Concertina deconstructed

The damaged Schoeler concertina that I won on eBay came at the weekend and with a brief 30mins between family activities I had a chance to take it apart and have a good look inside. It's a nice little beast and looks to be suitable for my initial project ideas.



The nice thing about the concertina is that it comes apart pretty easily. No need for bellows pins to be removed, just three screws on one size and then the middle plate containing the reeds and buttons is easily prized apart. All in all a simple and neat design.


The concept, like so many posts online is to have a go at converting this to a MIDI device.

This initial idea to try wiring the keys in place and put some kind on contacts on the levers. Unfortunately as many of the keys are damaged my first idea now is to replace the keys altogether with switches. As a first experiment the bellows air release buttons will need to be ignored.



To preserve the buttons and mechanism for a potential future project my first idea is to cut a completely new wooden plate to attach to the end box. The reeds are attached to this on one side, where the electronics will go and the buttons + holes on the other side.


I think it will be possible to make some kind of mounting to enable switches to reach through the existing holes. The new plate will need some smaller air-holes to enable some kind of pressure to be retained and some thinking of how to handle the bellows air release.