Have I missed something?
Ventura I agree with everything you say.............but,I think having a pizza delivered occasionally is ok, even if you do have legs
An associate of mine makes money “door dashing.” He reports that many of the “deliverees” use the service due to the desire not to drive on a late (or not so late) evening. Yes, dear Ventura, alcohol is a factor here, making it safer on the roads for the rest of us. ….just sayin!
The big difference is that they’re "made in China". A lot of people just throw stuff away as soon as they hear that. I get it — what’s good or bad really depends on how you feel about it. It’s all pretty subjective. What one person loves, another might hate. But if we could drop those biases, we might see things differently.
There's a great aid for this issue, regarding accordions: it's called "audio only". We have a classical music radio station (without announcements, but with an on-line playlist). When (not often though) something with accordion comes along it takes me just a few seconds to guess whether the player has a Bugari or Pigini (and virtually nobody who appears on that radio station plays anything other than these two). The playlist will say who's playing and then it's easy to find out what accordion they play. So far my hit rate is 100%. I'm not claiming I can distinguish between many more accordions, but high-end Bugari and Pigini each have a clearly distinct sound.
Housemate of mine had an intern who refused any Cola variant other than Coca Cola. She was given the blind testing treatment but had a 100% hit rate without half trying. Sometimes you have to accept that some people can discriminate a lot more than others, and then they still need to be bothered by the difference before you need to make accommodations.
Seems a very interesting, but I really doubt, anyone want to blind test the accordion sound? I can upload some accordion 'video“ but hide video, so only the sound, so you can only listen to it and tell where it comes from. We can try it.
Great suggestion, zdq!
Well... in general it won't work because there are many rather similarly sounding accordions. My "experiment" is just distinguishing the two most popular instruments (high end Bugari and Pigini) and that works, but if the Bugari were replaced by a high end Scandalli it might not work for instance. (I might mistake the Scandalli for a Bugari, not for a Pigini.)
It's kind of stupid because a "Stradivarius" is just an instrument built to high standards in a manufacture overseen by a particular master. But there is no magic fairy dust making an absolute difference to other instruments, and the various instruments sound different and indeed sell for different prices. Now if the participants would have been asked to identify a particular Stradivarius, or at least if the instrument they were asked to identify was known to be among the best built by Stradivarius for tonal reasons (there are some that are famous for being encrusted with inlays to a degree that makes you wonder how they can sound at all, let alone well). But recognizing an unspecific Stradivarius by sound alone played from behind a curtain is like asking an art specialist to make an expertise about the creator of a painting by looking at a photograph, or recognizing a star cook by the smell of his customers' farts.Great suggestion, zdq!
This reminds me of a double blind experiment where participants in an auditorium were asked to identify the Stradivarius among a selection of various violins being played live, behind a curtain onstage.
Interestingly, as I remember it, no one got it right!
Ok, you added another factor to here, the player's familiarity. Let's try to let someone play with an accordion that he is familiar with, and then tell the difference between the different accordion sounds? Or we can make it simpler for him to listen to a few clips blindly and tell me which accordions sound "better" or "worse"? Can you do that?
The sounds that I can clearly distinguish are Bugari versus Pigini, or rather, Pigini versus many others that sound somewhat alike (Bugari, Scandalli, Serenellini, etc.) There are other sounds that are quite unique too but it requires testing to distinguish them. The old Hohner Gola, Scandalli Super VI and Bell that were developed in collaboration have a very nice M in cassotto sound. The Morino comes somewhat close to that (and an early Morino N series accordion may sound just as good as a modern Gola). In a mix of sounds you don't easily notice the sound differences that are localized. Victoria also has a rather unique sound in their vintage design instrument (but less so with there conservatory convertor models). I can also recognize by ear the difference between a button accordion with 2+2 setup and a button accordion with a 3+3 setup (the numbers meaning number of reed blocks inside and outside of cassotto, and I can blindly tell the difference between a 3+3 one with B system versus C system, but that requires playing a chromatic scale slowly, on the single M in cassotto register.
Whether sound is "better" or "worse" is mainly a matter of taste and what you find important in the sound of an accordion. Some people do not like accordions with cassotto at all, and some others reject the sound of non-cassotto accordions almost immediately. Some people like accordions where in an MH register the H is less present and some people prefer the H to be more clearly heard in the mix. Some people prefer a very strong cassotto effect, creating what I would call a "dark" tone, and some prefer a lesser cassotto (like for instance in the Morino M series) because then the MM register sounds more balanced. Everything comes down to preference. Some people love the very sharp tone of a Hohner Atlantic IV N and others find it painful to the ears. Some people love the sound of a very wet MMM like often found on Accordiola accordions and others get a headache quickly after listening to that sound...
