concertina confusion

I need advice on which concertina would suit a nine year old girl best,
after much research last year I bought her a rochelle ,the main problem with this concertina is that her small hands can not reach the air button , and thinking I’m Bob the builder I attached a lever which was working just fine !!! till last night that is now we have no air button ,
I feel my best bet now is to buy another concertina but which one , Hohner, stagi , boorinwood are a few of the cheap mentioned, but is there anything really good out there for about 1000 euros that would suit a child with smaller hands.
I know its a lot of money for a child but she loves playing and has made great progress and will be competing in the fleadhs where the standard is quite high .
will be grateful on any advice

This isn’t the way you’re thinking of heading, but if the Rochelle is otherwise okay, is there a big problem with getting the air button sorted?

I don’t think it would be hard to get a replacement button ,but she still won’t be able to reach the air button with out some type of lever system , as I bought her the concertina online I didn’t realise this was going to be problem ,

get it to a good repair person. The repair person might also have some advice on a work around on the air button.

Not sure where you are, but I’ recommend you have a chat with Chris Algar, a very well known and reputed concertina dealer based in the UK, although he does a lot of business in Ireland as well. I’m sure he’d be able to suggest ways around the problem as he’s been dealing with concertinas for years and so must have come across similar problems before. He can be found at -

http://www.concertina.co.uk/

Best of luck

Mike

shouldn’t be too hard to mend - it will have popped inside the box.
Chris Algar is your man in the IJK
Mary MacNamara was telling me about some of the contortions that some youngsters get upto to reach the air-button and still manage to play at the same time.
I can imagine some of the whiz kids cross-fingering before they can reach the air-button.

Also, does it matter if she can’t reach the air button? Lots of old concertinas don’t have air buttons - it makes you plan your bellows better.