From Ike Milligan@21:1/5 to All on Thu Oct 19 13:16:19 2017
Decent money is out there. For my part, rebuilt pre- WW II accordions
and music mostly from no later than the 60's are popular with my public.
Sometimes the bellows give out. The one I was playing most recently was
a 2/5 37-key 60 bass I had up on ebay for a couple of weeks. I had new
bellows made last year. Interestingly the old bellows were 38mm depth
and I was told the forms for that depth were no longer available. So
using 32mm fold depth. I took it off ebay because I thought no one was
likely to compensate me for the many many hours I used fixing it up plus hundreds for the new bellows.
I found that more pieces I play were in Ab than were in F#, so I
recently moved the Db down next to Ab. If I happen to be in F# and need
the C# I just play the counter bass C# note under the A. The basses on
this accordion go down lower than the G on the old Hohners all the way
down to F, but the treble, although not weak, is so high without the
bassoon reed that I often transpose down an octave from the sheet music.
The dim chord does double-duty as a 7th, so had to get used to playing
the dim chord one row over from where it would be on a 72 or larger bass.
Got to go. Some hastily-made defective vids of that accordion I played
are on my youtube channel "49beerbottles". Maybe post updates later and
even more vids when I get a chance. There are some older vids of a 36
bass I sold may 3-4 years ago.
One issue with very old piano accordions is poor keyboard design as to playability, where the black keys are shorter than they should be. This
60 bass though hasn't got those issues.