FAQs

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There are many accordions around that are built for different categories of players (from very beginners to most advanced). As you know, the biggest difference in craftsmanship belongs to the number one important role is the sound, such as quality and type of reeds used in each instrument. This is very much a personal choice and can be influenced by the type and style of music you wish to play. to help guide you, here are a few points you may wish to consider. What are your musical aspirations? For example, do you wish to play traditional music, or is your goal to play classical repertoire? A chromatic button accordion has a larger range of notes than a piano accordion of comparable size and significantly more fingering options. This is an important difference and truly relevant if you wish to play classical repertoire where the extra range will be essential. Good chromatic accordions are more expensive and less common than piano accordions. This will affect the future resale potential should you wish to upgrade your accordion.

One-piece solid strips are metal plates, made to the size of the corresponding resonator and having a group of paired holes (openings) for the reeds. In most cases, the thickness of such strips is the same along the entire length. The initial excitability of the reeds is also noticeable since their vibrational energy from one section is transmitted through the strip material to the tongues of another section and when playing, by the time the air chamber opens, they are preliminarily set into oscillatory motion. It creates a unique “powerful” and “rich” sound.

The main advantage of solid planks over “pieces” is usually a more massive sound, since thee is more ability to give its energy to a massive plank than to a single piece. In addition, solid planks used in both artisan and high-end factory accordions are made of brass or light-weight duralumin to resist unnecessary energy transfer from the voice to the plank. Another feature of metal solid strips is that when one reed sounds, the neighboring reeds also come to their initial excitement, which improves their "response" when it is their turn to sound.

Since these reeds come in small pieces individually assigned for each note, the thing is that production requires the unification of components. Traditional accordion reeds that come in pieces are more convenient in mass production: there is no need to reject several voices if a mistake is made when gluing one of them or if one opening is damaged, as would have to be done in the case of a solid single plate. It is enough to replace a single piece with a couple of voices. The same is true when repairing an accordion. In fact, there is a significant increase in labor productivity to make in larger quantities which simplifies the technology of manufacturing, making them somewhat cheaper to make.

Many talented music performers already know the uncontested fact: the more frequently an accordion is played, the better it sounds because the vibration from reeds loosens up the wood and leads to greater responsiveness. Also, the reeds allow the steel "to stretch" which leads to a quicker response. In addition, after moving constantly along with reeds, the reed valves ‘memorize’ their position where exactly they want to react quickly, for opening or closing. But it takes many years to come.

The complexity of manufacturing and subsequent processing of the plates leads to a very expensive production price. It comes to a significant difference in sound between machine made reeds (machine stamped/ rivetted) and hand-made reeds. The contrast in sounding could be huge. 

Many accordion dealers will say “none”, or may ignore to answer this question or change the topic of conversation. But they all know the truth which is explained above. However, you may also consider to get an instrument with voices of Italian reed makers who built reeds of highest quality such as Binci, Sabatini, Artigiana, Magnatera, Salpa and may be some others which sound also great.

Unlike cars, many used accordions of exceptional quality do not depreciate quickly after purchase, but after a period of time become even more valuable again which could be an investment for a musician while enjoying playing a beautiful piece of art.

Overall workmanship, quality of voices, structural innovations in mechanics, etc. are normally reflected in the cost of the build and, of course, affects the sales price including used accordions. It is almost impossible to make a superb quality accordion for a lesser price.

Besides two rows of bass notes, the other two or four left-hand rows represent fixed chords that are commonly seen in standard bass.

The free-bass mode, on which the left-hand has no chords at all, its buttons (usually in three or four rows) represent single pitches chromatically graduated in a range up to six octaves.

The standard-bass accordion is the most widely played and it has traditionally been associated with ethnic, folk, and pop music. The free-bass accordion has been developed mainly as a concert-music instrument, its repertoire consisting for the most part of transcriptions of the classics and original works by contemporary composers.

A pattern of the chromatic keyboard. There are three commonly used layouts for the chromatic accordion:  B-, C- and F- system. The C note is in the third row for a B-System. Although the B-System originally was most widely used in the East Europe and Russia, it becomes more popular in other parts of the world like Serbia, China and South America.. Well, the differences are not all that much qualitatively. Probably you can learn playing much quicker with B-system which might be is sort of important for you or your child.  Again, B-system becomes more common, since it is way more ergonomic for fingering that has been proven for many decades. Usually, used chromatic accordions C-system cost less money and there is a reason why.

Musical instruments that contain wood have proven to the ears of many players tend to sound better as they age. 

1) The theory that best explains this is - that as the wood in the body ages, it becomes lighter and more responsive, and more resonant. In accordions, the vibration of the reeds alone produces very little sound. However, the vibration from the reed passes the sound wave to the reed block ("mini soundboard"). The resonance from reed blocks is transferred to the whole wooden body and stimulates to produce an audible sound we hear. Aged wood with much higher resonance obtained throughout the years is one of the secrets why older accordions sound better.   

2) Back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and even 80s of last century, quality accordion reeds in highly priced instruments were made exclusively by hand, and usually a fewer masters were involved in such a long creative process by taking all the responsibility for his work. Definitely, hand-crafted reeds do sound better compared to what we see nowadays.

As a conclusion, the wood and reeds available decades ago had a finer quality with significant restrictive selection and whole entire process of making an accordion was not based on mass production and cost savings what is common today.