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Alternatives to Cassotto

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Some Irish button accordion players take the grille off their instruments entirely, to let nothing get in the way of the sound projecting. I've seen a few examples of grilles which had more slots cut into them by their owners, same thinking. How about a grille that would operate like an old rolltop desk? :cool:

A slide mute was mentioned earlier, I've seen a couple examples of mutes which were solid pieces of wood that you could slide under the grille to mute the sound. How about a hollow grille, with a perforated front portion you could slide into place if so desired?
 
Yes. I have noticed Galliano always has his grill off.

I do think the wood would sound nice.

I thought if you didn't have any grill then dust would make its way into the accordion and maybe cause problems over time.
 
This is also interesting to read:
http://www.ifm-zwota.de/akkreso.htm
Einfluß von Resonanzräumen auf die Klangabstrahlung des Akkordeons
Demusa Report ‘89

Its by the engineer Gotthard Richter, talking about experiments in Zwota on the influence of different types of grilles on the sound.
German experiments trying to copy the cassotto sound effects, but with easier to produce grilles.
Weltmeister Cantora model.
He published some books about it, like Handbuch der Harmonikainstrumente: Akustische Probleme bei Akkordeons und Mundharmonikas, Tl.1, Einführung in die allgemeinen Grundlagen Gebundene Ausgabe – 1985
and
Handbuch der Harmonikainstrumente: Akustische Probleme bei Akkordeons und Mundharmonikas, Tl.2, Untersuchungen spezieller Phänomene Gebundene Ausgabe – 1985
 
Yes, the grill's purpose is to keep foreign matter from accumulating inside the accordion body. Most well made accordions have grill cloth that is acoustically transparent and sound the same with or without a grill. There are more than a few entertainers that do a variety of things out of the norm just to call attention to themselves.
 
I did some experimentation a few years back using different shapes and sizes of holes/slots in a wooden "grill" to see how much I could influence the tone quality. Differences were certainly audible.
 
I was playing some music yesterday with one of those button accordion players who keeps the grille off, the notion of him seeking to draw attention to himself is kind of amusing to me - he basically dominates any gathering he's in, via volume, rhythm, force of personality, etc.

This fellow plays a Paolo Soprani, TomBR has first hand experience with how those instruments often have a rather muted inner row of buttons, and taking the grille off helps alleviate those problems to an extent. I was surprised a few years ago when I purchased a new button accordion from another Italian firm, Castagnari, and noticed its inner row is a bit muted too. It's a design flaw that firms persist in utilizing for some reason.
 
KLR said:
This fellow plays a Paolo Soprani, TomBR has first hand experience with how those instruments often have a rather muted inner row of buttons, and taking the grille off helps alleviate those problems to an extent. I was surprised a few years ago when I purchased a new button accordion from another Italian firm, Castagnari, and noticed its inner row is a bit muted too. Its a design flaw that firms persist in utilizing for some reason.
Click to expand...

Its a problem and if there were easy answers the makers would have taken them! Size, weight, cost, response, even-ness all to be balanced. I understand that evening out the response across the rows was quite a large part of the design intention of the Shand Morino B/C/C#.
Similarly its surely why some larger Castagnari button boxes have grill type piercing in the plate that turns the corner close to the keys.
 
Tom- I know what you mean. Small differences in the grill design definitely affect the tone. I would imagine a lot of experimenting and design research went into grill designs. I remember somewhere on these boards discussing the pancordion grill design.

KLR- people like this can give accordions a bad reputation, and are no fun to play with!
 
Playing without the grill is generally not a good idea. Yes there is a minor influence on the sound if you take it off (at least with a well-designed very transparent grill) but there is a significant risk for accidents.
I remember a documentary about and with Richard Galliano which showed him trying to find a repair guy because he had an accident and needed a bent valve replaced while on a concert tour.
 
I have a hunch that the difference in sound with the grill removed, might be more apparent to the player than any other listener. Besides the general trend that this tends to be true with all kinds of modifications to musical instruments, my rationale is that the reed pallet itself is standing in the way of the reed, for anyone facing the accordion. But looking down from above as the player does, there's a small aperture that appears when the pallet is lifted, which might result in a bit brighter, louder sound. And the grill is probably less transparent at its edges, just for practical reasons, but the effect might even be to redirect some of the sound energy towards the listener.

My impression of the tone chamber, at least ideally, it selectively cuts down the highest frequencies while leaving the lower harmonics intact. It isn't a muffled sound. It would be interesting to know, when people are reporting the results of different muting techniques, whether they preserve the lower harmonics or tend to have an overall muting effect.
 
This topic about acoustics, cassotto, tone chambers, tone modulators, grilles, etc shows me how difficult, but important (!), this topic is.
Sound effects due to cassottos, tone chambers, grilles etc should also be studied in relation to accordion reed design.

Here is a sort of PowerPoint presentation in English:
Reed Vibration and Pitch Bending in Western Free Reed Instruments
by James P. Cottingham, Physics Department Coe College Cedar Rapids, Iowa
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/courses/318/mini-courses/Winter2013/Cottingham-2.pdf

This will take me some time to read (and understand...) it. Look for example at page 38 from this presentation:
At the 2009 San Antonio ASA meeting, Tom Tonon described and demonstrated modifying accordion construction to include a resonating chamber in addition to the standard reed chamber

This kind of topics also needs to be studied by engineers or physics scholars, In this presentation are showed some results of spectra analyses on reed vibrations.
Like: Velocity spectra from the laser vibrometer give the peak amplitudes of the second mode frequency taken at points along the reed tongue. (page 9)

We need the help of scientists in this field of tone chamber design or grille design, and the effect on acoustics in accordions.
The advantage is they can show the results from experiments in data and numbers.
 
debra said:
Playing without the grill is generally not a good idea. Yes there is a minor influence on the sound if you take it off (at least with a well-designed very transparent grill) but there is a significant risk for accidents.
I remember a documentary about and with Richard Galliano which showed him trying to find a repair guy because he had an accident and needed a bent valve replaced while on a concert tour.
Click to expand...

The instrument played by the fellow I mentioned has one of its 8 bass buttons missing, the bellows are a filthy yellow-grey from 40 years of playing in smoky pubs. He fairly thrashes the instrument around while playing, I dont think a bent pallet arm is a big concern of his, frankly. :lol: Hes a fantastic musician at any rate, and by no means alone in not bothering with the grille. But this problem is something Ive never encountered with piano accordions; only have the one chromatic button accordion so dont know about those.

My Hohner Club Morino and Trichord BCC# have balanced rows, owing to how the inner row lifts the topmost rank of pallets, using a compound arm system. This simple expedient seems to fix this problem, but other companies - and some Hohner models - carry on with having the inner row of buttons operate the bottom row of pallets, leading to a muffled sound.

http://www.tedmcgraw.com/Organola_Trichord_files/TrichKBmechinsm.jpg>TrichKBmechinsm.jpg
 
I'm not sure I follow? My accordion's lowest row of pallets works off a compound arm, which I suppose serves to make the action more level and possibly higher than it would be if they were mounted directly, as the lowest row arm is of course relatively short. (On the down side, it means that those pallets are mounted in a relatively inaccessible way, so where the upper rows have been remounted since, the lowest row is the original, crumbling rubber mounts.)

But would the button row have any bearing on it? Is my fourth row the inner row here, or the third, as the fourth a duplicate of the outer row? I'm guessing this is actually about the way melodeons are typically designed, and not so much an accordion thing?
 
Another thought about tone chambers- are they made of wood or metal or both? Ive seen some listed as all wood, but seems to me the ones I've seen always have a metal plate that you can unscrew to access the pallets. Does this influence the effect of the chamber as well?
 
The accordion pictured uses compound levers too, I think for the outer row to work the lowest row of pallets - I forget the exact details and can't tell from looking at the photo. There was a blogger who wrote about the Hohner Shand Morino in detail and explained how the compound levers helped to balance the rows. It really works, the accordion pictured here is a Hohner Trichord, the beginner's 3 row Scottish button accordion, I have one of those and the rows are much better balanced than my other 3 row boxes, including a new Castagnari.
 
Most all tone chamber accordions have a removable aluminum plate. The higher end models of accordions have this aluminum plate but it's laminated with a wood veneer and advertised as all wood.
 
Yes, Owen. Great work he does getting under the hood of these things.
 
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