another just sayin'

[Ventura]

based on the fact that a LOT of you like musette and more than one variation
plus
a lot of you have exhibited a reasonable amount of amateur repair skill/ambition
so
just sayin'
one of the easiest ways to get a nice. lightweight, inexpensive Musette Stroller
is to keep your eyes open for 2 (two) of the same model decently built Student
LMM boxes from the 60's or 70's

i picked up 2 simple, nice ladies sized Giulietti's for my project, you might
find a pair of those cream colored Bells, or Acme's, you get the idea, you have
seen these around many times

so now you have a couple hundred invested, but lots of duplicate parts
in case you mess up, and extra reeds

that is the ace, the extra reeds

because it is a piece of cake to take the L (bassoon) reed blocks out of the
best accordion of the two, and simply remove and replace those L reeds with one of the
sets of M reeds from the second box
(use the lowest pitched set, because it is way easier to make reeds go up in pitch
when you tune it in to the meusette you want)

voila, an MMM stroller comes to life

now to do a really good job (Debra might give us some clues) i think it might help
to make the reed chambers smaller (i only made mine shorter by waxing on
pieces of Popsickle sticks to cover for the shorter M sized reeds)
but maybe some filler would be good too

if you like the result, again a piece of cake to practice taking the keys out of the
spare parts box to get the feel for doing it, then rebuilding the key action on the new
Stroller... which means cutting new leather rectangles from some suede smooth
Italian Sofa leather sample and refacing the pallets, wiping and a touch of lube
on the key springs (i use a barely oiled q-tip and just touch the coil then flex it)
and if you like a quieter key action maybe a few more pieces of leather where the
keybed is just bare wood, and a new felt strip for the tips to rest on

some may disagree, but i put fine graphite on my fingers and rub the pivot rod
before re-inserting it.. not enough to leave any powder on it, just enough to
give it a pencil shine

the really nice thing is that even if you only get the tuning close, a 3 reed
meusette has such rich waveforms a LOT of blemishes get hidden in the overall sound

so now for less than $500 and a week or two of workshop, you have a sweet little
easy squeezing box with a variety of Meusette at your fingertips, and it looks
nice too with that little Mermaid emblem or the big G or the whatever art deco Grillwork
from back in the day when even the cheap boxes were made pretty damn good !

just sayin'

 

[Tom]

.....alternatively you could add on an extra set of external reeds, with lifters screwed to the keyboard, and tune it French musette. Just saying....

 

[Ffingers]

.....alternatively you could add on an extra set of external reeds, with lifters screwed to the keyboard, and tune it French musette. Just saying....

I believe that several States in the US have banned that kind of thing

 

[debra]

The nice thing about such a project is, as you say: "the really nice thing is that even if you only get the tuning close, a 3 reed
meusette has such rich waveforms a LOT of blemishes get hidden in the overall sound".
MMM is the most forgiving register on all accordions that have it. But tuning does become a more precise job when the accordion also needs to have well-tuned M and MM sounds in addition to that MMM. For decades Hohner made accordions with MMM (as part of an LMMM or LMMMH configuration) and only gave you the option of M or MMM (not MM) so that the tuning could be sloppier (and thus cheaper) and you wouldn't notice.

 

[losthobos]

Cooperfisa sold a model with a spare reed block to switch between LM and MM