G'day,

Musicman: I know that it's thread drift ... but I keep reading of your (unqualified) duet.

So what sort (System) of duet is it? ... Given that duets come in totally different systems called: Wheatstone (really 3 or 4 Wheatstone systems, but the one least rare has 6 vertical rows of buttons) / MacCann (a modification of the 6-row Wheatstone) / Triumph (really should be called "Butterworth", as he designed it: "Triumph" is Salvation Army brand name of all their musical instruments ... and "Crane" was the SA officer who introduced it to the SA) with 5 vertical rows / Jeffries Really weird and rare ... 4 horizontal rows / Linton (Exceeding rare ... 6 vertical rows, but utterly different from Wheatstone or MacCann). Of course, this does not even mention modern Duet systems like Hayden.

My first concertina was Wheatstone System ... made by Lachenal that I bought in Tasmania for £20 ... in 1966. Nowadays, I only play the Anglo systems that were the typical traditional concertina in the Australian bush.

Wellsy : As you know Derek, I presume you are up around Brisbane way. Will we see you down south at Richard's Lithgow Concertina Gathering #2 over the first weekend of November? Richard tells me he is getting a really good response to this second one (and the first one was good fun!).

BTW: My second concertina was a 20 key Anglo in Bb/F that had briefly belonged to Derek ... before the bottom fell out of the film prop business with the bursting of the brief '70s Aussie film boom. That eventually became a really beautiful D/G with a set of reeds newly re-made by Richard. Dave de Hugard used it (in both key-sets) on his CD Magpie in the Wattle and then had Richard do a similar new set of reeds for one of his own concertinas ... unfortunately that concertina, and one other, was stolen from my car a decade back!

Regards,

Bob Bolton