If youre anywhere near Western Canada, Id like to look at it.
I got to try one of these Russian garmon (as in harmon-ica) for the first time just the other day. Really interesting, I wrote a bit on my blog here:
https://accordionuprising.wordpress.com/2015/03/06/garmon/
I thought “garmon” was Russian for “little diatonic accordion,” but it is more complicated than that. I didn’t realize how different they were from our diatonics. Wikipedia has helpful button diagrams.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garmon
They look like small two-row accordions with extra bass buttons. But all the buttons on both sides are unisonoric (same note played pumping in and out). The treble is laid out in a diatonic do-re-me scale that kind of zippers up the keyboard – inside-button, outside-button, repeat – with three accidentals added on top. So they are diatonic (like Western button boxes) but without being in-out bisonoric (and they may be technically chromatic with the accidentals, I haven’t counted). Fun to play! Holding three notes next to each other gives a major chord, but the pattern changes as you move around. I gather they come in different keys. I’d love to have one of these to mess with. The one I tried had a nice sound on the master with LMH (low, middle, high reeds).
The bass side is weird too with the inside row (of three) all individual basses in a do-re-mi scale, and the outside two rows are bass-chord combos (like more familiar diatonics I think, but still all unisonoric.) You might could do some interesting chording by combining the individual notes with chords, hmm.
Russian accordion history has sort of a parallel development with the West through the long distance and separation. I dont know much about it, but I assume they think our slew of diatonic systems are weird too. (I gather they have some bisonoric in-out systems as well, but this one is really popular. Wikipedia also mentions the oriental garmon with piano keyboard systems on both sides, played in Azerbaijan.)