A bit of help, EJ . . The La Bottine concert was being recorded live last night, for Radio 3's Late Junction programme. I'm sure the Radio 3 area of the BEEB's web site will give you the broadcast date - I'm afraid I can't rmember when it is . .

This seems a good time to relate how Ralphie and I became aquainted . . Many years ago (more than 22, 'cause we had no kids at this point) my wife, Chris, acquired a 'baby' McCann duet 'tina (can't recall how many keys). She'd practiced it for about 6 months, and felt she was just starting to get somewhere. There she was, sat on a wall at our local Folk Festival (Bracknell, UK), tuning away. Ralphie walks past, stopa, looks. "Hey, I've got one of those - I'll just go and get it from the car!" Five minutes later Ralph re-appears with his slightly larger McCann (57 key?) - and proceeds to play Chris off the planet, in the nicest possible way! They stayed playing together for quite a while, and we've been friends ever since. Chris has since bought a McCann of similar size to Ralph's, which is the one she plays almost all the time. (She also has a beautiful large McCann, wonderfully reconditioned by Harry Crabb, but she finds that too heavy for regular use.)

As for Musicman's comments about fingering systems . . it's interesting that the Crane and McCann systems look pretty well identical . . . Tim Laycot has a Wheatstone 'tina which looks virtually identical to Chris's. The serial numbers of the two instruments are very close, too. However Tim's is a Crane whereas Chris's is (as mentioned) a McCann. (Fortunately Chris and Tim have rather different sized hands - that fooled the joker who tried swapping their instruments round when they were playing in the same band . . . )

Happy sqeezing . .

G