No. 8: A Smaller Blackbird
My latest concertina is a new, slightly smaller and lighter version of my Blackbird Anglo. It is a 30 button C/G with a low D drone in a 5 3/4″ (146mm) wide frame.
Specification
- 30 button C/G (Jeffries pattern) + low D drone on left thumb.
- Six sides, 5 3/4″ wide.
- Seven fold black goatskin bellows with 1 1/8″ deep cards and fancy custom bellows papers.
- Amboyna burl laminated end plates with black Ebano borders.
- Amboyna action boxes with black Ebano decorative stripe.
- Curved-top Ziricote hand rails.
- French polished finish.
- 5.7mm diameter boxwood buttons.
- Brass thumb levers on both sides (drone on the left, air release on the right).
- 2mm button travel (giving 4mm pad lift at 2:1 action lever ratio).
- Traditional concertina reeds in aluminium frames for weight saving.
- 1/5th comma meantone tuning, with A as the root note.
- Solid sycamore parallel-chamber reed pans.
- Experimental modifications to lower the volume of the drone note.
- Weight: 1138g.
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