Jesus- I have seldom been assauited by such a torrent of pseudo intellectual and pretentious crap as in the last few posts.
FOR YOUR INFORMATION Dick, apart from stating the obvious, you still don't get the basis of what traditional music is about.
Whatever buttons were actually available is irrelevant. It was not regarded as important by early players, and the current crop of 'improvers' have added very little by their 'custom' bass button reorganisation, and the older players used their often discordant bass buttons as PERCUSSION & little else, the tune was the thing.

You didn't grasp that Tim Lyons said that to me 53 years ago in 1968, and that's how the tradition was then, ie get on with the musiuc & feck the analysis.
The fact that some of the basses on the standard BC system can now be sympathetic is also irrelevant. The music has IMHO not been enhanced by the folk alumni who continue to try to improve a music which has managed fine without all this nitpicking and analysis. That's for the academics, maybe and the Newcastle Folk Degree- on that subject may I recommend the youtube video of Ed Pickford's 'Folk Degree' song.

Why do we give such respect to Oscar Woods, Scan Tester, Raymond Roland, John McKenna, and all the others whose 'technique' and ornamentation came without all this analysis & why do we keep trying to IMPROVE on what they did? Yes things CHANGE but improving on those people by playing extra notes, instrument reorganisation & such is not necessarily beneficial to the whole. As A cricket fan, you maty recall the MCC horror when Dennis Lillee came out to bat with a STEEL bat- The MCC correctly stopped THAT improvement

I don't like name dropping but I once askied Jimmy Shand (about 1990) what he thougght about modern players. He thought for a minute, smiled & then said   'Well, I didn't know there were quite so many notes in the cracks between the keys'.
Irish singers' ornamenation these days is excessive ( is there a minimim of 15 grace notes per songline or what is it?) & often embarrassing, and I agree this is down to CCE competition rules good to agree on something) Strangely, pipes have gone the other way, with few pipers now using the regulators!
Anyway, I'll close there and leave it at that, contrasts in fiddle styles are not my field, but melodeon/accordeon playing is & as you gave me advice Dick, may I politely suggest restricting your advice to subjects you know about.

PS I wish I'd saved this (or some of it) for my mext Living Tradition article- I was far too polite about the current state of music in the last one.....