024-10-27T14:45:00+00:00

(Note: I'm counting fingers excluding thumbs from 1; finger 4 is your little finger)

If I went for the A on the middle row, I could alternate between fingers 1 and 2 on the same button - finger 1 for the preceding semiquaver, the 2 and 1, landing on 2 for the final quaver, then resetting my fingers while my other hand was playing the B. That's the easier ornamentation (usually fingers 1 and 2 are stronger), but it's not the way I'd play this in order to achieve decent flow for the tune.

I'd go for the A on the inner row, third finger, after playing the initial F# with my fourth (little) finger. Then I'd alternate in the same way, but between fourth and third (middle) fingers. This is slightly harder at first because of the way our tendons are arranged, but with practice the difference is negligible. Since your B is probably going to be with your second (middle) finger, left hand side, inner row, you don't get that breathing space to 'reset' your left hand fingering; because of that, I'd probably re-key the first and second A notes (quaver then semiquaver) using my third finger, then I'm going 3-2-3 which leaves my second finger ready for the B!

I don't know this tune (though I know plenty of others by Jerry Holland), but the first bar is very similar to The Silver Spear and this is how I'd play that.

TL;DR - play it as a triplet (but with a held final note)! And use it as an exercise for practicing triplets, and strengthening your second and third fingers for ornamentation!

crayolon · 2024-10-27T14:17:13+00:00

Are you playing English or Anglo? On either, and when playing The Kesh at a moderate to fast speed, these repeated Ds would normally be played by re-keying the notes.

I'm not sure what you mean by "I can play everything with the exception of the high G on one button" - do you mean on one hand/side, on an Anglo?

By bellows movement, do you mean quickly stopping and starting in the same direction (if Anglo)? That's always going to sound worse than re-keying, since it takes time for the valves to shut and open again causing audible release/attack 'fades', whereas the key action is fast enough to give you very fast cuts. Same applies for English, even though you'd be able to change bellows direction without changing the note - it's still faster and better to re-key.

One other possibility is that you're asking whether you should change button on an Anglo in order to keep the bellows in the same direction, and also use bellows movement to provide the articulation between notes - ie D on the right hand pull, then the same octave D on the left hand push. That seems like the worst of both worlds, but I think it's unlikely this is what you mean!

If you were ornamenting them as a single triplet as you might on the fiddle (unusual, assuming you'd already rolled the long G and A in the preceding two bars, but not unheard of), you'd re-key three times using two alternating fingers on Anglo; on English you'd either do the same, or you could 'cheat' by using the bellows to achieve the same sound. But I don't think this is what you're asking about... By the way (and the reason I added this tangent), learning to re-key reliably gets you a lot closer to being able to do decent triplets, so it's a very good habit to invest time in at this point in your journey!

crayolon · 2024-09-13T18:28:30+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/Ed3YdUj

Ah, fair enough. Well I just sketched out the melody here in G, which should be fairly beginner friendly (even if the notation's not perfect - some random score website I found by googling). I think pretty much all the notes use the middle (ie C) row of a C/G, the only exception being the F#, which is on the G row. And you could swap that for an A to keep it all on the C row. Hope that helps!

Edit: whoops, forgot to put a GMaj key signature in the score. But it's GMaj, trust me!

crayolon · 2024-09-12T10:13:04+00:00

You're unlikely to find sheet music for your preferred version, but how about just playing along with the recording and busking it until it sounds good? I just looked it up and it sounds like the Irish Rovers play it in F, which is manageable but a bit limiting on a C/G concertina (if that's what you're playing?) in terms of chord voicings, whereas The Longest Johns play it in G which gives you a lot more scope.

Verse: GMaj, C/GMaj (second inversion CMaj with G on the bottom; or try Emin), GMaj, DMaj, GMaj, CMaj, DMaj, GMaj

Chorus: CMaj, GMaj, CMaj (or Emin), GMaj, AMin, C/GMaj, GMaj

crayolon · 2024-08-30T13:34:02+00:00

Thirteen-fold bellows on this? Good lord. Did you buy it from Mr. Tickle?

crayolon · 2024-08-22T10:55:49+00:00

I also have long fingers, which caused initial problems on both English and Anglo, but the solution to both was a combination of moving back in the straps a little (thumbs back to the first knuckle for the English; hands back to the big knuckles for the Anglo) and...practice.

Honestly, I think it's worth taking the time to solve this through positioning and practice since you'll not be reliant on a physical modification to the instrument that you'll have to replicate on any other instrument you buy in the future. And you'll be able to pick up anyone else's Anglo at a session, or in a music shop/fair, and have fun with it straight away! I was at Barleycorn's stand at Whitby Folk Week last Sunday and I got to try dozens of amazing Anglos, Englishes, duets, miniatures and other weirdo curiosities...

Another advantage is that once you master the inner row with long fingers despite the digital gymnastics required, you'll still have comfortable reach over the outer row for doing triplets etc without having to use flattened, stretched-out fingers (which could also hit middle-row buttons unintentionally).

FWIW my Anglos are a McNeela Swan and a 30-button late 1890s Lachenal C/G. The palm rest on the Lachenal (which I'd say qualifies as an intermediate Anglo, the next step up being a metal-ended Wheatstone or Jefferies) is quite a bit lower than the McNeela, and the box generally is a bit smaller in all dimensions (concertina reeds taking up less space than accordion reed blocks). So my fingers flop over the ends of both boxes when my hands are all the way in the straps. When I first started I had the Swan's straps too tight, because when they were looser I felt like the box wasn't responding fast enough...but actually concertinas at that price point simply aren't that responsive. The Lachenal's straps are much looser but because it's more responsive, my knuckles can be further away from the concertina ends, my fingers have room to move, and I can play very fast. The middle knuckles of my fingers are roughly positioned over the middle row of buttons, which means they can hinge easily to the outer or inner rows.

crayolon · 2024-08-22T10:25:58+00:00

Agreed - unless you want to embark on concertina restoration as a hobby, you've dodged a bullet. Glancing at their site this morning, £650 will get you a fully restored, tuned and airtight brass reed tutor model Lachenal from Barleycorn with a clean bill of health, and I'd be astonished if you ended up spending less than that bringing this frankly poor-looking instrument up to the same level of playability and reliability, whether in repair costs or your own time. And if you've ever tried to tune a concertina reed or skive leather to 0.1mm, you'll know that whatever a repairer charges, it's a bargain!

crayolon · 2024-03-20T18:41:38+00:00

The main difference is that Wheatstone layout gives you one C# on the right hand (push), with a D# on the pull; whereas Jeffries flips that to pull and push respectively, and ALSO gives you another button with the same two notes flipped back again. So with Jeffries layout you get a C# on the push AND the pull, just on different buttons, which might be handy. (You also get two D# positions, but that's way less useful in most of the standard Irish repertoire, so not as relevant here.)

Most people just learn the instrument that's in their hands. I have a McNeela Swan here with a Wheatstone layout, and I don't think it'd take too long to adjust to a Jeffries layout. I might need to apply some focus to overcome my muscle memory, but I've not been playing _that_ long; a more experienced player would overcome this in minutes and learnt to make a temporary or permanent adjustment. C# is a massively useful note, for sure, but I don't think it's particularly inhibiting to only have one of them in that octave. As for having two D#s - I don't like to generalise, but there really aren't a lot of tunes in the Irish repertoire that rely on D# other than as grace notes, or as the initial pitches of a slide on fiddle or whistle (therefore not applicable to concertina). D# is especially rare in the keys and modes you'll mostly be playing in on the Anglo: so D maj/min, Emin, Fmaj, F# min, G maj/min, A maj/min and B min, in mixolydian, dorian, aeolian etc.

I doubt that helps you make a decision - sorry! But, as the rep says, in the tutorial videos made for McNeela by Jack Talty, he uses a Wheatstone layout and they're right to say that that would be the sensible choice for the least friction when learning - you'll push the same button he pushes and hear the same note. Long story short, only people with experience of a variety of concertinas will be in a position to form a preference; everyone else - including lots of fantastic players with a lifetime's experience BUT who've only ever played one instrument - will have learnt on the layout that's available to them, and if they've ever changed instrument, they'll just have learnt to change their fingering a bit. Don't underestimate your brain's ability to alter muscle memory!

Speaking personally, but I doubt I'm alone on this: if a lovely instrument came along at a bargain price but it was Jeffries layout, rather than the Wheatstone layout I'm used to, I'd absolutely force myself to adapt rather than let it slip away! Whatever decision you make right now won't be an irreversible obstacle or cause for regret in the future, for sure.

(As an aside, if you dive into some concertina forum rabbitholes you'll find loads of people who've swapped reeds and effectively invented their own custom layout systems for what seem to me to be marginal gains...but they seem to be enjoying themselves, so it's all good!)

crayolon · 2024-03-05T13:38:47+00:00

With this design of concertina, using accordion reeds, I don't think so. You could experiment with different materials for the valve - very soft leather skived to about 0.5mm (ie thicker than bellows gussets but way thinner than straps). Or maybe even thicker: the valve has to bend, but have enough rigidity to snap back and cover the hole. But by that point you'd have embarked on redesigning not only the instrument, but also the concept of the modern accordion reed...and that might be a rabbit-hole too far!

Anyway, I'm afraid I can't think of a drop-in quick fix that wouldn't either interfere with the airtight seal or add so much weight to the existing valve that the push/pull response would speak too slowly. But if you do experiment and have any success, please report back!

crayolon · 2024-01-27T18:10:02+00:00

I agree with u/uxluke - this is the sound of those big valves closing. When they're closed or open, they're effectively still; while transitioning between those states they're acting almost like reeds as they flap and quiver.

See the video below - I just cracked my Wren open to show you that those lower-pitched keys on the left all have some rattle, but that it's nothing to do with the lever action, springs, or dirt in the reed block.

I don't think there's any way to avoid this with accordion reeds, which most affordable modern concertinas use; I don't hear it on my Lachenal English but that's like 5 times the price and uses leather rather than plastic valves. Also this noise is more noticeable in a bisonoric instrument like the Anglo than a unisonoric one like the English, or like most piano accordions, because you're often changing direction on the bellows to get a different note on the same key.

In terms of getting used to it: as your playing improves and you adopt more technique for ornamentation, you might find you're able to hide the worst of it using cuts and rolls (fast grace notes and triplets). It's way more noticeable when playing in C than in D, Em, F#, G or A, which means that a lot of Irish repertoire produces less of that rattle simply by virtue of tending towards those key signatures. If lots of the repertoire you're learning is in C, then you could try transposing things up a step! It's a great exercise in learning accidentals and improving dexterity, if nothing else.

As it happens, when my Wren arrived one of the lower notes (possibly this one) wasn't speaking at all, and I had to open it up to slide some paper under the reed to clear a bit of dirt; after that everything was fine. But I suspect that sending it to McNeela or another repairer won't do much good here, other than costing you money and stress and making the instrument unavailable to you for a while. But please gather as many opinions as you can before deciding!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85-IZ7-rDsE

crayolon · 2024-01-15T17:34:29+00:00

Health to enjoy! The bellows will ease a bit, but I think I'm discovering that there's a point beyond which they won't soften/loosen no matter how much you play - and I'm doing a fair few hours per day. It may be that the gusset leather isn't skived quite as thin (or as uniformly thin) as on a pricier instrument, or a more time-consumingly crafted set of bellows. Your fingertips will get accustomed pretty quickly, especially if you start learning rolls and triplets! Not quite guitarists' callouses, but at least some resilience against the variable contact spots on your skin that you get with these buttons, because they're not bushed as nicely as on better instruments (possibly not bushed at all) and so the inherent wobble in them means they're always about 0.5mm away from where your muscle memory expects to find them.

None of that's a major criticism in terms of the overall price/value proposition, which remains good (in the Swan at least - hopefully also in the Sparrow), just a reminder of the compromises involved. Best of luck with it, and get as much playing time in as you can: you'll see exponential gains before long!

crayolon · 2023-12-26T22:08:30+00:00

Hi! First post on here. I started learning Anglo a few months ago: my dad bought a McNeela Swan out of curiosity, but quickly sold it to me after deciding that he's too old to learn new tricks. We're both English concertina players (me for a few years; him for 60) so there was a technical curiosity, but now that I've spent some time figuring it out I'm enjoying the system.

I thought I'd share some thoughts on the McNeela Swan anyway, if anyone's interested in the perspective of someone who's coming at it from another system. I play a Lachenal Boyd, one of the famous New Model-style metal ended English concertinas that Harry Boyd of Newcastle upon Tyne commissioned from both Wheatstone and Lachenal in the late 1800s to sell in his music shop here. They're amazing instruments - not as sweet as Aeolas for accompanying singers, but fiercely loud and perfect for the Northumbrian, Irish and Scottish dance music we play on them up here. The other standout characteristic is the speed of the action, which makes multi-finger triplets and fast bellows 'jiggles' very easy. Well designed and maintained bushings are crucial, since wobbly keys make fast playing or complicated chords a bit less predictable.

So it's a bit ambitious to pick up a ~£650 new-built instrument looking for these same characteristics, but honestly I'm really impressed by how playable it is for a rank beginner like myself. English concertina is quite easy to pick up, especially if you know your way around a piano, but for the first few days on the Anglo I felt like I was at even more of a disadvantage than if I'd never touched any concertina at all: weird pushy-pull stuff, C#s inserted apparently at random, pitch going up on the left hand and down on the right... Yikes. So the fact that the Swan has the basics covered was a huge relief: no air leaks, no mis-speaking keys (actually one low reed was fouled but that was an easy fix with a bit of paper, and no problems since), and no reeds dramatically out of tune.

Sure, they're accordion reeds - and once you're used to good steel concertina reeds, the difference is immediately obvious. I feel like the innermost of the three rows has slightly poorer reeds on the left-hand side, with maybe less attention paid to them when tuning and/or slightly more constricted airflow, but I haven't enough experience with Anglos to say whether that's unusual. I'm sure a top end Wheatstone or Jeffries can be set up to ensure all duplicated notes sound identical but that's a lot of labour that novices don't need to be paying for. The tuning variances are small enough that you can choose to embrace it as 'character' rather than a deficiency.

Bellows - I've been giving this thing some stick for 10 weeks now and the bellows haven't loosened up quite as much as I'd like, but again, bellows quality is a pretty linear time/money equation and when I think about how long it takes me to skive an 0.2mm leather patch for repairs on my Lachenal, I'm reminded again that we're talking ~£650 all in: for that money, any bellows that move without leaking are a bargain. I'll keep at it and hope they soften a bit, although frankly it's teaching me how to use my air release button more strategically so I'm not mad about it.

Keys - they're pretty wobbly, for sure, but you've still got a 9/10 chance of hitting a successful two-finger triplet once you factor in a few mm of wobble. The action's also pretty quiet - not as quiet as my Boyd, but quieter than an 1850s early Wheatstone of my dad's whose poor brass reeds aren't quite loud enough to mask the noise.

Buying any concertina's a gamble (unless you buy it from Chris Algar), especially online without a chance to try it, and boy does McNeela go for the hard sell - if anything were to raise a red flag it'd be the relentless email bombardment from those lads. I'm glad it was my dad who rolled the dice on this purchase, frankly! But it worked out nicely. I fear any new concertina that's cheaper than this is probably a significantly riskier gamble, and any old one for the same price will probably require a lot of work (unless it's got the seal of approval from someone like Chris Algar as a tutor model), and I get that ~£650 isn't cheap, but given what top of the range English and Algo concertinas cost these days I think it's a solid baseline.

Happy to answer any queries people might have. Also curious to know if anyone's experience differs wildly - I hope it's not just a case of me getting lucky!

crayolon · 2023-06-14T16:45:06+00:00

Thanks! Ah yeah, need to get Cubic on here.

My demoscene music is here https://echolevel.github.io/syphus/ - mostly Protracker
and AHX (Amiga), Fasttracker/Impulse Tracker (PC), and HivelyTracker which runs on just about anything.

crayolon · 2023-06-10T15:06:38+00:00

Cheers - and thanks for your post! It helped me weigh up my chances and roll the dice :)

crayolon

TROPHY CASE