in the interest of debate - why do people go in for strange arrangements such as C# D G or D G C# or DG plus a row of odds & sods in order to improve the chromatic properties of the DG box as to lay in many keys requires learning all sorts of new fingering & bellows patterns.

Why not have a middle row in C and a row of accidentals either side of it! Of course such a system has been available for many years & is variably known as the BCC#, the British Button ;Box and The British Chromatic. Usually with the advantage of accordion bass (same both ways) and varying in size from hohner trichord 12 bass to shand morino 117 bass. Any new 3 row melodeon could be ordered with this tuning & a small number of accordion bass -some trichords were made with 12 melodeon bass but these are not much better than the 8 bass on a aBC box. Incidentally the British Button box as played by Jimmy Shand, John Kirkpatrick etc is also a very natural progression for BC or CC# players who are two thirds there already - the 3rd row makes life easier not more difficult
so why is the system not more popular?

has any bugger got any views on this?!