new member... new accordion 😁

[dinosaur_monkey]

hello. all,

no accordian experience, but scored a very nice vintage accordian and I'm trying to figure out the manufacturer and maybe some details on it....

I need to replace the shoulder straps for sure, and a few of the reeds are *raspy* but it does work 100%. my girlfriend's daughter loves music and has already figured out how to play *twinkle twinkle little star... she surprised herself she's only 6 so i can't trust her to play it unsupervised, but i figure I'll freshen it up and eventually get the noisy reeds repaired to make it sound as it should...

I've attached some pictures... didn't have any luck researching the crest ti determine manufacture, or age.... any help would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance

Mark

 

[dak]

"Raspy" is likely not the reeds. Either the valves, or the reed plates are loose. Taken a look inside yet? Know how?

 

[Perogie]

Cool accordion.

Like dak said that sounds more like air moving 'around' the reeds than bad reeds. Bad seal or something I am definitely not an accordion repair expert but I'm sure someone can pinpoint it if you take some internal pics.

Rather than worry about fixing it, I say call it "character" and start jamming.

 

[dinosaur_monkey]

"Raspy" is likely not the reeds. Either the valves, or the reed plates are loose. Taken a look inside yet? Know how?

haven't opened her up yet but i do see all the little screws holding the body/trim pieces on.... i restore old vacuum tube radios and amps and speakers, and build elevators for a living so I'm pretty comfortable working on mechanical / musical things... I'll try and peek under the hood this week... and YES Perogie.... I'm all for vintage things with character so if its not gonna hurt anything i probably won't mess with it

 

[Ben-jammin]

Usually the bellows are held in by pins and not screw. The reeds are inside this cavity. I would check the leather valves on the reeds. When these get old and dried out they stop working as efficiently and cause issues for air flow on the reeds including causing the reeds pitch to change, alter the response time, use more air, sound raspy as well as potentially not sound at all in one or both directions. While looking at them it may also be prudent to check the wax that holds the reeds in. This instrument is approaching the age where that can dry out and become brittle. No fun when you take the instrument on a car ride and find half the reeds fell out when you go over some uneven train tracks.

The registers on the instrument are interesting. The “violin” implies there may be two middle sets of reeds but I think it is likely that is a false indicator. If the violin indicator is true it would make this an LMM but I think it is as likely it is an LM.

I don’t recognize the brand maybe someone on here will (when this was made there were a lot of Italian builders building generic instruments on contract for US music schools and shops to be rebranded.) It would have been sold as a step up instrument to a young student after the first few weeks of lessons. In good condition these are adequate for learning the instrument, but aren’t as rewarding as higher spec instruments. I’m guessing by the relative amount of space of the bass buttons that this is a small instrument with a keyboard around or less than 17 inches. Potentially your girlfriend’s daughter may be the only one this instrument fits or at least can grow into it.

It may be a big job to return to the instrument to proper function. Replacing valves isn’t hard but it’s time consuming and the parts aren’t free. I find it’s most efficient to have a modified bellows I can sound the reed blocks on and test each one as I go.

I think in the past the ideal was that young students should learn on reduced size 120 bass with all the buttons available and much of the courses had material that required it. Nowadays it seems to be an argument that they should play an “adult” proportion instrument but with less buttons and keys.