Do modern accordion makers still frequently tune to something other than A=440?

[Mr Mark]

Do modern accordion makers still frequently tune to something other than A=440?

A quick question. Maybe a not so quick answer.

If not, when did this fall out of favour.

If so, why .

Had to tune something a couple cents out recently and am debating whether to do that ever again. 1 cent maybe.

Genuinely curious!

 

[Ffingers]

Do modern accordion makers still frequently tune to something other than A=440?

A quick question. Maybe a not so quick answer.

If not, when did this fall out of favour.

If so, why .

Had to tune something a couple cents out recently and am debating whether to do that ever again. 1 cent maybe.

Genuinely curious!

Look up debra's posts; he has mentioned that several times.

 

[debra]

Do modern accordion makers still frequently tune to something other than A=440?

A quick question. Maybe a not so quick answer.

If not, when did this fall out of favour.

If so, why .

Had to tune something a couple cents out recently and am debating whether to do that ever again. 1 cent maybe.

Genuinely curious!

It is very sad to see that indeed several accordion makers, including Pigini and Victoria will tune accordions to A=442 unless asked to do otherwise. Others, for instance Bugari, will tune to the ISO standard of A-440 unless asked to do otherwise.
I do not know a single accordion maker or reseller/distributer who will ask a customer what frequency their new accordion should be tuned to. 99% or more of the customers are completely unaware that there could even be different tunings that are used. International standards do exist for a reason and people just expect things to be standardized. Alas many things are not standardized. The tuning frequency of new accordions is just one of many examples...
The question "when did this fall out of favour" (the tuning to A=440) is actually the wrong question. There used to be no standard at all and many different frequencies were used in the past. We have no solid evidence for instance what A was tuned to in Bach's time for instance...
With accordions tuning initially stayed mostly somewhere between 435 and 445. In the 60's it was common to find Hohner accordions tuned to A=440 and Italian accordions tuned to A=442 or 443 (sometimes even higher). But then at some point A=440 became a standard and was later promoted to the ISO standard. The "constant beep" on the test-image used bo TV stations in the early days of TV followed this standard as well.
However, some accordion makers who were already not tuning to 440 at the time continued to tune to something like 442, maybe so that their customers could continue to play together, whether they had old or new instruments?
Tuning to 440 has fallen out of favour first with other instruments. Symphonic orchestras now often play at A=442. When you tune string instruments higher they sound louder (until they break). Others have followed. It generally is not a big problem for players of instruments that are easily tuned to a different frequency (within limits of course). I have played together with an ensemble of recorder players who struggled to go high enough to reach 440. Their instruments just could not be tuned that high. And I have played with wind bands (woodwind and brass) who were not very happy that they had to tune down to 440 from their usual 442...
Generally though 440 is still a very good idea. In about a month the Dutch Symphonic Accordion Orchestra will play a concert together with the city organ player of Rotterdam (in the city hall). The organ there is tuned close to 440 so it sounds fine. (We also do a piece with grand piano, also tuned to 440.) Many large (pipe) organs are still tuned to 440, some even lower, so when you show up with accordions tuned 442 you're in trouble...
The sad reality is that different tuning frequencies are here to stay. All we can do is educate people that when ordering/buying an accordion you should always check what tuning frequency should be used, the ISO standard (440) or something else (nowadays almost invariably 442 then).

 

[tcabot]

When you tune string instruments higher they sound louder (until they break)

Well, 2-4hz ain't going to make any difference to volume. Guitar maker speaking here. Anyone asking their musicians to use a non-standard pitch to achieve more volume is, frankly speaking, delusional. Don't let them near an orchestra.
There is zero impact on volume or timbre between 440 and 442. One is in tune and adheres to the international standard, the other one is not in tune. Simples.

Tuning a semitone up may become noticeably louder, but not by much. Plus, most instruments being played in an orchestra will be of sufficient quality to sound as well as they can at standard pitch. The vicious circle of factories overbuilding instruments to avoid warranty claims, leading to higher tension strings being installed, leading to even more warranty claims and more overbuilt instruments is only really applicable to cheap factory jobbies.

Accordions not being tuned to A=440 is extremely annoying in my view, and I really don't know why manufacturers do this. Our ear can pick up tuning errors in excess of 4cents. An A=444 accordion is simply out of tune. There's no excuse. It's out of tune.

If you bought a guitar where the fretwork was +-4cents off, you'd return it to the maker and write a stiff review, telling everyone not to buy this faulty product. How the accordion industry gets away with this is beyond me.
Same seems to go for tuned percussion - marimbas, vibraphones, etc. A=44whatever.

There are a lot of standards, but these days there is this thing called "standard pitch" with A=440. It's called "standard" for a reason!!! And it's been around for decades (a century in the US of A). I understand HIP musicians tuning to A=415 "baroque" tuning in an attempt to adjust their sound to what's generally believed to be slightly more historically correct.
But tweaking A=440 to some micky-the-mouse 441, 442, 443, 444 is just out of tune.

Anyway, I've let my frustration out and I'm going back to re-tuning my 441 reeds to 440.

 

[debra]

...

Anyway, I've let my frustration out and I'm going back to re-tuning my 441 reeds to 440.

Re-tuning from 441 down to 440 isn't bad. At A4 1Hz is about 4 cents. When I get an accordion in for tuning that was originally 440Hz but has not been tuned in 20 years or more a lot of reeds are out by more than 1Hz... from 442 down to 440 is getting pretty bad for the reeds. I have a nice old Crucianelli (especially nice after I completely restored everything), but it is 442 and it is going to stay 442. I don't want to torture these nice old Bugari (tipo a mano) reeds by tuning everything down 2Hz.

 

[boxplayer4000]

Provided a reed frequency is lowered in the proper manner (no Dremels etc) it will suffer no harm.
I'm sure there are limits to this but I have given many standard reeds to repair people who's intention was to lower one reed by up to a semi-tone so that the reed could be used in a diatonic situation.
Over the past 3 or 4 decades I have seen many accordions where the basic tuning was well into the teens (+15 or 16) and found this most common in Italian instruments. Those instruments were NOT ones where massive alterations had been made by a 'repairman'. To many the inside of an accordion is like a crime scene; scratches, file marks, wax, reeds all tell stories.

 

[tcabot]

Yes, I'm doing an all-reeds-out job for the "new" box, and gently kissing the reeds with a fine diamond-coated file across the entire width of the reed seems to adjust the pitch quite easily by a few Hz up or down. I expect this would have been the way they would have adjusted them at the factory (by hand or by machine) anyway, if it was to be tuned to 440.
I imagine the damage will be a lot worse if using a narrow scratch tool or a dremel engraver.

 

[tcabot]

PS brass and woodwind instruments have switched from high pitch to low pitch in the middle of the 20th century.

Here's a Boosey & Hawkes advert from 1969 - perhaps we can send it to accordion manufacturers.

 

[Ventura]

for me there is really no legit excuse for the manufacturers, who
all use digital tuners nowadays, to continue to make it more difficult
for accordion to be accepted comfortably in the world of Music
by forcing the world to accept us at 442 and everyone can adjust to us or be damned..

and as i mentioned in another post, any of us who have worked with
a damn good Vocalist with perfect pitch knows what a mistake 442 is in reality

once upon a time when the Provino was the essential tuning device
for factory use, there could be some argument made that this was
the way we have done it for decades and the man who set up our
Provino died in WW2 anyhow so no adjustments are forthcoming

i liked when the tuning variation between Provino's helped to give
different factories slightly different personalities to their end product,
but i feel this was because of variables of the tuning rather than the pitch

Werkmeister, Pythagorean, Just, equal, meantone, and oops tuning
had more influence in the old days i feel, as there were many
fanatics involved in Accordion Making after all waaaay back then,
and standards took time to become standards

consider me the voice of unreason

 

[Mr Mark]

It is very sad to see that indeed several accordion makers, including Pigini and Victoria will tune accordions to A=442 unless asked to do otherwise. Others, for instance Bugari, will tune to the ISO standard of A-440 unless asked to do otherwise.
I do not know a single accordion maker or reseller/distributer who will ask a customer what frequency their new accordion should be tuned to. 99% or more of the customers are completely unaware that there could even be different tunings that are used. International standards do exist for a reason and people just expect things to be standardized. Alas many things are not standardized. The tuning frequency of new accordions is just one of many examples...
The question "when did this fall out of favour" (the tuning to A=440) is actually the wrong question. There used to be no standard at all and many different frequencies were used in the past. We have no solid evidence for instance what A was tuned to in Bach's time for instance...
With accordions tuning initially stayed mostly somewhere between 435 and 445. In the 60's it was common to find Hohner accordions tuned to A=440 and Italian accordions tuned to A=442 or 443 (sometimes even higher). But then at some point A=440 became a standard and was later promoted to the ISO standard. The "constant beep" on the test-image used bo TV stations in the early days of TV followed this standard as well.
However, some accordion makers who were already not tuning to 440 at the time continued to tune to something like 442, maybe so that their customers could continue to play together, whether they had old or new instruments?
Tuning to 440 has fallen out of favour first with other instruments. Symphonic orchestras now often play at A=442. When you tune string instruments higher they sound louder (until they break). Others have followed. It generally is not a big problem for players of instruments that are easily tuned to a different frequency (within limits of course). I have played together with an ensemble of recorder players who struggled to go high enough to reach 440. Their instruments just could not be tuned that high. And I have played with wind bands (woodwind and brass) who were not very happy that they had to tune down to 440 from their usual 442...
Generally though 440 is still a very good idea. In about a month the Dutch Symphonic Accordion Orchestra will play a concert together with the city organ player of Rotterdam (in the city hall). The organ there is tuned close to 440 so it sounds fine. (We also do a piece with grand piano, also tuned to 440.) Many large (pipe) organs are still tuned to 440, some even lower, so when you show up with accordions tuned 442 you're in trouble...
The sad reality is that different tuning frequencies are here to stay. All we can do is educate people that when ordering/buying an accordion you should always check what tuning frequency should be used, the ISO standard (440) or something else (nowadays almost invariably 442 then).

Great answer, thanks.

One of the challenges I have found is in refurbishing old instruments for people. As indicated, most folks have no idea about accordion tuning issues in this manner, and often when they are in bad enough shape to begin with, I have no way of knowing the original tuning. Thus once I am at the stage of retuning a freshly waxed and valved instrument, not all results are desirable - this is really problematic in the modern day and age where everybody has a tuner at 440, or as you have indicated, for those playing instruments where they are reliant on their heavily ingrained intonation.

Here is a very interesting couple of reads;

A440 (pitch standard) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Concert pitch - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Particularily the latter-some quotes from within; Pitch Inflation...The Stuttgart Conference of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians in 1834 recommended C264 (A440) as the standard pitch based on Scheibler's studies with his Tonometer....French government passed a law on February 16, 1859, which set the A above middle C at 435 Hz... Convention of 16 and 19 November 1885 regarding the establishment of a concert pitch" in the Treaty of Versailles...In 1939, an international conference recommended that the A above middle C be tuned to 440 Hz, now known as concert pitch.[20] As a technical standard this was taken up by the International Organization for Standardization in 1955 and reaffirmed by them in 1975 as ISO 16 ...

Lots going on there. But still, cmon accordion makers!

PS; My 1939 Tango IIB is stamped A440. Yay Hohner!

 

[debra]

Yes, I'm doing an all-reeds-out job for the "new" box, and gently kissing the reeds with a fine diamond-coated file across the entire width of the reed seems to adjust the pitch quite easily by a few Hz up or down. I expect this would have been the way they would have adjusted them at the factory (by hand or by machine) anyway, if it was to be tuned to 440.
I imagine the damage will be a lot worse if using a narrow scratch tool or a dremel engraver.

The filing across the entire width of the reed is indeed how fine adjustments are done at the factory (after initial sanding with a belt sander). It should also be what is done in pre-tuning in accordion factories. But there are factories that use (automated) Dremel-like devices for pre-tuning and some even for final tuning. You can find "butchers" in every trade, and accordion making is no different.
In accordion repair tuning down is most commonly done using a scratcher, and that's the main reason why you don't want to overdo it (like tuning down from 442 or even higher to 440). The gentle filing across the width of the reed is just not very feasible when the reeds are already on the reed block, with valves installed.

 

[boxplayer4000]

I agree: major changes need to be made to the inside reed before it is waxed in place.

 

[forró]

Well, 2-4hz ain't going to make any difference to volume. Guitar maker speaking here. Anyone asking their musicians to use a non-standard pitch to achieve more volume is, frankly speaking, delusional. Don't let them near an orchestra.
There is zero impact on volume or timbre between 440 and 442. One is in tune and adheres to the international standard, the other one is not in tune. Simples.

Tuning a semitone up may become noticeably louder, but not by much. Plus, most instruments being played in an orchestra will be of sufficient quality to sound as well as they can at standard pitch. The vicious circle of factories overbuilding instruments to avoid warranty claims, leading to higher tension strings being installed, leading to even more warranty claims and more overbuilt instruments is only really applicable to cheap factory jobbies.

Accordions not being tuned to A=440 is extremely annoying in my view, and I really don't know why manufacturers do this. Our ear can pick up tuning errors in excess of 4cents. An A=444 accordion is simply out of tune. There's no excuse. It's out of tune.

If you bought a guitar where the fretwork was +-4cents off, you'd return it to the maker and write a stiff review, telling everyone not to buy this faulty product. How the accordion industry gets away with this is beyond me.
Same seems to go for tuned percussion - marimbas, vibraphones, etc. A=44whatever.

There are a lot of standards, but these days there is this thing called "standard pitch" with A=440. It's called "standard" for a reason!!! And it's been around for decades (a century in the US of A). I understand HIP musicians tuning to A=415 "baroque" tuning in an attempt to adjust their sound to what's generally believed to be slightly more historically correct.
But tweaking A=440 to some micky-the-mouse 441, 442, 443, 444 is just out of tune.

Anyway, I've let my frustration out and I'm going back to re-tuning my 441 reeds to 440.

Not sure I agree with this.
I am not a guitar maker (or a maker of any instrument for that matter), but this sort of reasoning seems to imply that there is only one way to do something. When clearly the history surrounding many instruments, and music in general shows this not to be the case.

I have no problems following a common standard, it gives a good reference point that everyone can use - but that doesn't mean it's the only one.

The guitar is my main instrument, and amplifying the guitar is a lot easier than it can be for other instruments as I've noted from my own experience and observing some others, mainly violinists playing in some small-ish ensembles that still could use amplification.

Your pattern of thought is quite amusing. First you say everyone who doesn't meet your expectation is delusional, then you say you don't know why the manufacturers do it. Then immediately afterwards you say there's no excuse. If you don't know why they do it, how can you conclude there's no excuse? Then a few sentences later you acknowledge that they used something different in 'baroque' tuning - historically correct.

Just because one doesn't know why something is done the way it is done, does not invalidate that something.
Before attempting to advise others, maybe get your own thoughts to agree with themselves

 

[kimric]

Annoyingly the Chinese companies have started tuning A442 ,possible they think this is what it is supposed to be because that is what the Italians do. This means that the Bravo series from Hohner are now sharp (on top of the rough factory tuning).

 

[debra]

Annoyingly the Chinese companies have started tuning A442 ,possible they think this is what it is supposed to be because that is what the Italians do. This means that the Bravo series from Hohner are now sharp (on top of the rough factory tuning).

That is very sad news indeed. If a single accordion brand cannot even stick to its own default tuning frequency then there will come a point when everyone starting out with accordion will need to learn, even before they even think of buying one, that there are different tuning frequencies used and that they should always mention the standard tuning frequency they want, and make sure it is on the list of requirements so that they can claim warranty repair if the accordion is delivered with the wrong tuning...
It is not "the italians" who tune to 442. It is just *some* stubborn accordion companies that refuse to recognise that there is an ISO standard we should all be following. Some of these manufacturers have gone away (think of Crucianelli, Borsini and others) but some remain, including Pigini and Victoria.
Maybe in addition to the list of Chinese accordion manufacturers we should also start a list of accordion manufacturers who do not tune to the ISO standard by default.

 

[kimric]

A much shorter list would be the ones who do.

 

[debra]

A much shorter list would be the ones who do.

I really wouldn't know. I think a double list might be best. I play in a few groups, among which the Dutch Symphonic Accordion Orchestra (NSAO). There is a large variety of accordion brands spread over these accordions. In NSAO we have players with Bugari, Scandalli, Serenellini, Hohner, Dallapè... who all bought accordions without knowing about tuning. These are all 440. Then there are a few with Pigini and Victoria, all 442 and they really stand out like a sore thumb. In the other orchestra we have also seen Fantini and Kratt (made by Fantini), aso 440. So far I have only seen 442 in older Crucianelli accordions, in Pigini, Victoria, Borsini. So my list of 440 accordions is longer than that of 442. But of course the world has hundreds of accordion brands (and maybe even hundreds of accordion makers)...

 

[Scuromondo]

My 60 year old Paolo Soprani is tuned around 442/443 Hz, and my new one is 440.

 

[kimric]

I have probably tuned/serviced well over 2000 instruments in 30 years. The trend I have noticed was pre 1920's instruments are all over the place. San francisco made instruments could be as much as 75 cents sharp, 1930's instruments seem to have suddenly become A440 with some Hohners (and other German instruents) being about 10 cents flat as marked. By the 40's the italian made instruments had drifted to anywhere from 7-21 cents sharp, with the odd instrument being within 2-3 cents of A440. There is a big gap in imports from the 60's to the 80's with not much of a sample set. Italian instruments seem to have settled down to about 7cents sharp on average with about half being A440 and a couple being about 12 cents. These may be by customer request when built.
A thing that I run into on some instruments from the 40's-50's is a stretch tuning.
I also get the feeling sometimes that the left and right sides of instruments may not have been tuned by the same people at the factory since I will get instruments that will have the bass side flat or sharp of the keyboard.
Vince Cirelli might have shed some light on this but all the old SF factory people are gone now.

 

[Mr Mark]

I have probably tuned/serviced well over 2000 instruments in 30 years. The trend I have noticed was pre 1920's instruments are all over the place. San francisco made instruments could be as much as 75 cents sharp, 1930's instruments seem to have suddenly become A440 with some Hohners (and other German instruents) being about 10 cents flat as marked. By the 40's the italian made instruments had drifted to anywhere from 7-21 cents sharp, with the odd instrument being within 2-3 cents of A440. There is a big gap in imports from the 60's to the 80's with not much of a sample set. Italian instruments seem to have settled down to about 7cents sharp on average with about half being A440 and a couple being about 12 cents. These may be by customer request when built.
A thing that I run into on some instruments from the 40's-50's is a stretch tuning.
I also get the feeling sometimes that the left and right sides of instruments may not have been tuned by the same people at the factory since I will get instruments that will have the bass side flat or sharp of the keyboard.
Vince Cirelli might have shed some light on this but all the old SF factory people are gone now.

I sometimes wonder that the business side of things and all the complexities of the accordion get in the way of practicality, a tunnel vision problem in the accordion world of manufacturing. Also a bit of an elitist thing going on...fair enough.

2000+ accordions serviced is pretty cool, I've made it to about 50 and so far haven't really run into the same thing twice, except on my own that I have specifically sought out. Always a good and interesting learning experience! I have also wondered about differing tuners left and right though!

Stretch tuning seems like a heck of an annoying experiment - kind of weird to think tuning was that wild not that very long ago. Having said all this I do realize societally we tend to take standardization of a lot of things as having been a long term norm, when in reality most things probably aren't more than a generation or two long at best.