Beltuna Leader V

[cestjeffici]

I bought the Leader V today from Liberty Bellows today. It was quite an excellent experience.

I played it for about an hour and it felt good and made me smile. It is about the same size as the FR8 so it felt normal to me.

It has a beautiful sound, much better in person than on any of the videos. My wife was with me and went from being dubious about my need for another accordion to saying “I can hear why you wanted this thing”

Stass (maybe I got his name a little wrong) was extremely helpful. He clearly wanted me to leave the store with exactly what I wanted. We fitted the straps with quick disconnects at the bottom so I could use the back strap. The back strap as it came from the factory wasn’t well designed. Stass had one of the technicians add two rivets that made it work.

Out of the box it had a few issues with reeds. Both bass and treble. Stass meticulously marked all the bad keys and buttons with bits of blue masking tape and sent it into the shop. I also had trouble feeling the bass index buttons for E and A flat due to lose of nerve function from my hand operations. They were marked by a bit of roughness on the button top and I couldn’t feel it. Stass had the technicians create depressions on those buttons just like the one that marks the C bass.

When it came out of the shop I played it again to make sure I could get the straps on and feel the newly indexed bass buttons. Stass then played EVERY! reed in the box! Just to be sure it was perfect.

This process took 3 hours and was considered just part of the service! No extra charges.

I couldn’t be more happy with the experience. And I would never, ever, buy an accordion direct from a factory or a distributor.

 

[Tom]

That’s awesome Jeff!!!! Hope you love it!!!!

 

[Alan Sharkis]

I bought the Leader V today from Liberty Bellows today. It was quite an excellent experience.

I played it for about an hour and it felt good and made me smile. It is about the same size as the FR8 so it felt normal to me.

It has a beautiful sound, much better in person than on any of the videos. My wife was with me and went from being dubious about my need for another accordion to saying “I can hear why you wanted this thing”

Stass (maybe I got his name a little wrong) was extremely helpful. He clearly wanted me to leave the store with exactly what I wanted. We fitted the straps with quick disconnects at the bottom so I could use the back strap. The back strap as it came from the factory wasn’t well designed. Stass had one of the technicians add two rivets that made it work.

Out of the box it had a few issues with reeds. Both bass and treble. Stass meticulously marked all the bad keys and buttons with bits of blue masking tape and sent it into the shop. I also had trouble feeling the bass index buttons for E and A flat due to lose of nerve function from my hand operations. They were marked by a bit of roughness on the button top and I couldn’t feel it. Stass had the technicians create depressions on those buttons just like the one that marks the C bass.

When it came out of the shop I played it again to make sure I could get the straps on and feel the newly indexed bass buttons. Stass then played EVERY! reed in the box! Just to be sure it was perfect.

This process took 3 hours and was considered just part of the service! No extra charges.

I couldn’t be more happy with the experience. And I would never, ever, buy an accordion direct from a factory or a distributor.

Best of luck with the new Beltuna!

 

[PhiliGol]

Congratulations Jeff
I also remember a good shopping-experience in Phili.
Enjoy your new instrument.

 

[Chickers]

Nice review from a accordionist, and now a satisfied customer.
Sounds like Liberty Bellows is the kind of accordion shop most places can only "think" about becoming.
Thank you for sharing your experience
Enjoy

 

[JerryPH]

The Beltuna Leader V is a special accordion (I can speak from personal experience), very well spec'ed and a fantastic sound. I am sure it is going to make you smile for years and years!

The experience at LB seemed really good, it shows that they went over and above for you.

I look forward to maybe sometime setting up a zoom session and having you show it off a little.
BTW, I believe forum rules are "pics or it never happened"... lol

Congrats on getting a beautiful accordion!

 

[cestjeffici]

This is the actual Leader V that I bought today:

 

[Ben-jammin]

That’s a lovely instrument.

 

[JerryPH]

This is the actual Leader V that I bought today:

So beautiful.
OK, thanks to your pic it shows that I may have a previous generation of Leader V or one that was originally ordered with slightly different options compared to yours (yours is brand new, I purchased mine used). I am sure that internally it's basically all the same, but they changed a couple details outside to make yours more cohesive and IMHO more classy.

Grill design is a bit different, they removed the register name wording and the two small badges on the accordion bass side, one on the left one reads "Leader V" and one on the right reads "Amplisound". There are some minor coloring changes as well. Oh, here is an interesting change... they moved to bellows pins from screws. Not a big thing but I prefer the pins like most other accordions.

Your Amplisound switch is in the proper location as opposed to mine, which had to be moved thanks to the addition of the LIMEX midi module.

The registrations are the same, and the one thing that I really like about this accordion is the 4 levels of "musette", none of which is "too aggressive". For me (and I assume yours too), the one that has the highest level of tremelo is strong without being overbearing.

There are very few accordions that I have played with this level of quality and versatility. With 15 registrations, we can fit the perfect tone to so many genres of music from Jazz to German to French Musette and more.

I think you will be moderately pleased with it... lol

 

[cestjeffici]

So beautiful.
OK, thanks to your pic it shows that I may have a previous generation of Leader V or one that was originally ordered with slightly different options compared to yours (yours is brand new, I purchased mine used). I am sure that internally it's basically all the same, but they changed a couple details outside to make yours more cohesive and IMHO more classy.

Grill design is a bit different, they removed the register name wording and the two small badges on the accordion bass side, one on the left one reads "Leader V" and one on the right reads "Amplisound". There are some minor coloring changes as well. Oh, here is an interesting change... they moved to bellows pins from screws. Not a big thing but I prefer the pins like most other accordions.

Your Amplisound switch is in the proper location as opposed to mine, which had to be moved thanks to the addition of the LIMEX midi module.

The registrations are the same, and the one thing that I really like about this accordion is the 4 levels of "musette", none of which is "too aggressive". For me (and I assume yours too), the one that has the highest level of tremelo is strong without being overbearing.

There are very few accordions that I have played with this level of quality and versatility. With 15 registrations, we can fit the perfect tone to so many genres of music from Jazz to German to French Musette and more.

I think you will be moderately pleased with it... lol

I was watching an older Liberty Bellows youtube demo of a Beltuna Leader V. I think Mike, the owner, was playing it. He said something interesting about the Piccolo switch.
He would select a switch and then press the Piccolo switch. He said that that sequence would keep all the settings of the first switch but remove the bassoon and add the Piccolo to it.
Seemed odd to me. As if what you get when you select Piccolo depends on what you previously selected.
I'm going to play with that today to see how my Leader behaves.

 

[JerryPH]

I was watching an older Liberty Bellows youtube demo of a Beltuna Leader V. I think Mike, the owner, was playing it. He said something interesting about the Piccolo switch.
He would select a switch and then press the Piccolo switch. He said that that sequence would keep all the settings of the first switch but remove the bassoon and add the Piccolo to it.
Seemed odd to me. As if what you get when you select Piccolo depends on what you previously selected.
I'm going to play with that today to see how my Leader behaves.

Huh, interesting! It's not something that I noticed, but now I'll need to try that too!
I do recall that when I press the piccolo register, things sound really high pitched... LOL

Fast question... was it this video?



Because I have strong suspicions that this is my exact accordion, that from there it was sold to someone who then used it a while, and sold it to the accordion museum, and that is where I picked it up.

 

[cestjeffici]

Huh, interesting! It's not something that I noticed, but now I'll need to try that too!
I do recall that when I press the piccolo register, things sound really high pitched... LOL

Fast question... was it this video?



Because I have strong suspicions that this is my exact accordion, that from there it was sold to someone who then used it a while, and sold it to the accordion museum, and that is where I picked it up.

This is the video:

 

[JerryPH]

Very interesting!

Right off the bat, he said that this was a "special order option", and what I see is the registers are not in the same order at all like mine, he has musette sounds in the 2nd register from the top and master all the way on the bottom... all my musette are at the bottom half, master is in the traditional place in the middle. I'll have to be happy with 30 sounds with the Amplisound off and on... lol

 

[debra]

I bought the Leader V today from Liberty Bellows today. It was quite an excellent experience.

...

This process took 3 hours and was considered just part of the service! No extra charges.

I couldn’t be more happy with the experience. And I would never, ever, buy an accordion direct from a factory or a distributor.

Best of luck with a fabulous instrument. I tried the Leader V at the Frankfurter Musikmesse about 25 years ago. (Really... it has been that long...)
Virtually every accordion from every factory comes out of the factory with a number of small (or sometimes large) defects, which the dealer then has to correct. When you get an accordion straight from the factory you should be prepared to do these repairs yourself. You might find a technician who can do it for you, but repairers that are also accordion dealers may not be happy at serving you when you didn't buy the accordion from them...

 

[Siegmund]

I was watching an older Liberty Bellows youtube demo of a Beltuna Leader V. I think Mike, the owner, was playing it. He said something interesting about the Piccolo switch.
He would select a switch and then press the Piccolo switch. He said that that sequence would keep all the settings of the first switch but remove the bassoon and add the Piccolo to it.
Seemed odd to me. As if what you get when you select Piccolo depends on what you previously selected.

That is not the standard function of a register switch, but is an easy aftermarket modification of it, if someone desired it. It's a handy way to get access to most of the 31 combos of 5 reeds with only 15 switches.

The function of a switch is encoded by a set of tabs on the sliders beneath it. Normally a piccolo switch is set to "turn H on, turn M+ off, turn M off, turn M- off, turn L off." But a quick snip-snip-snip with metal cutters can change that to "turn H on, leave M+ unchanged, leave M unchanged, leave M- unchanged, turn L off." (Putting the tabs back on if you've previously cut them off is quite a bit more work.)

 

[JerryPH]

I'm not sure what Jeff wants to do, but yeah, no snip-snip on my 'Tuna for me, thanks... lol

 

[cestjeffici]

I'm not sure what Jeff wants to do, but yeah, no snip-snip on my 'Tuna for me, thanks... lol

Accordions are like women, trying to change them never comes to any good!

 

[Tom]

Accordions are like women, trying to change them never comes to any good!

Not to mention that they will change you. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Depends if you like their sound and playability I guess.

 

[JerryPH]

Well in fairness, I did do some changes to the LIMEX on my Leader V, I had to change the top display module to one that had a USB input and I changed the proprietary parameters that controlled the microphones so that I could get 100% separation between the left/right sides... but thats not like I was in there clipping away at some very important functional parts... lol

What is funny is that I like the sounds of digital, but I feel no great need to use any of the Limex digital sounds when I play that accordion, I just like hearing it's acoustic side. That box has a sound that is unique to the extreme for me and gives me such pleasure when I play it, I have a good idea of whats going through Jeff every time he uses it.

I think it may be time for me to make a video with it again!