Vintage Hohner piano accordion with extra bass buttons, does anyone know what this model might be?

[MoreorlessMusic]

I was having a look at an auction website and saw this lovely Hohner listed. I am curious about the "extra" bass buttons. I keep counting eight rows rather than the usual 6, but maths was never my strong point!!! I wondered if any of you knew something about this model of accordion and what its age might be? I'm guessing 1920s or early 1930s, but I really have no idea.

Here is another view of the bass buttons. I wonder if the 7 slots with metal tabs that are below the air button are register selectors for the bass?

There are register selectors around the front, and slightly below the keyboard


What a beautiful looking instrument... and yes, I am a bit tempted!!

 

[JerryPH]

I may be wrong, but it looks like an early Morino, more like a 40's model. I say that because Morino did not start making accordions for Hohner until 1936 and the unique bass registers did not appear on Morino boxes until 1940-ish.

The bass is likely an early MIII Free Bass design, possibly at the expense of diminished chords.

An accordion of this age, unless it has been professionally maintained, will need a lot of service... the cost of which can likely easily exceed it's market value.

Its true value can only be determined (as we constantly say on all similar posts), by the condition of the inside more than how it looks all nice and cleaned up outside. I will say that it likely will need good amount of work. The bellows need replacement, that alone is several hundred dollars right there.

As historical piece, this accordion may have value to those that appreciate a little Hohner history, less so for pretty everyone else.

EDIT: The more I look at it, the more little things I see. The beautiful mother of pearl grill and inlays. The break on the bottom, it's piece missing, the additional black section of the bass side looking like an add-on as registers for the bass side (they're traditionally just 2 registers), the rounded slider on the back of the keyboard, the long sliders on the back and top of the keyboard... would be interesting to see if that is for 8 registers or 4 registers repeated twice for convenience (my vote is on them being repeated).

Almost looks like a developmental or beta design, Hohner had a lot of those over the years.

 

[dak]

I may be wrong, but it looks like an early Morino, more like a 40's model. I say that because Morino did not start making accordions for Hohner until 1936 and the unique bass registers did not appear on Morino boxes until 1940-ish.

The bass is likely an early MIII Free Bass design, possibly at the expense of diminished chords.

Morino did that with some later Artiste designs, but this one is older. The image quality is not quite good enough, but I think that the inner two rows of buttons have markedly less depth above the board. That would make it likely that we are talking about an MIII free bass but about "baritone basses" that only access the chord octave reeds (leaving the 12 bass notes alone which you need to play using the Stradella bass rows), arranged in Jankó alternating style, probably with low notes at the bottom of the instrument. This was an arrangement Morino cooked up in the 1920s I think.

While quint basses could also use 8 rows, they weren't there yet and anyway not a Hohner thing. And the regular MIII arrangement (which required a second mechanical access path to the bass octave) came up later.

An accordion of this age, unless it has been professionally maintained, will need a lot of service... the cost of which can likely easily exceed it's market value.

Its true value can only be determined (as we constantly say on all similar posts), by the condition of the inside more than how it looks all nice and cleaned up outside. I will say that it likely will need good amount of work. The bellows need replacement, that alone is several hundred dollars right there.

As historical piece, this accordion may have value to those that appreciate a little Hohner history, less so for pretty everyone else.

EDIT: The more I look at it, the more little things I see. The beautiful mother of pearl grill and inlays. The break on the bottom, it's piece missing, the additional black section of the bass side looking like an add-on as registers for the bass side (they're traditionally just 2 registers),

Possibly the upper octave for the bass reeds and the chord reeds, respectively. The "additional black section" looks like it has been added long after the initial completion of the instrument, probably because a piece of the mother-of-pearl patterned celluloid broke off or was ruined. I rather doubt that the registers came as an add-on after the shell was already completed.

the rounded slider on the back of the keyboard, the long sliders on the back and top of the keyboard... would be interesting to see if that is for 8 registers or 4 registers repeated twice for convenience (my vote is on them being repeated).

Almost looks like a developmental or beta design, Hohner had a lot of those over the years.

Morino cranked out a whole lot of one-of-a-kind accordions over the years even under the Hohner label (when he was still in Geneva instead of Trossingen, it was not surprising that he built more singleton instruments than stock ones).

At any rate it is more than likely that even with this instrument restored to full glory, it would take a player considerable time to learn dealing with those 8 rows of basses, whatever they actually may be…