• Infrastructure supporting accordion preservation in America?

    From Ike Milligan@21:1/5 to All on Tue Feb 5 12:25:27 2019
    Are there any people doing good repair work? I have seen used accordions
    where very bad repairs were done, but I have heard of many people who
    claim to do accordion repairs.
    People have called me complaining of bad work or have shown it to me.
    Most recently a guy had a really clean double casotto accordion he had
    taken to a music store and the guy told him to buy a cheap used
    accordion at a yard sale to replace reeds that had fallen out of the
    carriers. When I looked under the bellows frame on the bass side the
    missing reeds were there.
    A lady phoned me about a well-known accordion store where she took her accordion to get a treble key fixed, and the owner called in a teenage
    boy who played with it and didn't fix it, and they charged her for it.
    It was apparently just a bent up key.

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  • From ciao_accordion@21:1/5 to All on Wed Feb 6 06:56:37 2019
    hey Ike

    it is a shame when music store "professionals" pretend to be
    knowledgeable rather than simply admitting they don't know
    (but will help you find out if they can)

    deceptive practices are still widely used in
    our niche (accordions) particularly

    but the customers want to believe in the myths,
    so they are part of the problem too...

    it has been at least... what... 45 years now since
    the Scandalli name actually physically meant something
    that was actually connected to a factory, or an owner,
    who had any stake in supporting their well earned reputation

    instead, the brand name and it's famous models have been raped
    to within an inch of their lives by a multitude of "owners"
    or companies that secured name rights for a time

    but the general public prefers the myth.. being unable to actually
    tell the difference when they play a real Scandalli,
    vs something that looks like a scandalli

    there is a "real" scandalli just came up on the NewYork Craigslist
    (Long Island) for $1000

    it is an incredible bargain (for a professional or
    someone with discerning tastes)

    but it is old.. ugly.. heavy.. and it has no "cachet"
    compared to the new ones marketed around the corner
    all shiny and looking like Super Sixes

    really, it is sad

    ciao

    Ventura

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  • From Ike Milligan@21:1/5 to All on Wed Feb 6 12:03:34 2019
    On 2/6/2019 9:56 AM, ciao_accordion wrote:
    hey Ike

    it is a shame when music store "professionals" pretend to be
    knowledgeable rather than simply admitting they don't know
    (but will help you find out if they can)

    deceptive practices are still widely used in
    our niche (accordions) particularly

    but the customers want to believe in the myths,
    so they are part of the problem too...

    it has been at least... what... 45 years now since
    the Scandalli name actually physically meant something
    that was actually connected to a factory, or an owner,
    who had any stake in supporting their well earned reputation

    instead, the brand name and it's famous models have been raped
    to within an inch of their lives by a multitude of "owners"
    or companies that secured name rights for a time

    but the general public prefers the myth.. being unable to actually
    tell the difference when they play a real Scandalli,
    vs something that looks like a scandalli

    there is a "real" scandalli just came up on the NewYork Craigslist
    (Long Island) for $1000

    it is an incredible bargain (for a professional or
    someone with discerning tastes)

    but it is old.. ugly.. heavy.. and it has no "cachet"
    compared to the new ones marketed around the corner
    all shiny and looking like Super Sixes

    really, it is sad

    ciao

    Ventura

    Ciao Phil: Old accordions are nearly always in need of 40 hours of work
    to be usable. I am playing an accordion marked "Scandalli Camerano" as
    you may know and last night I made plenty on the street. I did have a
    typical pre-war Scandalloi I had bellows made for, as the one i am using
    now has. The one i am using now is unique, as you know from having seen
    and commented on it. The machine stamped metal mechanisms of the
    keyboards would wear out do to metal-on=metal issues. That big one I had
    tuned very carefully full French Musette using a strobe tuner and a spreadsheet. bobby Lyle bought it and was happy with the sound but he
    became disillusioned when people in the cafe were commenting on the
    noisy keyboard. i eventually found one to use for keyboard parts, but by
    then he had given it to his recently deceased relative, and i can't get
    oit back now by trading for it.. It had 2 palm switches on the treble
    for LMMM LM MMM and M. Scandalli made many of those back in the day and
    the reeds were excellent.
    later on the modern designs were heabier, and of course culminated in
    the Super VI copy of the Settimio Artist VI. After that it was slowly
    downhill for the brand and as you say it was bought out, but of course
    any institution of mortal beings will change and the 2nd law of
    thermodynamics will erode the putative entity of the same name.

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  • From ciao_accordion@21:1/5 to All on Thu Feb 7 18:43:18 2019
    oh Ike i recall your serious tuning experiments and perfection
    through the years...
    was telling a young fella about you just last Saturday
    at the acc club meeting... he is a huge afficionado of old
    tunings and old reed instruments (including accordions)
    and has studied and thought on it much.. including the
    old Pipe Organs and Harpsichords and Bach and eye yi yi
    barely could hold up my end of the conversation !

    he brought a small portable reed organ he had repaired
    to the meeting and played it for us.. was like something
    a traveling Preacher must have had in the old West times.

    yes, a company like Zildjan (cymbals) is rare to have
    held itself true to its history and family growing into
    it for generations all seeking improvement and to add to
    the reputation.. Martin Guitars is another..

    ciao

    Ventura

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  • From Ike Milligan@21:1/5 to All on Fri Feb 8 14:15:48 2019
    On 2/7/2019 9:43 PM, ciao_accordion wrote:
    oh Ike i recall your serious tuning experiments and perfection
    through the years...
    was telling a young fella about you just last Saturday
    at the acc club meeting... he is a huge afficionado of old
    tunings and old reed instruments (including accordions)
    and has studied and thought on it much.. including the
    old Pipe Organs and Harpsichords and Bach and eye yi yi
    barely could hold up my end of the conversation !

    he brought a small portable reed organ he had repaired
    to the meeting and played it for us.. was like something
    a traveling Preacher must have had in the old West times.

    yes, a company like Zildjan (cymbals) is rare to have
    held itself true to its history and family growing into
    it for generations all seeking improvement and to add to
    the reputation.. Martin Guitars is another..

    ciao

    Ventura

    Hi. Phil.
    Last night the weather was bearable and I got a fair amount of applause
    playing the 37-key 2/5 accordion with the new bellows I had tuned in Well-Tempered "Joung" system that was an option on my strobe emulator.
    Money comes in too.
    I don't know what "joung" means on the options but it seems to be
    similar or the same as Thomas young Temperament Number II that was
    described in Jorgensen's book of historical temperaments published by U.
    of Michigan. I chose it because it is not so far off Equal Temperament
    as to avoid creating rough sounding intervals in remote keys.
    My software has a couple dozen choices pre-set including just
    intonation, which might be good for some instruments.
    The names of the well-Tempered systems in my software are unfamiliar. I
    tuned another accordion in something mentioning "Bach" and was using it
    some of the time to actually play Bach and other things, but it needs
    new bellows and has a badly designed keyboard from the 1920's.
    Those are the only 2 accordions i have applied Well Tempered systems to,
    but I find it sounds better than factory tuning, which generally isn't
    even accurately tuned or else the accordions I have examined are
    drifting out due to old wax, which may still hold the reeds in, but
    seems to cause the reeds to go sharp from some air getting around the
    plates.

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