Reed boosters

[Brassodemolish]

I personally prefer leather reed valves instead of Ventelli because the type of music I play uses alot of bellow shakes and I dislike the higher pitched slapping sound the plastic makes when there's alot of air pressure. Will leather valves last longer with the wire valve boosters? Any cons?

 

[debra]

Leather valves need boosters to "stay in shape" over a much longer period of time. When I'm doing maintenance on accordions of 30+ years of age the leather valves without boosters tend to not close too well any more whereas the ones with boosters are still fine.
But... the smallest valves suffer from the boosters because even the smallest, thinnest boosters offer too much resistance. For that reason manufacturers who used to put boosters on all the leathers have started to use plastic valves for the highest notes that still have a valve. You can typically find between 3 and 5 small plastic valves on high notes on each (side of each M or H) reed block.