Stephen said:
They can be contacted here:
http://accordion-museum.com/en/contacts/contacts
That section has some email adresses and Phone numbers. I dont know, but maybe they also speak some English.
Black Diamond is manufactured in China, and the reeds inside sound horrible. Probably only had machine tuning, without manual finetuning and last control check. Typical of cheap crappy accordions.
For many decades, some music shop owners and accordion teachers have imported their own brand accordions, produced in Italy, and branded them under some fancy Italianised name. These Italian made cheap export accordions still had some quality, some where even good. Things became much worse with similar Chinese made accordions, named after some importer.
Every person can have his own brand of accordion product line, as long as you order 50 or less pieces in China, Czechia, Italy, ...
Thats nothing new, whats relatively new is the very low quality of these brands, they really sound horrible and have very stiff bellows and action.
A total waste of money in my personal opinion.
Hi Stephen, thank you for expressing your personal opinion that our instruments are ‘typical of cheap crappy accordions’, ‘the reeds inside sound horrible’, and that they are of ‘very low quality’ and a ‘total waste of money’.
We cannot, of course, please everybody – nor do we aim to do so. But visitors to this forum should be aware that many others hold very different personal opinions from your own.
Our instruments have sold steadily over the past three years, not only to students, but to many other people without the means to buy a top-of-the-range Italian instrument. They are fully aware they are buying a Chinese-made accordion. But they also know that, in buying from us, they are also buying a very decent-sounding instrument at a reasonable price, made with Cagnoni Durall reeds, and personally quality-checked by us, which also comes with a lifetime of personal customer care. Our factory is the oldest and best in China, and we make regular personal visits to satisfy ourselves that high levels of quality control and working conditions are being maintained.
The endorsements on our website have not been sought, or paid for, by us. They have been freely given by happy customers, by teachers and by those who have tried them out at various shows. They can be read here:
http://www.blackdiamondaccordions.com/feedback/
Accordionists of the calibre of Paul Chamberlain, Ian Lowthian, Lyn Tocker and Gary Forrest, amongst others, teach on and recommend Black Diamond Accordions to their students – presumably
not because they believe them to be ‘crappy’ instruments of ‘low quality’ that ‘sound horrible’. Black Diamond Accordions are used by Fèisean all over Scotland, and our melodeons have been well reviewed and recommended by Martyn White, Ray Langton and James Delarre amongst other top names in the folk world. Would Sam Pirt of The Hut People have agreed to put his name to recordings of our 96 bass had he been of the same opinion as you as to the sound of its reeds? Let the recordings speak for themselves:
http://www.blackdiamondaccordions.com/audio-and-video/
As to the Accordion Museum Online – we were made aware of this a couple of years ago, and despite the somewhat mysterious nature of the organisation, pleased that they had chosen to include us. The entry for BDA, which they wrote, makes it abundantly clear that, at present, our instruments are all manufactured in China. We contacted them to correct a couple of errors in the BDA entry, but received no reply and the amendments have not been made, so it’s possible that the site is either dormant or obsolete by now.
best wishes
Juliet & Greg Dunn, Black Diamond Accordions