Reed positioning

[salad dodger]

The wife recently acquired an old Pietro accordion as a wallhanger.
It was in a very sad state , sticking keys, sticking buttons, lots of internal rattling etc etc, but the bellows & casing seem in decent order.
I can't say as I'd even held one before this, but I love tinkering with stuff , understanding the mechanics & getting things working .
I've already given myself a crash course in deconstruction, sorted the sticking keys & buttons but the big problem is that all the rattling was unseated reeds/valves.
I best admit now that I'm tone deaf & can't play any kind of instrument, so working out where the seperated parts go is proving difficult.
Is there any way of working out what position they go back in ?
There's 8 in total from 3 of the 4 reed blocks .
Any help would be much appreciated

 

[debra]

The wife recently acquired an old Pietro accordion as a wallhanger.
It was in a very sad state , sticking keys, sticking buttons, lots of internal rattling etc etc, but the bellows & casing seem in decent order.
I can't say as I'd even held one before this, but I love tinkering with stuff , understanding the mechanics & getting things working .
I've already given myself a crash course in deconstruction, sorted the sticking keys & buttons but the big problem is that all the rattling was unseated reeds/valves.
I best admit now that I'm tone deaf & can't play any kind of instrument, so working out where the seperated parts go is proving difficult.
Is there any way of working out what position they go back in ?
There's 8 in total from 3 of the 4 reed blocks .
Any help would be much appreciated

You can ping reeds (with a small knife or razor blade or any other thin metal blade) and use a tuning app (on the phone) to find out where the reed should go. It isn't always very obvious because of problems with the "logic" accordion manufacturers apply, but close. Most white keys go from A to B.... to G in one row and then up again all on one reed block, and the same with the black keys on the other reed block. But... because eash octave has 7 white and 5 black keys most manufacturers mix some white keys in with the black ones. Putting all the E notes on the block for black keys is a common pattern.
When the reeds are from the bass side it's harder to say because there some manufacturers will put them in the order from A... to G chromatically (starting with some random note like C or B or F# for instance) and others follow the circle of quints... And on the bass side the reed plates of a whole row are the same size, so size won't help either...
The good part is that when you get it wrong it doesn't matter for a wallhanger.

 

[boxplayer4000]

If you haven't got a tuner you can 'trace' a reed by following a keyboard 'key' via its pallet/valve to the reed block. ie. Key C will take you to the
place where the 'C' reeds are on the reed blocks.
If reeds have fallen off you can blow them temporarily and sound them against a reference keyboard you might have around. If you don't have a reference keyboard there's plenty on-line.

 

[salad dodger]

Cheers folks, I never even thought of using an app for tuning !
& my daughter has a keyboard I can reference against