Curved KeyBoard Hohner Factory Delivery Certificate

[noelekal]

Felt almost holiday festive to receive a Hohner factory Delivery Certificate on the curved keyboard model Hohner I acquired back in September. https://www.accordionists.info/threads/oldie-curved-keyboard-hohner-come-to-roost.11293/



Ralf Tritschler was very helpful to advise me in email exchanges. I had initially contacted Hohner's USA office which kindly referred me on to Ralf and he was the one who initiated email contact with me.


Seems I have a Organola De Luxe Model No. 9555 which was shipped to New York on September 4th, 1931. I haven't peeked inside the instrument to this point so don't know if it's a 4/5 reed set or a 4/4. It is described as a No. 9555 /41/120/4.

Using a table found on the internet https://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/exchange.html it would appear to have converted to a cost of $160 US, a tidy sum for the depression year of 1931.


It's a grand old accordion and great fun to play even though I do not play it well. It's amazing how the mechanics of accordion build technology advanced after World War II. Playing this thing is a bit like driving an antique car without power steering and power brakes, no wipers, no heater or air conditioner, and no electric starter.

In playing it I find myself limited to some extent: mostly by the amount of travel required to depress the piano keys, the narrowness of the black keys, slightly wider white keys than those to which I am accustomed, the slide-y bar shift, the more compact 120 bass, and the copious amount of air needed by the reeds. Attempts at a glissando is revealed to be a severe error in judgement as the key travel and the key edges combine to chomp fingers most enthusiastically!

The accordion is tight, as tight as any that I own, but requires a lot of air for sound, hence much "sawing" on the bellows to play when compared to the others on hand here. Since the bellows don't leak when pressure is applied without either venting or playing, I don't know what is going on with the reeds. It just requires more air to give them voice. Perhaps merely a characteristic of the reeds used back in the day.

Part of the playing issue is me I'm sure. I seem to require more practice than I once did to burnish or even retain a measure of what skills I ever had and I haven't devoted the time to this accordion to really familiarize myself with it. I don't intend to give it a lot of playing pressure, but for less complicated pieces it holds a lot of charm.

 

[Dingo40]

Felt almost holiday festive to receive a Hohner factory Delivery Certificate on the curved keyboard model Hohner I acquired back in September.

Thanks for sharing your experience with this instrument: most interesting !

 

[JerryPH]

Aha, there it is!

Part of the playing issue is me I'm sure. I seem to require more practice than I once did to burnish or even retain a measure of what skills I ever had and I haven't devoted the time to this accordion to really familiarize myself with it. I don't intend to give it a lot of playing pressure, but for less complicated pieces it holds a lot of charm.

Quite the beauty you have there, one with lots of character!

Playing does get more challenging as the years pile on, I've noticed the mental rallentando a bit myself, but I'm not giving in... if I can get 10 minutes in there somewhere, I'll take it. They say "use it or lose it" and it is very true!

I have a few on my list that I need to send for certificates on, but I'll wait until after the Christmas rush to place the order.

 

[boxplayer4000]

Quite the beauty you have there, one with lots of character!

I'll second that.

The accordion is tight, as tight as any that I own, but requires a lot of air for sound,

To my mind there are two types of air leakage; one is the kind that is evident when no keys or buttons are being pressed and the other that comes into play when they are pressed. noelekal's quote indicates need of overhaul; not a great surprise after 90 odd years and a testimony to the quality in the first place. I confess to having a soft spot for such beauties and they are harmless fun to overhaul and play around with as long as you are prepared to accept that it will be difficult to make any financial profit.

 

[dak]

It's a grand old accordion and great fun to play even though I do not play it well. It's amazing how the mechanics of accordion build technology advanced after World War II. Playing this thing is a bit like driving an antique car without power steering and power brakes, no wipers, no heater or air conditioner, and no electric starter.

I think it's not as much the technology that advanced rather than the standards. I'm almost willing to bet that a 1925 Morino will play nicer than a 1925 Hohner (it was just in 1928 that Hohner made Morino an offer he could not refuse, rebooting his career in Germany instead of Switzerland where he had been running an artisan accordion business). Technology advancements after WWII were the Elektronium that came out in 1952; and Dr Dorner (an in-law of the Hohners) innovated with things like aluminum frames (Atlantic, Imperator) and Hohner's own reed plate productions. Quite successful at their time. But much of that innovation went the way of the dodo.

Mechanics have become better, but accordion production otherwise is really traditional and people working in the 1920s in the accordion industry would be quite qualified working on most current-day instruments. Some part production has become entirely automatised, but much of the assembly and fine work is quite similar to what it had been.