Can Stradella bass be reworked to add quint system?

[Johnny]

I went searching through the excellent quint melody bass discussions, but I had no luck - so I'll just get to it:

Can a standard Stradella bass be reworked (after construction) to add a quint melody bass system? I imagine this is an expensive proposition - but just curious if anybody has done this. And would it require a trip back to my accordion's creator in Castelfidardo?

 

[JIM D.]

An accordion with a Quint convetor bass has a bass machine with different rods & pins to operate the convertor.
An accordion with convertor also has different reed block positions. The solution is replace the bass machine.
I'll elaborate on this subject if you feel need.

 

[Walker]

To be honest, I am not really one for altering the originality of any accordion, even for such a noble quest as adding a quint converter.

However, I just saw a shop selling a new Scandalli quint converter. The Scandalli BJP442. It's utterly beautiful...

NEW Black Scandalli Conservatorio BJP 442 Quint Converter Piano Accordion LMMH 41 120

Type: Piano Accordion Converter Reeds: 4/4 LMMH (A442hz +0 cents) Treble: 41 Keys, 18.5(47cm) Key to Key, 13+3C Registers Bass: 120 Bass Buttons, 6 Registers Weight: 27.5lbs / 12.5kg Features: Quint Converter, Dry Concert Tuning, Palm/Chin Switches

www.libertybellows.com

I better start increasing the contributions to my accordion fund envelope. I am up to about £26 now. Getting there...

 

[debra]

An accordion with a Quint convetor bass has a bass machine with different rods & pins to operate the convertor.
An accordion with convertor also has different reed block positions. The solution is replace the bass machine.
I'll elaborate on this subject if you feel need.

You are (of course as always) very right: such a conversion is not feasible. One of the strange things with a quint convertor accordion is that (some of the) reed blocks have two holes going into the resonance chamber for a single note. Register sliders open and close these holes: one used by the chord basses and one used by the melody bass. So the reed blocks are not just in a different position, they are also a different construction. (A side effect is also that they are tricky to tune because reeds play slightly differently depending on which of the two holes the air goes through. There are a few older chromatic convertor accordions that also have at least one of the reed blocks with such double holes (I worked on an old Excelsior that has this).
The solution to do this conversion is to replace the whole bass side of the accordion, but accordion manufacturers are generally unwilling to make just half an accordion.

 

[Johnny]

Thank you all for the helpful information! The accordion in question is a Victoria Poeta V (5 reeds blocks on treble side and 5 on bass side, I believe). I only asked because 1) I'm interested in learning the quint system eventually and 2) it's my one and only accordion and I'm very fond of it. For those reasons, I wondered if a bass conversion was feasible -- but apparently it isn't! Of course, I'm still happy to carry on playing and learning with Stradella for the time being.

 

[TonyChicago]

I always thought it would be great if manufacturers added the option to purchase a matching bass unit for free bass. Just pull out the 6 or so pins and swap it out.

 

[debra]

I always thought it would be great if manufacturers added the option to purchase a matching bass unit for free bass. Just pull out the 6 or so pins and swap it out.

My experience has been that although "from a distance" accordions of the same model look identical the reality is that there are small differences. You cannot always swap accordion halves between accordions because the position of the holes for the bellow pins are not in exactly the same place (close but not exact) and even how tight the fit of a half-accordion on the bellows frame is not the same.
I am also always careful to keep the bellow pins in the same order because you cannot even swap them from one hole to another without making some too loose and other ones too tight.
I once also tried to swap out the grille from one to the other and found it wouldn't fit...

 

[gberto]

Thank you all for the helpful information! The accordion in question is a Victoria Poeta V (5 reeds blocks on treble side and 5 on bass side, I believe). I only asked because 1) I'm interested in learning the quint system eventually and 2) it's my one and only accordion and I'm very fond of it. For those reasons, I wondered if a bass conversion was feasible -- but apparently it isn't! Of course, I'm still happy to carry on playing and learning with Stradella for the time being.

Hallo,

I am italian. I had a Victoria stradella bass and three or four years ago I asked Victoria to modify the instrument, because I wanted to learn free bass like you. First telephone call: "yes, sure we can. But now we are busy, call next week and we'll say you everything". After this, nothing. Calls, emails, no more answer from them.

A friend explained me that the accordion makers (what's the right name?) don't like to make big changes in their instrument, perhaps for the fear to obtain an accordion that "sounds" or "works" bad.

I suspect there is also a commercial reason, to force you to buy a new one. In fact, now I am an happy owner of a Bugari and my old Victoria is in Austria.

Excuse me for my poor english.

 

[debra]

Hallo,

I am italian. I had a Victoria stradella bass and three or four years ago I asked Victoria to modify the instrument, because I wanted to learn free bass like you. First telephone call: "yes, sure we can. But now we are busy, call next week and we'll say you everything". After this, nothing. Calls, emails, no more answer from them.

A friend explained me that the accordion makers (what's the right name?) don't like to make big changes in their instrument, perhaps for the fear to obtain an accordion that "sounds" or "works" bad.

I suspect there is also a commercial reason, to force you to buy a new one. In fact, now I am an happy owner of a Bugari and my old Victoria is in Austria.

Excuse me for my poor english.

Probably the first person you talked to was not sufficiently technical to know what is feasible and what is not. Even Victoria cannot really modify the stradella bass into a quint convertor. They can make you a new bass side, but that's like making half an accordion, and not having your old half they cannot even line up the bellow pin holes and make the case a tight fit onto the bellows frame... A friend of mine once asked Bugari to replace the bass side which was mirrored B system by a bass side with Russian B system and she also got "no" for an answer. Accordion makers are good at one thing: making accordions. They do not like to make just part of an accordion.
There is indeed also a commercial reason, but it is less strong. When they make you a half accordion you are buying half an accordion and reusing the other half, so nobody gets to buy your "old" used accordion. When they sell you a whole new accordion they know your old one is going to be sold to someone else who is not buying a new accordion... so they gain less by not selling you a half accordion.

 

[gberto]

Probably the first person you talked to was not sufficiently technical to know what is feasible and what is not. Even Victoria cannot really modify the stradella bass into a quint convertor. They can make you a new bass side, but that's like making half an accordion, and not having your old half they cannot even line up the bellow pin holes and make the case a tight fit onto the bellows frame... A friend of mine once asked Bugari to replace the bass side which was mirrored B system by a bass side with Russian B system and she also got "no" for an answer. Accordion makers are good at one thing: making accordions. They do not like to make just part of an accordion.
There is indeed also a commercial reason, but it is less strong. When they make you a half accordion you are buying half an accordion and reusing the other half, so nobody gets to buy your "old" used accordion. When they sell you a whole new accordion they know your old one is going to be sold to someone else who is not buying a new accordion... so they gain less by not selling you a half accordion.

Hallo and thank for your answer,

perhaps you are right, I remember he was one of the "chiefs" of Victoria and he could have been on the commercial side instead of the "working" one. You are also right in the commercial aspect, I realize that it is better to sell half an accordion than a whole one.

They didn't answer me though I wrote and called them many times, and this is a very unkind behavior. The accordion was really good but just for this I preferred to change productor.

Hallo,

 

[Ben-jammin]

I imagine accordion builders flexibility to do some of those custom “jobs” is very dependent on their back log as well as how their their build process is executed. Custom work can require custom routing and significantly more communication through the shop floor that makes it much less efficient to execute than their more standard products.

 

[debra]

I imagine accordion builders flexibility to do some of those custom “jobs” is very dependent on their back log as well as how their their build process is executed. Custom work can require custom routing and significantly more communication through the shop floor that makes it much less efficient to execute than their more standard products.

Certainly true in general, and more so for larger factories than smaller ones. (Victoria is on the small side compared to for instance Bugari and Pigini who cannot be bothered with such special requests.) But in this case, a "conversion" from Stradella to Quint Convertor is just impossible. It requires a whole new bass compartment and they need at least the original bellows in order to fit it which implies that Johnny would be without accordion for quite a while.

 

[dak]

Certainly true in general, and more so for larger factories than smaller ones. (Victoria is on the small side compared to for instance Bugari and Pigini who cannot be bothered with such special requests.)

Hohner certainly wasn't a small company around the 1950s and I've seen multiple Youtube videos with weird Hohner Morinos (typically CBAs) that most definitely never were stock options.