Excelsior Midivox III date range?

[Ryan C Cihlar]

Excelsior 960 Midivox Serie III. Anyone know the year range this was produced in?

 

[JerryPH]

An educated guess, I would say late 80's early 90's. MIDI for the accordion came out in 1985 or later, depending on manufacturer, with SEM (Elkavox) being one of the first in late '85.

 

[Dingo40]

I'd second that based on the stylistic characteristics of the bellows, keys and signage.

 

[Ventura]

An educated guess, I would say late 80's early 90's. MIDI for the accordion came out in 1985 or later, depending on manufacturer, with SEM (Elkavox) being one of the first in late '85.

I didn't know that.. or i am not understanding..

are you saying Elka had a MIDI accordion that was NOT an organ accordion ?

 

[Ventura]

Midivox II ws the longest running version commonly available,
M III was the 1990's through the end of CEMEX and into the beginning
of PIGINI, and they had it available through 2020
(whether or not any were ever ordered or delivered after 2010 is anyones guess)

the box itself looks like a CEMEX era 960 and is worth a few Grand easily
on it's own merits as an acoustic

 

[Ryan C Cihlar]

Thanks everyone for your input. This instrument has a really full, beautiful voice that I think is perhaps due to it's larger overall dimension (5 reed treble). I'm considering removing the MIDI in the treble to simplify things (and I never use it) and to substitute Harmonik mics for the factory ones. I notice that with the MIDI controller on the grill and the MIDI materials inside that the tone lacks some of the higher end, so sometimes I open the cover when playing to hear the tone chamber reeds better, and that sound is really sweet. Does this sound like a legit idea to remove the treble side MIDI, or would one regret removing the MIDI? Would adding additional vents in the grill cover help too, say on the chin side and under the treble switches to hear the overall sound? I'm curious if anyone has done that and what results they've encountered.

 

[JerryPH]

I didn't know that.. or i am not understanding..

are you saying Elka had a MIDI accordion that was NOT an organ accordion ?

Well there actually were accordions with the name Elka out there that were plain acoustics... one of those is actually posted on this forum and did surprise me, however that was not what I was saying... SEM had one of the first MIDI units for accordions on the market, is what I meant. MIDI was more or less ratified in 1984 as you know and by late '84, early '85, SEM had Ella's out there with MIDI integrated in to their Elkavox accordions... albeit straight basic "on-off" control only, but they did manage to get it integrated in to the tone generator as an optional add-on.

 

[Ventura]

yes a lot of little kits popped up to "integrate" non-midi stuff..
the Thunder Bay guy made them for a few Korg's and did one for
the Crumar organ accordions (i installed one for a friend who had
gotten his frim Castiglione, who imported and sold a ton of them)

i have personally never seen a pure midi accordion from ELKA
and this is also confusing to me as ELKA did not sign on to the MIDI
spec and made their own anyway at first. I guess they eventually got on
board but not until after their OMB3 module was out, which used their
proprietary MIDI spec. I do recall seeing pics of one or another
Elka Organ Accordion with a MIDI out, but i have no idea if that was
Factory or an add on or what. I never saw any Organ Accordion with
a MIDI IN, so i do not believe ANY organ accordion survivred the dark ages
long enough to have it's electronics designed with MIDI in mind from the get-go

also confusing as SEM never had an electronics department in their factory at all

afaik the very FIRST Midi Accordion brought to Market was the SOLTON
accompanied by the first Module designed for accordion by KETRON
which was at the time a consortium electronics company with an R&D shop
in Germany and the Studio oriented shop in CastleFi where they did the
sampling and programming

eventually Orla and Master and Cavagnolo and other brands developed Digital Accordions
but these were not organ-centric in design

thats how i remember things

 

[JerryPH]

i have personally never seen a pure midi accordion from ELKA

I have not either, not that I've even come close to being around as much as you.

My point was that in a time when MIDI was just made available to the public in any form, the first company that I ever saw that included any form of MIDI in their accordions was Elka and it was an option from SEM (it was needed so that it would work with the Solton Programmer 24 arranger, which I also have... at the time, it was the bleeding edge of that tech in the accordion world... lol Who knows, maybe that part was a Solton part? All I know is that I have a MIDI socket in my tone generator. ). Hohner, Excelsior, Cordovox (which was already on the way out by then), etc... none of them had MIDI available from the factory or even MIDI only units... that came a bit later, so your memory is, as usual, flawless.

 

[Ventura]

that makes sense.. SEM did provide the bodies to Solton so they
were already involved, and if someone wanted to use the Solton Programmer
with Elka electronics, they likely made the interface so that it would be
truly MIDI compatabile

the fella working at Solton at that time had a golden ear.. his sampling and
crafting of the Wavetables for the Solton/Ketron products is what put them
hands down over everyone else for Modules (designed to work with MIDI Accordions)
for decades to come

sadly the Solton midi accordion failed because they bit off too much trying to succeed
with a velocity capable accordion keyboard.. the physical technology simply
could not reliably handle it, so they were constantly in need of service
to regulate the action switching.. i have a set of their MIDI electronics complete
here on a shelf

 

[Alan Sharkis]

So, by the time we get to the mid-to-late 90s when I bought my SEM Ciao reed-less, Hall-Effect had already been introduced to MIDI for accordions. I played it for six years before something went bad in the bass notes. I really wanted a Roland 3, and my dealer only had the Roland 7 and I just couldn’t make friends with the 7’s keyboard. So the Ciao with its light weight and my bad back got along splendidly.

The Ciao was accepted for trade when I bought an acoustic with mikes and midi. But this midi, made by Master Production, with the same tone list as the Ciao, had tones that just sounded richer and Hall-Effect detectors that were more rugged than those in the Ciao. I still play that acoustic, along with my Roland 4x.

The AxE-Cordion that I have was also made by Master, but it had so many weak points that my dealer eventually had to send it back to Italy and for a few hundred I got the next generation AxE-Cordion with a much-improved and strengthened design. However, all the second-generation AxE-Cordions have black shells, whereas there were many color choices in the first generation. Mine, for example, was a dark red that faded to black. My new one can be converted to a flat accordion and it has a not-so-conveniently located pitch bend button (big deal,) but a also a much sturdier keyboard and MIDI detection system.

You’d think that MIDI systems for accordion could be designed to be near-perfect and perform well for the life of the instrument, but in practice it hasn’t turned out that way. Metallic contacts under the keyboard have one weak point - corrosion. Hall-Effect detectors, can go out of alignment giving you no sound on the affected key or constant sound. Cavagnolo, as far as I can tell, uses some sort of optical detection system, which can be slow. And in any case, there’s always some mechanical element that can affect the MIDI detection, to say nothing about electronic components that can fail.

But MIDI technology has:

1. made today’s reed-less accordions possible;
2. made velocity-sensitivity and aftertouch possible;
3. made it possible for an accordionist to control other devices and instruments while playing their accordion, and;
4. Made it possible for an accordion to sound like another instrument, or even an orchestra.

 

[Ventura]

you forgot to mention the horrors of the big time musicians traveling with
their MIDI and Reedless accordions then opening the Anvil Case and the box
had nevertheless been bounced so hard half of the Magnets came loose
so the hall effect switches or reed switches go brain dead

but otherwise you tell the history well

 

[Alan Sharkis]

Yes. An accordion with Hall-Effect MIDI, for those who don’t know, relies on a magnet coming close to a special transistor to generate a “note on,” or, in some cases a “note on with x velocity” MIDI message. So, in the case of the right-hand side of the accordion, the detectors, including those transistors, are mounted by their leads on a printed-circuit board that runs the length of the space inside the grill; one detector per note. The magnets are glued to the key rods, again, one for each note.

So, when a key is depressed, the magnet on that key rod comes close to the detector and the detector generates the MIDI message.for as long as the key is held down. The detectors must be within a fraction of a millimeter from the magnet for the process to work. Too far, and the note doesn’t sound. Too close, and it sounds continuously.

An accordion with this system must be transported in a case that is padded to prevent the accordion from moving, even slightly, within the case. Otherwise, detectors can go out of alignment, or, if the movement is extreme, magnets can work loose and fall off the key rods.