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beats on register violin, musette...

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Jomme

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Hello people,

Here I am again with a question I didn't find the answer...
I bought a Scandalli 5 voice (4 but with possibility to add a octave to the 16'' to have 5) and the thing has 11 registers where I can choose to have violin (from what I understand from the pictogram this should give me teh + and - M reeds) and I could also choose to have musette which give me MMM...
When I check this on Dirk's tuner on the 'violin' it gives me 20cts difference between M- and M+ (approx 5Hz beat)
On musette it gives me the same deviation between clean M and + or - reed... twice 5Hz or beats...
The two settings seem to give the same beat by ear but I would expect to have 10 beats/sec between M+ and M- on the violin setting...
I didnt open up the thing yet but I presume the violin is just claen M and M+ instead of M- and M+?
is this common practice or am I missing something???
(hope my explanaition makes sense...)

Cheers
Jomme
 
Any chance of a picture of the register switches ?
From your description it is L, M-, M, M+, ie musette tuning. But I don't see how that requires 11 switches - that sounds more like LMM+H.

An 'easy' way to be certain is to take out the bellows pins on the treble end and take out the treble reed blocks and observe what the register switches actually do - they move sliders that block the air holes on each reed bank (2 per reed block). You should be able to identify two reed banks using the L and M register switches, the others are M- and M+.
 
It looks to me like the violin register label is symbolic - old register labels are not necessarily an accurate depiction of the reeds used.
So it could easily be MM+ or M-M.

I think the only way to be certain is to check what the register sliders do.
 
It looks to me like the violin register label is symbolic - old register labels are not necessarily an accurate depiction of the reeds used.
So it could easily be MM+ or M-M.

I think the only way to be certain is to check what the register sliders do.
On an accordion with MMM it is really common to use a symbol that looks like it means M- M+ for "violin" when in reality it is M M+ or in some cases M M-. The M- M+ combination gives the most extreme tremolo. Some accordion brands have created the name "musette vivace" for this combination. Both register markings (with dots) and register names were always invented "creatively" to look and sound attractive and used to be pretty meaningless. I have an old Crucianelli for instance with register markings that suggest the accordion is LMMH whereas it really is LMMM. The M dots are also placed left and right suggesting M- and M+ but they are M and M+. The placing of the non-offset M dot is often creatively placed to the left instead of the center. This is also done in music scores: often you will see a register with the M- and M+ dots but it never means "musette vivace" but always means the M M+ combination (often called violin).
 
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