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[Adam-T]

I`ve got two Anglo 20 button concertinas - one is a wheezy wooden Scholer Klingenthal special, reliable wooden action, wheezy brass reeds on unified plates - it`s OK as a "tester", it`s not A440 pitched as they generally weren`t .. (as it happens, I`m selling for what I paid for it which was £35)

Second is a Scarlatti unbadged Chinese - it`s the total opposite of the Scholer, it`s far from wheezy, it`d keep up with a castagnari Lily in sheer volume but the button action & pallet lever system is Rubbish, thin alloy levers and wobbly buttons on even thinner alloy with rubber buffers, when they move about the pallets can be held open .. I got it as a swap for my underplayed Mando, the box was nearly new and they cost £100 new, I`d not have the heart to sell it to someone now, I tried a new one in a shop and it was the same

So what am I getting at ...... It`s easy to get a well playable Melodeon for far less than £100 - you can even get a Hohner 1 row if you`re lucky and don`t mind it looking like it`s been to beirut and back , Heck a 2 Row even from Germany so long as you don`t mind C/F  ! . but Concertinas seem dispropotionally priced . £100 gets you Nothing, a used low end Stagi if you`re very lucky and at the other end you`d be lucky to get a Jeffries for the price of a Shand Morino .. WHY do they cost so much, new AND used for such a basic instrument (the cheapos don`t use complex reed-Pans)  ? .

I`ve got a Stagi coming as a third go at getting a 20 button Anglo 'Tina - I`m hoping it`s going to have the sound of the Chinese and the relaibility of the Scholer, sell the Scholer and write the crappy Scarlatti off to experience - it`s full of Melodeon reeds on wooden reed blocks which may find their way into something else such as my toy melodon which has slow reeds..

Is the Stagi any good, it IS Italian and the wooden rather than the plastic one .

[malcolmbebb]

I think you've answered your own question - you got a playable concertina for £35.

You'd struggle to get a playable DG melodeon for that, you might get a beat up German C/F but you won't get carriage let alone bank charges out of it (and the ones at that price are rarely Paypal).

A playable - albeit just - 20b Lachenal from Ebay, more usable than your "Beirut" one-row, is about achievable for your £100 if you're patient and a used Rochelle should come in at £200 or less.

You could ask the question on C-Net - or just just hold a really nice concertina in your hands and play a few notes, say a new Dipper, and you wouldn't ask again.

[Chris Ryall]

Concertinas have sort of gone bonkers over the last 30 years. I sold my Wheatstone Linota "to a good home" in 2004 and used the proceeds to pay down mortgage (I kid you not) on the old family house.

A year later Gaillard accepted the €150 I had in my pocket as a starter deposit and I eventually paid for my Saphir by selling the old pile and moving to a flat. OK, 3 row Gaillards ain't cheap either, but that little concertina I'd paid a few hundred for had ended up at the sort of sum you'd more commonly talk to Building Societies about 

Sort of makes you realise you are on the right instrument? 

I'd consider a Lily if you like that sort of sound.  Was my first proper melodeon and I had so much fun with it.

[Adam-T]

Thanks for your thoughs folks, I have to be honest that i`ve not seen an even remotely playable Lachenal for £100 on E-Bay, just a few Rotters which look salvagable at best since I`ve been looking (about 3 or 4 months), As for £35 Concertinas Vs Melodeons - I`m selling a Worldmaster 1 row in C which is both more playable AND sounds a whole lot better than the Scholer for £50 ONO delivered within the UK (accounting £10 for delivery, £5 off for the ONO = £35)... as for Rochelle, aren`t they chinese like the Jackie and Jack ? . Hmmm, they all look a lotta money for what they are . I`ll hold off asking on C net Malcolm - LOL

Chris, I can believe a collectable wheatstone could lay down a good sized mortgage payment just like a classic Jeffries would get you a Tidy Shand Morino AND another New Lily - talking of the Lily, I`d love one, just haven`t got or can justify in playing abilty over £1000 to get one  . All I wanted was to have a good stab at getting a playable concertina for battered hohner 1040 money . I`m sorry but I can`t see how any Concertina can be worth more than a Shand, a new Handry or higher end Excelsior or Pigini PA unless it was owned by Prince Albert himself .

[Prestidigitator]

I think you're a little unfair on the Rochelle. I had one for a while, and whilst it's no Crabb or Wheatstone (or other new makers' instruments like Norman, Marcus, the top range Wakkers etc.) it costs a fraction of the price and plays quite well enough for a beginner or progressing player.

It wasn't the Rochelle's fault that, having played melodeons since about 1968, I couldn't readjust to the fingering techniques, gave up and sold it on; as it happens, for about the same I paid for it from the Music Room.

[Howard Jones]

With respect, whether or not you think a concertina is worth more than a melodeon is irrelevant - the market says they are.  As with everything, it's a question of demand and supply.  Melodeons are mass-produced, and have been for decades, and in addition there are huge numbers of playable second-hand instruments.  There are also plenty of reed-makers turning out high-quality accordion reeds by the bucket-load, so even the craftsman melodeon makers buy in the reeds.  Reeds are the most expensive component and hand-making the reeds (which are different from accordion and melodeon reeds) makes up a significant proportion of the cost of a concertina.

Demand for anglo concertinas in particular, and specifically Jeffries instruments, has been boosted by the explosion of interest in the instrument for Irish trad, and as a result silly prices are being paid.  But at all levels, you pay for the relative scarcity.  You can go into a music shop and buy a melodeon off the shelf - you'll be lucky to do that if you want a concertina. 

Concertinas are more complex instruments, and (apart from some low-end instruments of variable quality) aren't being mass-produced.  If you want a new one, there are only a handful of makers.  There are something like 4000 parts in a concertina and in most cases these are all hand-made, including the reeds.  So to get hold of a new high-quality instrument you're going to have to pay a commensurate price, and probably go on a lengthy waiting list.  There are makers of so-called "hybrid" concertinas, which use accordion reeds, and these are in the same price range as a middle-quality melodeon -roughly £1000-£2000.  However they have a different sound from true concertina reeds.

However I think you're setting the bar very low at £35 and I doubt you'll find many playable melodeons at that price.  I don't think it's fair to compare a one-row with a concertina, as even a 20-button 'tina offers more flexibility.  For around the price of a pokerwork it's quite possible to find playable concertinas.

[Mike Hirst]

My dad bought his first concertinas c.1960 paying a guinea (21/-) for one and 20/- for the other. I'm not sure what a melodeon would cost at that time, but I would imagine some sort parity. By the late seventies, when I started playing, costs had diverged radically. I started out playing a 20 button anglo. When we looked for an upgrade we found that a decent playable 30 key anglo would cost c. £300.00, but a brand new Hohner 4 stop cost £67.00. More than 30 years on, we still see the equivalent disparity.

I recently got an itch for an anglo. I bought a 20 key lachenal, paying perhaps slightly more than the market value, but nothing excessive. I spent a month or so relearning the instrument. Working hard to get the best out of it. I can honestly say that I found the experience deeply disappointing. I found nothing on the anglo that I could not do better on the melodeon. That is not to say that there are some very fine players out there and some very fine instruments. It is my opinion that a unless you are prepared to invest something in the region of £1500-£2000 you will not get a quality of sound to approach the sound you could expect from a melodeon at half that price.

If your interested in playing a single reed instrument without breaking the bank I'd suggest a good single row played with only one stop raised. I use this setting myself sometimes, but if you want to see a true master at work I'd point you in the direction of Dave Hennessy (Any Old Time):

http://youtu.be/IRGN6ri_rUk

BTW I'd also like to add Dave Hennessy to my list of influences. We played a session together at Nantwich Folk Festival c.1983. You'd have to travel a long way to hear music better than that played on that afternoon. 

[Adam-T]

Thanks again folks, I`ll see how the Stagi pans out, sell the Scholer for what I Paid and your idea of a 1 row running on 1 reed bank sounds good Mike, hasn`t that 114 you`re selling got just that ability (with a choice of L, M or H too :)

Sorry Howard but Personally I find the thought of £1000-2000 for a concertina made from Melodeon bits quite excessive, I`d have guessed that kind of price for one made from proper concertina parts (reed-pans, tina reeds etc) ..

Anyway as you say, my opinion on what concertinas should cost is irrelevant to the outcome apart from that I`ll never own anything worthy of posting on Tina-net but it goes some way to explaining the lack of popularity of the instrument especially after playing the Ubiquitous £120 red pearloid Chinese horror, likely where most will start out..

Yes I did think of fitting the actually decent reedblocks from the Scarlatti into the relaible scholer but it`s not viable without making some new very clerverly designed reedblocks

[Howard Jones]

Sorry Howard but Personally I find the thought of £1000-2000 for a concertina made from Melodeon bits quite excessive, I`d have guessed that kind of price for one made from proper concertina parts (reed-pans, tina reeds etc) ..

These instruments are not made "from melodeon bits".  They are made by craftsmen using concertina techniques.  The only difference is with the reeds (and of course the reed-pans), where instead of using concertina reeds they use high-quality accordion reeds (better than you'll get in a £35 melodeon, I'd guess), which are readily available and a lot cheaper than making concertina reeds by hand.

http://www.concertinas.ca/construction.html
http://www.marcusmusic.co.uk/concertinas.html

The difference can be illustrated by the threads about melodeon-building courses.  A novice, albeit under expert instruction and with some assistance, can build an excellent melodeon from scratch in less than a week.  Of course, a number of the components can be bought ready-made as they are manufactured for the accordion industry.   Even an experienced concertina maker will take several weeks to make an instrument - Wim Wakker (who uses traditional concertina reeds) estimates 8-12 weeks.  Prices reflect this - you won't get a new traditionally-made concertina for less than £3000, and you'll have to wait for it - but a craftsman is worthy of his hire, as they say.

I think the mistake is to think of concertinas and melodeons as substitutes for one another.  They are not, any more than a violin is substitute for, say, a flute.  They are alternatives - different instruments, with different sounds (a single-reed melodeon produces a different sound from a concertina), and more importantly different capabilities.  The reason I play both is that I can do different things with the different instruments.

It is indisputable that melodeons are cheaper than concertinas.  On the other hand, melodeons are more expensive than mouth-organs. For the price of a new pokerwork you can get a decent guitar or violin.  If your concern is to get the best sound for your money, then a melodeon certainly offers better value than a concertina, but you could get other instruments for even less.  However we choose an instrument for a variety of reasons, of which cost is just one (albeit an important one!).

[Adam-T]

I think the problem remains that the only tinas I`ve seen that you can walk into a regular music shop like Dawsons, Back alley etc and buy are of the same type as my Chinese disaster - unreliable and crude for hardly pocket money (£130) , the next step up are the £300+ ones from Jackie and Stagi ..

I`ll pass judgement on the used Stagi 20 button when it arrives , they were about £150-£200 if I remember new but don`t seem to be available in the UK now - Thomann in Germany may stock them. I`m really hoping the reliability is at least as good as the wooden action Scholer.

[Howard Jones]

I think the problem remains that the only tinas I`ve seen that you can walk into a regular music shop like Dawsons, Back alley etc and buy are of the same type as my Chinese disaster - unreliable and crude for hardly pocket money (£130) , the next step up are the £300+ ones from Jackie and Stagi ..

That's the point I was making earlier. However a regular music shop is not the place to look for a concertina, you'll do better going to a specialist dealer. Even these may not have what you want in stock.  The simple fact is that concertinas are relatively scarce, they are complex and expensive to make, and there isn't the volume of demand to justify mass-producing them at reasonable standards of quality.  We're left with a few types of basic and fairly crude mass-produced foreign imports, and even they are hardly cheap, or hand-made instruments (with or without traditional concertina reeds) which are commensurately expensive, or a fairly small pool of second-hand instruments of all qualities.

This issue has been bemoaned frequently and at length on concertina.net.  The price of instruments, and in particular playable entry-level instruments, is a significant barrier to new players, and it is unsurprising that many will turn instead to the melodeon.  However the melodeon (excellent instrument though it is) is not a concertina and cannot do the things a concertina can.

One more point - my concertina, hand made by one of the most reputable makers, cost only a few hundred pounds more than the current retail price of my melodeon.  They are both very good instruments, but the quality of workmanship and sound from the concertina far exceeds the melodeon and was undoubtedly worth the (proportionately small) extra cost.  If I was forced to choose between them (which I hope I never have to) it would have to be the concertina.

However that is at the upper end of the market for both instruments.  At the price levels you're talking about, less than £100, it's virtually impossible to find a playable concertina, but I'd also say you'd have to be lucky to find a melodeon which is playable without some work.

[oggiesnr]

I've recently cut a pair of concertina ends for someone.  I'm an experienced fretworker (it's my job) and they took me ten hours.  OK, I could  probably have cut two pairs at once so that would be five hours an instrument.  Work out the cost of that at a craftsman's rates, reckon it's one of the quicker/easier parts of making a concertina and it's quite clear why they are that expensive for a quality instrument.

Personally I don't think concertinas are outrageously expensive, they're out of my price range but so is a fifty year old Martin guitar.

For a bit of perspective, I visited the Contrabass Shoppe to have a look at a new Double Bass.  Their cheapest beginner bass was £2,600, after that they just went up and up.  Their quality instruments are mainly in five figures and their Jefferies equivalent?  "If Sir has to ask the price, Sir can't afford it" 

Mind you my niece has just paid several thousand pounds for a violin bow!

Steve

[Chris Ryall]

Stage Impro in France attracts increasing numbers of bass clarinettists, all keen to learn from Mâitre J-P Sarzier. I think there were five last time. I think you can get something for under £1000, but all the better players I've inquired from had paid £7-8k.   

Melodeons are relatively cheap! 

[IanD]

When Crabb made Hilda's G/D 38-key baritone Anglo in (I think) 1980 it cost £1000. During many long conversations with Neville he said that they couldn't keep the business going on new concertinas because they were too cheap for the amount and time and effort needed to build them, and the only thing that kept Crabb solvent was repairs.

Given this fact -- and I don't things have changed since then given inflation, which would put this price at around £4000 today -- it's difficult to see how anyone could think that new "hand-made" concertinas (with concertina-type reeds) are overpriced.

[Adam-T]

Given this fact -- and I don't things have changed since then given inflation, which would put this price at around £4000 today -- it's difficult to see how anyone could think that new "hand-made" concertinas (with concertina-type reeds) are overpriced.

I guess I was putting more value on the soundmaking side of it as a musical instrument rather than as a piece of engineering and artwork - I didn`t realise so much went into them - it doesn`t excuse the price of the Jackies etc which are just stamped out parts in china, to be honest, the £100 scarlatti would be OK as a beginners instrument if they Stamped out the lever mechansim from steel instead of coke tin aluminium and fixed the button shafts to the arms (can`t add that much to the cost surely, its only a 20 key anglo)..

you never know the Stagi may be the ideal balance in a sub £200 Anglo , if it is then fine, though they only seem available from Thomann with the thomann badge on . again, if it is then Dawsons etc need to stock it in place of the red horrors from China

The insides of the Reliable Scholer - all it needs is a reedblock of the cheapest chinese decent sounding Reeds  ... and the unreliable action of the scarlatti . before someone says "what do you expect for £100", remember that you can get a toy 1 row melodeon with the same individual plate reeds from Home Bargains for A TENNER which is far more reliable than the chinese Anglo !

[waltzman]

- it doesn`t excuse the price of the Jackies etc which are just stamped out parts in china,

Not sure why the slam on the Jackie.  The Jackie was the first decently made affordable english concertina for beginners....better than the Stagi at less than half the cost.  It has a nice riveted post and lever action and decent reeds.  I have one of the first ones made and have had no trouble with it all.  Truth be known, I like the timbre of it better than my Edeophone and I still play it.  Check out the opinions on it at concertina.net.

[malcolmbebb]

I think the wooden German actions are brilliantly engineered for their purpose - cheap, simple, reliable (apart from buttons falling off), repairable, and do the job. But their purpose was cheap export boxes not designed to take heavy use.

The actions in the Concertina Connections boxes (Jackie, Rochelle etc) are significantly better than the cheap generic Chinese units, and are a bit closer to the better quality English/Anglo actions (although personal experience only extends to dismantling my Rochelle). These are probably not good boxes to illustrate nasty, cheap manufacture as they are generally well considered for beginner's units. But they are that bit more expensive, £400 or so for a new Rochelle when I last looked.

Loads of us have the little plastic toy melodeons, and there are whole threads devoted to overcoming their shortcomings and making them playable. They are good value for toys, but have other major shortcomings (notably bellows). In addition they only have seven treble buttons and two bass, in addition to the generally superfluous air button, whereas nearly all concertinas have 20+.
(Actually ten quid is a pretty good price for them, since they are normally around 25 (not that that changes the argument)  and apparently in stock, too.)
But would you choose one for your main box?

But as Howard pointed out, comparing concertinas with melodeons is not comparing like with like. Quite a few here play (or are learning  ) both, which would make no sense if they were otherwise interchangeable. And people are prepared to pay for a new concertina a sum that would buy two top of the range melodeons, so there has to be something there.

[Anahata]

I've recently cut a pair of concertina ends for someone.  I'm an experienced fretworker (it's my job) and they took me ten hours.

Nick "Chalky" Whiteley, a melodeon player from near Chelmsford, is a metal worker by trade, and the other day he showed me some stuff he'd made by laser cutting. I wonder if that's a feasible process for concertina ends (it makes beautifully clean cuts). I've gotta ask him...

[Adam-T]

Ahh well, we all have our views and opinions of what represents value, I`m not passionate about concertinas as many obviously are (I like them well enough though).. someone who is will obviously see more value in something they love and play as their main instrument.

[Howard Jones]

I've recently cut a pair of concertina ends for someone.  I'm an experienced fretworker (it's my job) and they took me ten hours.

Nick "Chalky" Whiteley, a melodeon player from near Chelmsford, is a metal worker by trade, and the other day he showed me some stuff he'd made by laser cutting. I wonder if that's a feasible process for concertina ends (it makes beautifully clean cuts). I've gotta ask him...

I believe Wim Wakker uses CNC alongside more traditional techniques