And so?
After a few weeks of struggling and hitting non-existing buttons, top ones as low ones, and a quality very far away from a real instrument, I was getting a clear idea of what I needed: 27 buttons – down to G as a standard treble, with some
bs and #s missing, but only up to C#. When it comes to sound: accordion reeds (real concertina reeds were out of the question - I wanted this thing tested fairly quickly). I am also fond of "dry" accordion tuning, aka early Jackie Daly, so a single accordion reed would be interesting to hear. But such an instrument does not exist.


More thinking, drawing and thinking... I couldn't just build a test prototype, and then "the real one". That's what concertina makers do – but they have workshops and materials and stuff and they do it full-time. On top of that, they also know what they are doing.

I then realised I could use the Stagi as a test object: modify it and go on modifying it until it felt right. And modifying also meant changing it to make it feel like a "standard-size" instrument. The idea was then to copy the vital parameters: button spacing and positions, hand rests, hand straps and then build a new, accordion-reeded instrument based on that. After that decision, it felt even more reasonable to use accordion reeds – there were tons of other things to consider, and reed-making was not one of them.