I'm sitting here thinking... where to start, what to write about what happened over the last 2 weeks. Obviously there is too much here to say in a single post about a 2 week vacation that covered 2300 kilometers unless I spend the next 6 hours typing away, so I will try to chunk things down a little. I think that what I would like to start off with is my experiences at Hohner in Trossingen.
First and foremost, the people there are amazing. Welcoming, kind and very open. My time that I spent with the master Gola builder/assembler Sigmund was very eye opening. While they get to build an accordion with one of the greatest names in accordion history, the main feeling was that of being humble and straight. My time with Ralf limited but sincere. My German was a bit more limited, but along with my mother's help (her German is better than mine, I am at the conversational level, not really able to talk accordion shop... lol), we got along just fine. My time with Petra, the wonderful lady who gave me the private VIP tour was great.
Grab a seat guys-n-gals, here is where the eye-opening stuff comes.
1. Hohner is no longer the accordion manufacturing beast it was in the 1950-s to 2000's.
2. In Trossingen at the Hohner factory, they focus on harmonicas, the one that pays the cheques for everyone there, they are *still* the predominant maker of mouth harmonicas in the world... and no matter how many accordions they offer...
only 3 models are made in Trossingen, 2 models are made in Castelfidardo and the rest are made in China.
Which accordions are made in Trossingen?
The Hohner XS, the Hohner Corona and of course the Gola.
Which models are made in Italy?
The NOVA and MORINO lines... all of them. No mention of what company makes them for Hohner.
Which models are made in China?
All the rest of the accordions that they offer.
Some tidbits that were shared
NO OTHER MODELS of the Gola are made other than the 414 model. No converters, no Free Bass. I was not told if this was temporary or permanent. The feeling was that it was permanent, but that was just the feeling.
Customization of the Golas used to be unlimited to whatever you as the buyer could dream up, colours, options, midi, micing, registration order, number of keys... ANYTHING... that is no longer available.
You can get anything you want... as long as what you order is the base Gola 414. They *may* consider tuning requests, special tremolo requests, but you need to be 100% sure (as in either speak to him in person or over the phone and be VERY CLEAR about what you want), and there are no "take-backs". It still is complete payment up front and you wait anywhere from 18-24 months for your Gola.
Parts for Golas are scarce... so scarce that they resort to 3-D printing some internal parts so that they could move forward. There are just two people that do the final tune on Golas, Sigmund and (heaven forgive me, I forgot his name), another gent that is now retired, but still goes to the home of Manfred Leuchter to tune his Gola for him personally. They have a super nice lady (that I was introduced to and watched for a few minutes), that currently does all tuning for the Coronas, she is an apprentice (even after 3 years of doing nothing but tuning), I foresee her being the next Gola tuner once the current people are no longer available.
In the shop where the Gola is made, they had some amazing designs on the wall, including a Gola Bayan that was something that the world has never seen... it truly could take top of the heap in the accordion world, if they ever decided to offer it... which it is not available. While I was there, I was seeing two Gola 414's being worked on.
All orders for all NOVA and Morino lines are on hold, no one has been making any NOVAs or MORINOs for the last year or so and at this time there are no orders. Again, whether that is temporary or permanent was not clarified. I was given the impression that demand was very low.
There were 3 kinds of reeds made for the Gola during it's entire history:
- The ones that Giovanni Gola hand picked himself. These were easy to identify, they had NO markings on them.
- The later ones were Bugari reeds, these had "Bugari" stamped on them.
- The ones that they use now from Voci Armoniche
They are all good, but the special trait of the Gola was to get the notes to all start and stop AT THE SAME TIME with the same amount of air was the final test. According to Sigmund, the unmarked ones were fairly easy to do with... the Bugari reeds took more work and the Voci Armoniche are a constant battle to get right.
A little digging came up with a little gem of information from Hohner for me... first, my Gola is not a 1980 model, it is a 1979 model. The reeds in my accordion were from the very last batch that Giovanni Gola personally hand picked. They did not want to put it in writing for me on my Hohner Certificate, but did assure me that this was fact. They offered this info WITHOUT my asking. So my accordion uses neither Bugari or Voci Armoniche reeds... the rest is not so important but its nice to know that Giovanni's hands held the reeds in my accordion.
Concerning the source of the "legendary best Gola reeds", I asked if they were reeds from Dallapé, since it was documented that his mother worked there and he himself was picked up from Dallapé to come to Hohner... there was a small smile and then a statement something along the lines of "well, that's now long in the past and we never saved that information". Take from it what you will.
I did receive the 4 certificates for my 4 Hohner accordions and it has some nice info on it, but of course none has all the info that I would wish was on it... though a lot of it is interesting, but that's perhaps best left for my next post.
So... a lot of "wow" moments and a few disappointments.
I wish I could say that Hohner is still the power house manufacturer that they were in the 40's to 80's, though sadly they are not... but Hohner has a rich and extremely important place in accordion history... even if today they are a shadow of their former selves.
I'll post some pictures later.
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