OUR CONCERTINAS
Edgley Concertinas has been in the business of making concertinas for over 20 years. Before we started making instruments, the founder, Frank Edgley, repaired and tuned vintage concertinas like Wheatstone, Lachenal, Jones, Jeffries and Crabb for 20 years more. Frank Edgley and Harold Herrington collaborated on their early designs, but eventually developed their own signature way of making concertinas. Edgley Concertinas uses the best quality "Hand-Made" reeds available from Italy for the Session Box, Performers and Professional Models. The quality of all these instruments is the same....the best we can make it, no exceptions, as all our instruments are made in Canada, one at a time, and are all hand-crafted. Our action mechanism is unique and the quietest of any concertina made. Further, it will NOT develop a "clicking sound" as most other instruments do when the rivets develop wear. Our mechanism is also the fastest by our design's ability to reduce the friction which Wheatstones, Jeffries and other actions of their type suffer from. It is also far superior to Lachenal action which is notoriously noisy when trying to play fast tunes. We recently (2019) had the experience of seeing our first concertina made over 20 years previous. It had no problems other than it could have used a bit of a tuning, and is still playing today. Edgley Concertinas are well-built to a very sturdy design. As part of our custom service, customers can specify the wood they would like; a contrasting wood trim; trim on the handles. We offer wooden ends or stainless steel ends, which will not corrode or discolour. With the aforementioned models, the Italian reeds are screwed down to the reedpan, NOT waxed in, and we use a leather gasket under each reed for tone purposes and to ensure an airtight fit. This makes it very easy for dust removal, and the eventual touch up re-tune. (in 5 or 6 years depending how hard it is played.) On all our bellows we use SEVEN folds ensuring that it is quite unlikely that you should run out of air. With our Professional Models we install what we call the "angled reedpans" which are unique to Edgley Concertinas, and provide our Professional Models with the most refined tone of any concertina using Italian reeds.
About 10 years ago we began our Heritage Model. These are concertinas using traditional concertina reeds. This is a completely different design within the instrument, with single reeds per reed frame (Italian reeds have two reed tongues per frame). These reed frames are tapered and bevelled to a five degree angle, and are fitted into the hardwood reed pan. On some traditional concertina reed pans, like Lachenal instruments, and some others, the reed pans can warp over time and this is not a good thing and very difficult to remedy. We use a different wood than any other maker. This wood does not warp, and is proprietary to Edgley Concertinas. It also provides a very good tone.
We stand by our concertinas, as we have since we began the business, but have had very few concertinas returned for repair or modification. If you are interested in acquiring an heirloom quality concertina that you can pass on or resell at a good price, please contact Frank Edgley at fedgley@cogeco.ca , Ph. 519-991-3100, or Gwyneth Edgley at gwen.edgley@gmail.com. I believe there is no one making concertinas with as much experience as we do. Also, you can visit our web page at http://www.concertinas.ca/ and our Facebook page.
