G'day GUEST(the 'Catter who used to be 'Butterfly"),

A Harmonetta was ... something else!

It was a mouthblown (or sucked ... same note each way), roughly square box of free reeds with a tightly packed array of (triangular ... ?) keys with a moulded top that came to peaks at the apices (or apexes). I think the notes were spaced in fourths in the left diagonal, thirds in the right diagonal and seconds horizontally. I can't be dead sure about that because the small diagram in the article does not appear to indicate the octaves, so I'm not dead sure which way the the scale runs ... but I'm assuming it ascends left to right and outside to inside.

I have handled one, bought by accordion & concertina repairer / dealer Christiaan Dolislager ... and now, presumably, moved up the (NSW) North Coast to Repton along with Christiaan ... but I didn't get to play it. I mean to examine this layout against some other related tuning schemes: the Continental Chromatic Accordion (a 3-deep scheme, based on intervals of 1, 2 and 3 semitones) and the modern Hayden concertina (an accidental re-invention of the Janko piano keyboard of the late 19th century). I don't have a Hayden diagram here at work, but I don't remember it as being quite so logical ... however, I could be wrong! (There should be one on Maccann Duet Concertina Site
- Bob Gaskins' wonderful site with loads of information on every conceivable type of concertina ... and a few inconceivable ones!)

I did a CorelDraw diagram of the Harmonetta keyboard ... to help Christiaan sketch out fingering patterns. I don't know how far he has progressed with it, but I can e-mail the basic image file (say; exported as a GIF or TIF) to anyone interested. I'm afraid it would be only theoretical ... see my remark, above, on the chances of finding one!

Regards,

Bob