I do sometimes get asked a similar question: which brand is best, which next, etc...
First of all, when you are looking for a good new accordion the exact model is extremely important. You cannot really compare the experience of driving a Volkswagen Lupo with a Passat, or Skoda Fabia with a Superb, or a Toyota Aygo with a Prius... The same holds for accordions: you can buy a full size accordion from the same brand for about 4.000 euro and one for 25.000 euro. Trust me, the quality and playing experience will be very different.
The best experience I have had (playing, repairing and tuning) is generally with Bugari. The Bugari company is not the most innovative, but that results in proven designs that simply work flawlessly. The Bugari factory also does Zero Sette, Giulietti (if that brand is still produced, I thought not) and Petosa. Producing large numbers of well-designed and solid accordions really pays off in terms of obtaining a good reputation for making consistently the same good quality instruments.
Pigini makes good accordions and not so good, under several different brand names, including Excelsior (used to be a very good independent company until up to about 2.000), Dise, Gibelle, Titano and maybe others. I have not found the workmanship to be quite as good as Bugari but it will certainly be acceptable for most. Of course the very expensive accordions they make (especially the Nova) will be outstanding, but that's not what most people will be buying.
I have worked on a few recent Scandalli accordions. They are very well made, and nowadays also very "standard", very similar in design to Bugari. Reliable and with good sound. (I have not worked on their smaller, lower end models, so I cannot comment on those.) Production has moved over the decades and was combined with other brands. I'm not sure what brands come out of the same factory as Scandalli today.
Beltuna is a very innovative company, turning out expensive excellent instruments, but with the drawback that comes with "cutting edge"... they might try something that in the end turns out not to be such a great idea. The future will tell... But accordions like their Leader IV and V are absolutely outstanding! They recently introduced electromechanics to replace the complex bass mechanism with solenoids. An interesting innovation that may (or may not) in the end revolutionize accordion construction.
Victoria used to be very busy as they made Titano, but now they just make Victoria. They are very committed and hard working, but they are a smaller outfit, not churning out series of identical well-made and consistent accordions. Being smaller has advantages (like being flexible in accommodating special requests) and disadvantages (like having less predictable lead times). Victoria runs the Accordion Craft Academy and what I learned there was very valuable!
Many great accordion makers from the past no longer exist: Hohner (except for a few Gola's made in a small workshop in Germany, so I heard), Excelsior (gobbled up by Pigini), Borsini (closed down), Fantini (not so great, but also closed down), and some names may have been bought by others so if you see a new Paolo Soprani or Crucianelli for instance, someone here may know who makes it, but they ceased to be real independent factories decades ago...
Weltmeister... I don't know how good their new accordions are. The someone less new (but still post-iron-curtain time) ones I have seen were absolute garbage. But I have not seen the insides of a new Supita for instance, so I cannot comment.
Hohner used to be a famous accordion factory (in Trossingen, Germany). From everything I have seen coming out of Hohner I deduced that there "secret motto" has always been: produce as cheaply as possible and sell for as much as possible. There are great Hohner accordions out there, but all older. The Morino (N and S) made by Excelsior was good quality, but kept below the Gola for economic reasons, using for instance only tipo-a mano reeds, reserving a mano for the Gola. The lower end models were not bad, the Verdi series was actually pretty good. The "metalbau" (Atlantic and others) was a typical example of cheap production, called special, and then sold for a lot of money... New lower-end models are now thrown together in a Chinese factory using Chinese components. Higher end models are made in Italy by Pigini and/or other companies (it has varied over the past two decades)... They are no longer an accordion maker (except maybe for the odd Gola coming out of Trossingen). I never recommend Hohner: why would you pay extra for a name when you can buy the same quality for less, with the name of the real manufacturer on it (or another brand name used by that manufacturer)...
There are many other brands to consider that are made in not the largest factories, but made with dedication. Think of Serenellini, Mengascini, and many more "...ini" companies. Both the accordions made by the big names and the small names are made using mostly standard components (thousands of them in each accordion). What you are buying that is "special" when choosing a certain brand is 1) the maker of the case and the reed blocks (thus, essentially all the woodworking) and 2) the skill, workmanship and dedication that goes into building the accordion. Choose wisely, and consider the "sound" you are after. It is amazing how different accordions sound despite being made out of the same standard components!
) of the beholder!"
