Puzzles found in an old CBA

[craigd]

Hello and happy holidays to all,
Holidays, so opened up the circa 1950 Guerrini I received a few months ago. Main thing wrong is a disengaged e-flat chord rod in the bass mechanism. The spring on it is broken or disconnected and moving the rod by hand does not open the pads. This is for upper three octaves only when chord buttons pushed. When e-flat note button pushed, the pads for all reed blocks do open. Any advice on how to disassemble the bass mechanism to get at the problem spring etc?

I am puzzled also by treble register switches. It is an LMMM box with the following switches (various M tunings not identified at this point but numbered to distinguish): bassoon L, celeste M2, horn LM2, clarinet LM1, master LMMM, musette M2M3, concert M1M2, organ LM2M3, flute M1. Some unfamiliar names there (concert, horn), but main question is, shouldn't musette be MMM? The switches and sliders do not appear to have been altered.

Interesting to see how a CBA is arranged differently from a piano accordion. This one has a mix of hand made and standard reeds. Only the three or four lowest and highest reeds are hand made on the treble side, while the 2 lower bass octaves are hand made.

Thanks in advance for any help with these puzzles.
Craig

 

[Sebastian Bravo]

dissasembling the bass section is a lot of work. but everyone can do it without problem. just watch how the mechanism works and you will be able to remove button by button.


the 5th video of that post is a timelapse of me, dissasebling a 185 bass mechanism.

 

[debra]

The time lapse video illustrates the work involved in disassembling the bass mechanism of an Italian accordion. Don't let the name "Hohner" fool you. It is an Italian accordion made by Excelsior. What it does not show so clearly that is the most important in disassembling/reassembling a bass mechanism is *taking lots and lots of pictures of everything you do". If you mess up somehow you have pictures of how it was at each stage in the process!
The Guerrini I'm afraid is not good news on the treble side regarding the reeds. The most valuable thing about a 1950's Guerrini is the reeds that were used. If it's a good one it came with Taborrov hand-made reeds, the same ones as used in the legendary Scandalli Super VI. So what likely happened is that during some repair the good reeds were "stolen" to fit in a different, smaller, accordion (leaving the highest and lowest reeds as not needed). I'm afraid this has reduced the Guerrini from being a highly valuable instrument to just a plain old accordion with no special value whatsoever. Sorry I don't have better news about this accordion.
With any luck, when you examine the two lowest octaves that have the original hand-made reeds you can find a reed with "TABORROV" and "B.N. 85181" engraved in it (can sometimes also be on two different reeds). If that's the case you clearly have what used to be a real gem and has sadly been butchered.