Item Type: Wheatstone Symphonium No 128SummaryFull Description: A Wheatstone Symphonium, serial number 128, with nickel-silver reeds,
24 keys, and fully engraved with Wheatstone’s 20 Conduit Street
address. This model is a later 24-key version, with a full four columns of
keys either side, (one ivory top-stud missing from LH B-flat Key), and with a
button layout identical to that which would be used on the very earliest
Open Pallet Wheatstone English system concertina. (See the
Open Pallet
in The Collection). In later models, such as the Horniman Museum Wayne
Collection
44-key Symphonium, Museum No M17a-1996,
their layout of keys more fully introduces the ”English” fingering
system, used on the first of the Wheatstone concertinas.
The 1829 Patent
has images of an early form of bellows powered instrument, with reeds and
levers from the Symphonium added to it.
Symphonium C15.01-002
in the Collection includes some pages of images from Neil Wayne’s research upon
an incomplete 20-key ”Gliding-Reed” Symphonium, in the Horniman
Museum’s Boosey Collection as Item 2004.808, Entry No E83.170, with
reed-tongues of gold, (some of fish-tailed profile, and in which each reed can
be shortened or lengthened via a sliding adjuster. Source Catalogue No: The Concertina Museum: C15.01-003 |
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Created August 2009 by Neil Wayne
Last Modified 07 February 2012 by Neil Wayne, Chris Flint, Wes Williams
This page created Tuesday 14 February 2012.