Wet bass

[KLR]

This nutty notion occurred to me last night while practicing. Anyone ever tune a part of the basses a bit soggy? Kind of a rhetorical question as everything under the sun has been tried by now, of course. :lol: Maybe one of you has actually heard one of these rara avii, or has a video ready for linking.

 

[JerryPH]

Ok, maybe I am off base (bass) here, but my Hohner Morino has 5 reeds on the left hand, and I am sure that 5th (H reed) is wet tuned. It even has it's own activation/deactivation switch on it. I'll find out for sure later once I start on my tuning table project, purchase Dirk's tuner and start documenting it a bit.

 

[debra]

Ok, maybe I am off base (bass) here, but my Hohner Morino has 5 reeds on the left hand, and I am sure that 5th (H reed) is wet tuned. It even has its own activation/deactivation switch on it. Ill find out for sure later once I start on my tuning table project, purchase Dirks tuner and start documenting it a bit.

Normally the bass side is always dry tuned. I would be very surprised if your Morino has the H reed wet tuned. I would not be surprised if it is simply out of tune.
The 5 reeds on the bass side are not like L M and H but have overlapping ranges to hide what I call the octave jump. Only when you pay attention while playing a scale can you here where which of the reeds reaches the highest note and then jumps to an octave lower. As a result you do not have two sets of reeds that are made to be wet tuned.

 

[boxplayer4000]

I agree. I've never heard of a 'wet' bass and I would treat any tremolo or beating as being a symptom of being out of tune.
Where the 12 reeds of bass or bass chords go from high to low is an interesting one. I believe some accordions are arranged so that the split is not all at the same place on the reed blocks in an attempt to balance the sound. i.e.. if the split on all blocks was made between B and C (C lowest and B highest) then playing a C major bass and chord would involve reeds in the lower end of the reeds available while playing a G major would use more upper end reeds and sound thinner.

 

[debra]

I agree. Ive never heard of a wet bass and I would treat any tremolo or beating as being a symptom of being out of tune.
Where the 12 reeds of bass or bass chords go from high to low is an interesting one. I believe some accordions are arranged so that the split is not all at the same place on the reed blocks in an attempt to balance the sound. i.e.. if the split on all blocks was made between B and C (C lowest and B highest) then playing a C major bass and chord would involve reeds in the lower end of the reeds available while playing a G major would use more upper end reeds and sound thinner.

Exactly! Typically 3 or 4 reeds sound together to mask where the jump is. The challenge for accordion manufacturers is to find a way to balance the sound volume coming from the bass (like 3 notes in a chord, 3 reeds per note = 9 reeds sounding together) with the volume from the treble side (maybe one note on just one reed). There are large difference between brands and models, where some have really overwhelming bass volume and some have very soft bass. I guess it is a matter of trying to match with 1 reed versus several reeds sounding on the treble side.
But to stress the answer to the OP: the bas side should not be tuned wet.

 

[JerryPH]

As mentioned, I was not sure, but there is an offset in tonality when I engage the highest set of reeds. About being out of tune, that I would have to disagree because one set of reeds would not be globally so "perfectly" out of tune equally everywhere.

I'll blame it more on my lack of knowledge than anything else.

 

[boxplayer4000]

The fault might be that a coupler is not fully opening on the high reeds or some other malfunction with the coupler mechanism.

 

[JerryPH]

Nope, that's the way it's been since we bought it brand new. It's not an error, that's the way all Hohner Morino VI N accordions were made.

 

[debra]

Nope, thats the way its been since we bought it brand new. Its not an error, thats the way all Hohner Morino VI N accordions were made.

That is interesting to hear. I have worked on some Hohner Morino VI N accordions and none of them were like that. This accordion has MIII melody bass (sometimes called bariton bass) and that is completely dry tuned. The same reeds are used for the standard bass. Absolutely dry (unless a coupler is not opening correctly or valves are not opening far enough).
I own a Morino Artiste XS (so the newer series) which has exactly the same lefthand side as the Morino VI and it came absolutely dry tuned.

 

[JerryPH]

Paul, it well may be dry tuned, I don't have the software yet to truly find out... but there is a special button on the side that controls the shutting off of the highest pitched bass reeds and they don't really sound pitch perfect to the other reed sets, just ever so slightly off. I do know that the bass has 5 reeds in there, so it has to be more than MIII... counted the reed blocks myself and it's clearly stated in all the specs.

 

[TomBR]

I'm guessing that there's some physics which says wet tuned bass won't work?
By a quick and rough calc go two octaves below A=440 to A=110 and you've only got about 7hz to a semitone. If you want, say, three beats per second you're offsetting by about half a semitone, and I don't think that's going to sound nice.

OK maybe you wouldn't want three beats down there, but I think the principle would be something along those lines. After all, in general bass chords don't sound nice. To my ear tenor C, an octave below middle C is about the limit for chords, on a piano anyway.

Or am I wrong???
Tom

 

[KLR]

They'd wet tune one of the extra M reeds, not the L, and control it with a coupler I'm sure. "Wet tuned left hand chord" would describe this better. It's surprising that Hohner would use this in a high end model on the H reed.

 

[george garside]

wet tuned bass - have never heard of them, nor do I want to even though like full Scottish musette a la Shand morino.

For many types of music the bass are used to a greater or lesser extent to drive a rhythm and nobody would think about having a 'wet' tuned drum even if such a thing was possible.

For what its worth I dislike the term 'wet' tuned and don't know where it crept in from. It is more appropriate for a particularly worrying tone of flatulence

george

 

[JerryPH]

From a complete tuning novice's point of view, the terms of "wet" or "dry" tuning are very easy to understand, it may not be technically accurate or someone may have made it up somewhere, but IMHO there is no easier way to describe the tuning methodology of sticking to the A=440hz standard (dry) or deviating from it (wet)... at least as far as I know.

I don't see "hey, I see you tuned your accordion to flatulence standards" becoming popular... lol

 

[boxplayer4000]

On that note do you think this thread has run its course?

 

[debra]

When you shut off the highest reeds with that lever on the side the top octave of the MIII notes stop working. These reeds are thus used for both the standard bass and the MIII notes. When these reeds are enabled the MIII keyboard has a range of 58 notes (E to Cis). The lower octave always plays as L+M, the others can be L, L+M or just M. Because there is L+M 70 reeds are already needed for the 58 notes in L and M. A 5-reed standard bass requires 60 reeds. There may be more than the 70 reeds. I have not recently counted.

 

[JerryPH]

One day when I start all my documentation, I'll take pics and record all those kinds of fun facts, not just on the Hohner, but all the other ones as well.