Hi folks,
Doing some clean-up in my hard-drive, I fell upon a layout I worked on some time ago, when I considered spending more time on a semitone box. I dropped the idea of playing seriously on such boxes (I have a 2 rows model I used from time to time just for fun), but I'm wondering what semitone (and others if they please) players might think of it.
So the idea was to go for the most versatile box possible with such system, without losing track of what it's best at. If I had pursued in that path I would have gone for a 23+4 buttons with 12 basses.
The bass layout is based on a cycle of fifths and consists of bass-only, unisonoric buttons. My main interest when playing reels and the like is more to mimic pipe regulators than to go for an old-style bass playing style, so it would best work with a register allowing to remove the low bass. For slower tunes, it's possible to make chords on the go, or at least to harmonise a bit.
The right-hand layout is 4th button start, and the added buttons are based on a D/G with the Dutch reversal, with 3 notes changes (typed in red) to have all the 12 notes at least once on the pull, opening the instrument to a bit of an harmonic role (in the context of a band, can be useful), the other notes being there just as a convenience (it's not really mandatory, the 2-row semitone layout being quite efficient already).