Sometimes, You Get a Sticky Key: Improv 1,793 (Anglo concertina)

So the drawback to buying a $65 concertina off Facebook Marketplace is exactly what you might expect. My new concertina officially has a very annoying sticky button I can't fix. I opened the instrument up but don't know enough about how it works to do anything about it. Also, I'm not opening it up again. I've done it twice now to different ends. On this type of old, cheap concertina, the buttons aren't fixed in place; they're sort of dangling on the ends of metal levers. They're supposed to have these sort of rubber washers that hold them in place, but those washers have disintegrated and are mostly in tiny bits inside the instrument. So when you open it, all the buttons fall off. And then it takes twenty tries to get the casing back on because you have to do it with the buttons upside down and unsecured to the levers, which they are continually falling off of. It's the worst.

Anyway...I could probably get it fixed at Accordions Canada, but 1) the repairs would cost five times what I paid for the instrument, and 2) it still wouldn't be very good. This is frustrating to me, as I have now fallen in love with the concertina.

This progress video is not very progressive because most of my energy is being devoted to not hitting the sticky key. As the sticky key is high A/C, I would kind of like to have it. (Yes, I could find the notes on the second row, but I'm not good at that yet, and the C would have to switch from a "push" note to a "pull" note.)

So here I am in my usual position: really liking an expensive instrument that is virtually unavailable in Canada. I don't know why I do these things to myself.