Do new accordions improve with playing?

[Inflammo]

I'm not sure where I heard it, but I think I recall someone saying that a new accordion will only really begin to sing after it has been played for a few months....is this true?

 

[george garside]

YES!
george

 

[JIM D.]

Yes, and the volume increases.

 

[Corsaire]

I've just bought a little Weltmeister and the instructions (!) say to play gently for at least a month to let it "settle". I was told years ago that an accordion should never be forced, whatever the age.

I've just seen that this topic has been duplicated ...

 

[george garside]

The only reason for 'forcing' an accordion (?by sqeezing harder) is to increase the volume. If you want to play louder than a reasonable but not hard bellows pressure provides you need amplification!

george

 

[Corsaire]

The only reason for forcing an accordion (?by sqeezing harder) is to increase the volume. If you want to play louder than a reasonable but not hard bellows pressure provides you need amplification!
george

Exactly George ! If I want more volume, I use a microphone !

 

[debra]

Im not sure where I heard it, but I think I recall someone saying that a new accordion will only really begin to sing after it has been played for a few months....is this true?

Yes and no...
Some things may need to settle a bit, like pallets and leathers, but that goes rather quickly. I would rate the influence on the sound to be negligible. Manufacturing or material defects may show during the first weeks or months (like a hairline crack in a reed may cause the reed to break). I have yet to witness a truly noticeable difference in sound in an accordion between brand new and played for a few months. And I have had several brand new accordions. Maybe they were not the type where sound improves over time (mainly Bugari Artist Cassotto). The sound was always already very nice from the start.

If you see how an accordion is made and especially how the reeds are made there is no way that playing the accordion loudly right off the bat is going to hurt anything unless it was essentially already broken during manufacturing. For instance, a reed that is not perfectly centered might shift a bit during use to better fit in the hole in the reed plate, but it should have been perfectly centered from the start. Also, if it gets stuck for instance because it is essentially too long for its hole then that too was a manufacturing defect. If a leather doesnt open right away until the accordion has been played for some time that too is a defect. There really should be no reason to be gentle with a brand new accordion, and in fact when dealers or factory workers demonstrate a new accordion they will not be gentle either.

So mostly I rank the issue of slowly working in an accordion as a myth. People get accustomed to the sound of their instrument and at least if its a good accordion they start liking it more and more and thus *think* that the sound has changed and in fact improved over time. I doubt whether that is objectively the case.

 

[StargazerTony]

The think the thing that improves the most with playing, is the player

 

[george garside]

that may well be true.

george

 

[jozz]

I agree a new instrument will grow on you

also when it comes to metal on metal, like with an engine, there has to be a some sort of settling period

 

[george garside]

''running in'' a new box is probably more important on the cheaper mass produced with cheaper machine made reeds boxes than on the top range boxes which should be set up to perfection before leaving the factory. Also the bellows can be stiff and will become more flexible after some use


george

 

[Eddy Yates]

A new piano, not an accordion, really sounds better after about 3 YEARS of playing. This is largely due to the soundboard resonating and flexing, and all of the component parts, hammers, etc. settling in and being adjusted by a technician. A lot of accordion manufacturers make a point of saying their instruments are made of the “finest wood.” Unless this is is just a false bragging point, and an accordion would sound just as good made of graphite, then I don’t see why a new accordion wouldn’t sound better after it has resonated with hours and hours of music.
However, I’ve never owned a new accordion, so I can’t say from experience.

 

[debra]

A new piano, not an accordion, really sounds better after about 3 YEARS of playing. This is largely due to the soundboard resonating and flexing, and all of the component parts, hammers, etc. settling in and being adjusted by a technician. A lot of accordion manufacturers make a point of saying their instruments are made of the “finest wood.” Unless this is is just a false bragging point, and an accordion would sound just as good made of graphite, then I don’t see why a new accordion wouldn’t sound better after it has resonated with hours and hours of music.
However, I’ve never owned a new accordion, so I can’t say from experience.

It is an interesting statement. To verify it one would need to make a recording with the new accordion and then record the exact same piece under exactly the same circumstances again after three years. Because nobody can really remember what the accordion sounded exactly after three years. And you cannot really compare a new accordion with one that has been played for three years as the two accordions would also have sounded differently if they were made and played at the same time: each individual instrument is slightly different.

Good accordions are not just made of the finest wood (whatever that implies...) but they are made of wood that has been left to dry and settle completely for several years. The only type of settling that I have seen after years of playing is warped reed blocks that no longer fit flush and need to be straightened again (by sanding the bottom), or cracks in the body of the accordion (without it having been dropped). Also, there are different qualities of wood being used: not so excellent wood on instruments that get covered with celluloid and some supposedly better and certainly better cut and finished wood for the so called pure wood instruments that have no celluloid outer skin. One of the greatest, most valuable assets any accordion factory has is its stock of wood that must lay around for years before it can be used to build an accordion body or a reed block out of. And in a reed block alone several different types of wood are used, for the bottom, the separator between the chambers front and back and the separators between adjacent notes. All these different woods wood not form a long-term bonded unit if the wood was too freshly cut.

 

[george garside]

presume most Chinese boxes, which are the only ones many can afford do not have the luxury of ''finest wood'' . ( and that presumably includes Chinese built hohners which are quite popular.


george

 

[donn]

Piano isn't a good analogy, because it operates on very different acoustical principles.

A piano string can't produce much sound at all, on its own. If you took one of those strings and stretched it out to the appropriate tension between a couple of spikes in the sidewalk, you could hammer on it however you want and no one could hear it 4 feet away. The same string stretched out on the soundboard can fill a concert hall. => The soundboard is an integral part of tone generation, just like in a guitar or a violin.

An accordion reed can however produce the normal accordion tone, all by itself, as long as you can deliver the activating force in the form of an air stream through it. There's no compelling reason to suppose that the material the reed is mounted on plays any acoustic role at all.

That isn't to say that the break-in period isn't real, only that it wouldn't be so much about wood or other such materials. Metal sure is affected by being "worked", so it's plausible that the reeds are so affected. But probably not a whole lot - otherwise you'd start to hear big differences between the notes you use more often, and the notes you use less often.

 

[Tom]

I have never noticed a difference in my new accordions. That is not to say it doesn't exist, but I have not noticed it, and I listen very closely, as we all do. However, with my violins I can tell you that if I do not play them for several months, the tone is very noticeably different, and it can take an hour or so to get the tone back.

 

[JerryPH]

The think the thing that improves the most with playing, is the player

Strange, that doesnt work for me... lol

 

[Eddy Yates]

“An accordion reed can however produce the normal accordion tone, all by itself, as long as you can deliver the activating force in the form of an air stream through it. There's no compelling reason to suppose that the material the reed is mounted on plays any acoustic role at all.“
Still learning. So, if you take the metal reed (which is comparable to a string on a piano)out, and separate it from the block, and somehow hold it while forcing a stream of air through it, it’ll resonate as loudly as when it was in the Block?

 

[debra]

...
An accordion reed can however produce the normal accordion tone, all by itself, as long as you can deliver the activating force in the form of an air stream through it. Theres no compelling reason to suppose that the material the reed is mounted on plays any acoustic role at all.
...

The most compelling reason to suppose that the material the reed is mounted on plays any acoustic role is that different (models/brands) of accordions using the same type of reeds (made by the same manufacturer) can sound quite differently. And on an accordion where the L and M reeds are placed on the same reed block (but one octave apart) the same note (i.e. a note played one octave higher on L than the note on M) sounds differently on the L reed than it does on the M reed. What is different is the size and shape of the resonance chamber of these reeds: The M reed has a relatively larger chamber than the same reed as a L reed, because the reed block has a size to fit the L reed and is at that location oversized for the M reed on the opposite side.

 

[donn]

And on an accordion where the L and M reeds are placed on the same reed block (but one octave apart) the same note (i.e. a note played one octave higher on L than the note on M) sounds differently on the L reed than it does on the M reed. What is different is the size and shape of the resonance chamber of these reeds: The M reed has a relatively larger chamber than the same reed as a L reed, because the reed block has a size to fit the L reed and is at that location oversized for the M reed on the opposite side.

Interesting - my L reed does sound different than the M for the same note, but I supposed it was because the L reed was in fact different, because it's the kind of reed that also works well an octave lower.  At any rate, it doesn't sound like you're claiming any acoustic property for the material itself.  It could be acrylic or something and the chamber size effect would be the same - and the chamber size doesn't change after being played for as long as you want, I suppose.

Still learning. So, if you take the metal reed (which is comparable to a string on a piano)out, and separate it from the block, and somehow hold it while forcing a stream of air through it, it’ll resonate as loudly as when it was in the Block?

Well, that "somehow hold it" covers a lot of ground.  You'd need to effectively duplicate the reed block at that point, because it forms the input chamber to the reed - and I don't doubt the shape of that chamber is likely important, to get the right air flow.  But my point is, the sound is generated directly by the reed, vibrating in the reed plate.  It isn't vibrating anything like a soundboard, or accordions would be built much differently.  (Where strings, on the other hand, must have that soundboard as an integral part of the sound generation:  the string alone is ineffectual at moving air, rather it moves the soundboard.)

So, yes - any kind of apparatus that manages to get the air to flow through the reed plate the right way, will produce just as loud of a reed sound, whether it's the reed block or a channel you glued together out of scrap plastic.  I'm asserting that from a theoretical perspective, anyway.