Any garmoshka players here?

[tcabot]

By the way, tcabot - how DO you know all this? Have you lived in Russia?

Made in USSR and lived in Russia until late 90s, with a few short stints in Ukraine, where part of the family came from.

Also, I am quite a bit of a squeezebox nut.

Re your chaika, it's probably the best Soviet factory-built hromka model out of the box, so unless you are unlucky to get a "Friday afternoon" job, it should be a keeper. I find them very pretty as well - chaika-1 was my nomination for the "accordion beauty contest" thread on this forum.
There are other models that are very hot-roddable (i.e. you need to put hundreds of pounds of work to get them to a very good instrument in the end), but a lot of the old soviet squeezeboxes are completely unplayable and unserviceable.

So very well done with your box selection!

 

[Hellohelenhere]

Made in USSR and lived in Russia until late 90s, with a few short stints in Ukraine, where part of the family came from.

Also, I am quite a bit of a squeezebox nut.

Re your chaika, it's probably the best Soviet factory-built hromka model out of the box, so unless you are unlucky to get a "Friday afternoon" job, it should be a keeper. I find them very pretty as well - chaika-1 was my nomination for the "accordion beauty contest" thread on this forum.
There are other models that are very hot-roddable (i.e. you need to put hundreds of pounds of work to get them to a very good instrument in the end), but a lot of the old soviet squeezeboxes are completely unplayable and unserviceable.

So very well done with your box selection!

Excellent! This is very encouraging to hear