The Button-Piano Accordion

[Walker]

There have been countless variations on the accordion design over the years. The button-piano accordion is one such design.

I first noticed one when I saw a Venezia (Hohner) on eBay, but during a conversation with a friend on the Forum, he introduced me to the Swiss accordion museum and the marvellous accordion collections it contains.

There were two particular accordions that stood out to me as being very interesting:

A beautiful Damianenko accordion with buttons in the "piano" formation:

(see link for item description)

Y. Demianenko, N.Y. (Nr. 139) – AKKORDEON MUSEUM – "Sammlung historische Handharmonika 1830 – 1945"

akkordeon-museum.ch

Secondly, a spectacular Dallape with two treble manuals. The inner keyboard has full musette tuning (MMM) and the outer keyboard has double bassoon tuning (LL) in cassotto!

(see link for item description)

Dallape Cav. Mariano e figlio, Stradella, Italia, zwei Manual Knopf-Piano 1923 (305) – AKKORDEON MUSEUM – "Sammlung historische Handharmonika 1830 – 1945"

akkordeon-museum.ch

 

[Vladimir M.]

An ingenious combination of all the disadvantages of both the piano and the CBA accordions. It's fine as an exotic, but I wouldn't want to play it.
Best regards, Vladimir

 

[Walker]

Woops... looks like I failed the accordion-enthusiast test again... I saw the beauty instead of the "disadvantages".

 

[Tom]

Woops... looks like I failed the accordion-enthusiast test again... I saw the beauty instead of the "disadvantages".

Well, it is “interesting,” and I was not aware of this design so Thank You!

 

[Vladimir M.]

looks like I failed the accordion-enthusiast test again...

Oh no! Your post was very, very interesting. I just looked at the box from the point of view of expediency. Other exotic solutions would also end up in the same way, for example this:

(Source)

Times are hard and the evolutionary selection of the best boxes very hard...

Best regards, Vladimir

 

[tcabot]

Arranging buttons in a piano fashion is one thing, but sticking a piano manual onto an accordion is a whole new degree of madness, imho. Who would want to play that?!
Almost as mad as sticking buttons onto a violin.

 

[losthobos]

That Dallape is a stroke of genius...at first I thought was a split keyboard then heard the different voicings between the bass keys and the treble keys...super... bit like the two keyboards on a Hammond...except you couldn't play both at simultaneously..
Supercool