Seth Austen and Beverly Woods

Accordions and other Free Reed Instruments

Beverly plays several types of free reed instruments.

• Hayden Duet Concertina - A concertina is generally smaller than an accordion and only has one reed per note. The one Beverly plays is on the large side for a concertina, and is a Hayden duet fingering system. It plays the same note whether you push or pull, and has a full chromatic range on each side, with the left being somewhat lower than the right. This particular Hayden has an unusually large range, and was rebuilt from a vintage Wheatstone McCann duet concertina by Dana Johnson.
  
• Piano Accordions - Beverly has several piano accordions. Her favorite is a Petosa Stylemaster from the 1960's.
  
• Chromatic Button Accordion - Beverly plays a Weltmeister B system chromatic button accordion (commonly abbreviated CBA). There are 2 common chromatic button layouts, C system and B system. As I understand it, the C system is popular in Sweden and Western Europe, while the B system is popular in Norway, Russia, and Eastern Europe.
  
  For a serious dose of Weltmeister chromatic accordions, come dance to the Neskaya Fork Oakestra. Oakestra member Sam Moffat plays a Weltmeister C system chromatic, sometimes in tandem with Beverly's accordions. Free reeds galore!
  
  
• Free reed links:
  
  http://www.accordionlinks.com/
  Classical Free Reed
  http://www.button box.com/
  http://weltmeisteronline.com/