More silent bass mechanism

[Sebastian Bravo]

Hi everyone.

Days ago a friend came to my house (Asking for tuning and restoration) with a Contello Accordion, it is an italian accordion, good box with smaller keys (41/120 in a 37 key body).

I inspected it everywhere and realized that the bass buttons had rubber bands inside of the mechanism, to make it silent. so... i tried to imitate that on my Hohner.

(I recorded the video with half of the mechanism modified, to compare how noisy the keys were after the mod.)

And the results were really good! now the buttons sound less, and also feels more solid and better!

I suggest anyone to try it! To imitate the rubber i used 0.6mm heat shrink tubing (Had to cut a lot but worth the results!)
<ATTACHMENT filename=1mm-black-heat-shrink-tube-1-meter-WOER.jpg index=0>

 

[Morne]

Its great to see an example of this. I half remember reading something before about using heat shrink tube for this purpose.

I have a few questions:
- How much time is this taking you?
- Did you disassemble the bass mechanism or did you do it in situ?
- How does that extra thickness (even though its small) influence other things? For example, did you have to readjust some of the rods or pallets after doing that?

Ive typically seen these tubes/dampers on the other small sideways bits that push down on the levers you put the tubes on (sorry, dont know the correct terms here). Heres my Morino VI M (ignore the drawn boxes, they are from a different thread):
https://www.accordionists.co.uk/download/file.php?id=2326&mode=view>

Ive wondered whether something like that would help with my older Morino IV M. The bass buttons dont have padding around the holes and the rods are also bare metal on metal. On the other hand, I imagine this to be a very time consuming task and if you risk introducing leaks due to the additional thickness, then it might just be more effort than its worth. I suppose there are ways one can try to be less percussive on the buttons.

 

[Sebastian Bravo]

As you say, the added thickness of the tubes affect in some ways, i had to bent some rods to get a clean movement, and some others couldn't be silenced because of the small space (12 in total)
I didn't lose any air tightness, and i did all the work without dissasembling the machine.

I didn't count the time it took to complete it, but maybe one hour and a half (i finished it in 1 hour, but then i noticed some notes were sticking so i had to check every movement inside and see what was the problem)

Now it's fully working and i love it. I tried to be less percussive in the past and it worked great, and now it is almost silent!

 

[jozz]

Nice one, huge difference there. Should've done this to my own Concerto but as the basses are reasonably loud, I could never be bothered.

 

[Sebastian Bravo]

Nice one, huge difference there. Shouldve done this to my own Concerto but as the basses are reasonably loud, I could never be bothered.

Yes, they are very loud. But now ive modified some buttons to be free bass, so, they are REALLY noisy.