Don't miss the train, Gianni

[maugein96]

My main instrument is a Piatanesi which incidentally I see a lot of Brazilians play, but I like some vintage Scandallis and my Hohner Corona. I never played a French accordion, they dont seem that common in the US.

Have you seen Sere in Festa? Its another youtube variety show with a lot of dance music (and pop if you like that) not all but some accordion from the Verona area.

Hi Tom,

I remember you now and like your Piatanesi. Never seen one yet on a Brazilian clip but Ill keep my eyes open. I love the way those Brazilian guys can get great sounds out of those old accordions, and they always seem to keep them well maintained. Theres a guy whose name I now forget from the Irati area of Brazil who does them up and plays them on You Tube with a view to selling them on.

Ill have a look at Sere in Festa,

Ciao

 

[Tom]

Heres Bia Socek with a beautiful black Piatanesi. Shes a very popular sanfoneira in Brazil, playing a lot of sertanejo style. Yeah, you tend to see a lot of vintage Scandallis with those big round treble air hole covers. So cool.

 

[maugein96]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for that link, Tom. Thats a brilliant tone from a great player. Id heard of her before but the name sort of never connected me to Brazil.

Tried Sere in Festa, but not enough accordion content and I obviously couldnt understand the comperes.

Have you tried this one?

https://www.lisciodoc.it/

You select the type of track you want and you get transferred onto You Tube. The spartiti are sometimes incorporated into the video so you can play as you listen (if youre good enough!)

I believe the streaming site I mentioned has been taken down for some reason, as I cannot find it.

French accordions are not very common outside of France at all, except in Portugal, where there are a lot of Cavagnolo CBAs with what appears to be special Portuguese tuning. Neither Cavagnolo nor Maugein make very many PAs at all and they are about the only French mainstream makers left. There are one or two smaller makers who supply the folk scene, as well as a make called Gadji who supply manouche and jazz type accordions, the latter of which have an altered bass configuration, which they reckon is better suited to jazz playing the the normal Stradella bass.

In my experience the Italian built models for the French market are better than Cavagnolo, although Maugein are quite solidly built with a reasonable tone. Cavagnolos have a sort of fragile feel to them which Im not keen on, although you wont really get a more French sound out of any other make. Maugein have nearly gone under several times in the last few years. Their instruments are just too dear for all but pro players, and Cavagnolo have gone down the digital road, so they havent developed their acoustic range very much lately.

New Italian made boxes are often a couple of grand cheaper than French ones, and a lot of youngsters seem to be favouring Hohner (France) which are made by Mengascini. Dont know how long theyll still be making accordions in France. I believe Maugein were down to less than 100 new instruments per year lately, with Cavagnolo on maybe double that, but theyre not very forthright about the situation.

Time will tell.

 

[Tom]

Very interesting, thank you! Someday I'll have to get over there and check out those brands. I really don't know what the future holds. What with the Chinese and the digital accordions and the high cost of expert labor, it's hard to say. At least in our lifetime we have access to good, quality instruments. In the future, who knows?

 

[maugein96]

First time I heard a digi box I almost went straight out and bought one, as the demo was done on a little Roland fr1xb by a French pro player, who knew exactly how to set all of the sounds just about spot on.

I actually joined the forum looking for advice, as I had read various horror stories on the French accordion media, with regard to lack of reliability on the Cavagnolo and Crucianelli offerings on sale there.

After a long period of listening to recordings on You Tube it became pretty obvious that a lot of players were having difficulty in getting the sounds they wanted, which I thought was unusual as it appeared all you had to do was follow the instructions in the manual. I would have been happy enough with the default sounds which apparently came as standard, but it all got rather too complicated with all sorts of people trying to get their own particular sounds.

I ended up abandoning the idea, as only two or three players out of about 100 I heard were getting sounds anywhere near an acoustic box, although I did consider that was not necessarily the goal. The little fr1xb appeared to be too small to take a chance on, and it was all I was prepared to gamble.

On the Cavagnolo and some Roland demos the sounds are excellent, but IMHO very few individual players seem to be able to set them up like the players in those demos.

I'm not saying I'd never buy one, but there are still a lot of posts on here, some of them by people who appear to be very knowledgeable, which suggest there are many aspects of them that even the makers don't seem to understand. If I can't just plug it in and play it the same day I'm not really interested. I have one of those Fender modeling guitar amps that is gathering dust in a cupboard because it is so frustrating to set up properly.