I've posted a couple times that I would be going to the accordion museum this year for my birthday, and though I am posting about a little late here is that day went for me:
The day started early by us getting up early, having a small breakfast, packing the car and starting the trip. The weather was PERFECT, sunny and warm and crossing the border was 2 minute affair. The scenery is always beautiful in that part of the country and the Adirondack mountains are ever majestic. Once entering the New England area, we start to see the now familiar structures... they really do have their own unique flavor that just doesn't exist anywhere else. Being the middle if summer, we notice another trait of the area... these people are fanatical about their lawns and keep them perfectly manicured, with not one straggler visible.
Arriving at the museum I am again struck by the beauty of the building. A few years earlier when I first visited the museum, it was located as an extension of Paul's home and during that visit, we all went for lunch and passed by the building where he is located now. I turned to Paul and mentioned that this would make an AMAZING location for the museum. At the time the building was old, faded and pretty much dilapidated, covered in graffiti and looked like a hundred year old unused husk of it's former self and some parts looked like it had lived through a fire. Little did I know that my words would ring true a few years later!
I always love just walking in and taking in the atmosphere that over 200 years of accordion history. Not only is the visual impact of looking at hundreds of accordions an experience, the smell is just so pleasantly unique too.
Now, while on my last visit in May, I picked up the Hlavacek diatonic accordion. It's mostly for decorative purposes, but it does work and it does have the signature deep Helicon bass sound. I had often said that it would be amazing to have a piano accordion with Helicon bass. Prophetic thoughts!
Doing my usual looking around, Paul showed me a very unique accordion that he had recently got in, and it was a very well ornamented Petosa Antico accordion. The thing that made this special was that it had something called "Tuba Bass"... wow, never heard of that before, and though it was not truly Helicon bass level deep, it was much deeper than any other accordion that I've ever seen or heard, a PERFECT accordion for European folk music, thanks to its LMMM strong musette tuning and powerful bass. At the time I had a thought to make a short video of it and "advertise" it for Paul on the accordion forum. After processing it, I noticed that I had by accident made the video right underneath the blasting air of the AC outlet and the noise was unacceptable for advertising purposes and so I dropped the idea... but as it turns out, it was perfectly acceptable as a documenting of a memory of the first time that I played the accordion! My mother was graciously the videographer at the time. I placed that little memento on my website.
Well... at the start of the day, as we entered North Canaan, my mom popped the surprise on me that my sister and her had conspired together and made a present of this accordion to me for my birthday! Wow!!
Now, though normally, I am not a big fan of Petosa accordions (though I do like Zero Sette and the irony is that Petosa accordions are *made* by Zero Sette... haha), there were 2 things that caught my attention, this is the most decorated accordion I have seen (but not in the gaudy ways I have seen others done), with massive amounts of adornments all over 3 of the 4 sides of the accordion and the unique floral designs on the bellows, and of course the Tuba Bass which really sets it apart from all other accordions.
I've had some short time with the accordion and now want to share my first impressions. it's a strongly tuned musette on the right hand (great for German/Czech/French folk music) and on the left hand it has a set of reeds that are 1 octave deeper than what one would normally hear on a standard 41/120 and there is a switch to turn them on and off. Very unique on this unit compared to other Tuba Bass or Helikon bass instruments, it also has a choice of 4 registers on the left hand side on top of a switch that activates the Tuba Bass.
Mine has a set of Harmonik microphones out of Brazil. These are supposed to be like the 2nd or 3rd best sounding mics on the market. I've already made a bit of an audio/video test, and they do sound very good (they have a small switch to select between mono and "stereo" which basically separates the left and right hands, which is my personal preference), but they are not quite as sweet sounding as the Limex mics, but I've not played with the tone controls, all I did was set the tone controls to the center and adjust the volumes to a nice levels, so I am not fully aware as to how much the tone knobs change the sound, but I do know that they're very clean and have amazing left/right separation but in my opinion lack a little "brilliance" at that position. The build quality of the electronics/boards, though, is sincerely top notch. The system is the AC 5001-Plus model, a 5 mic right hand, 1 mic left hand setup that just really works well with this accordion.
The keyboard is very shallow and very fast, but has a small amount of mechanical clatter if you pound the keys a bit harder. The bass buttons feel different from all my other accordions in that the movement is shallower and a touch stiffer. Looks like this accordion was designed for people that love to play fast but have a gentle touch.
Doing some fast searches I found one place online that mentioned the "new retail" price for these accordions to be in the $10,900US range from Petosa (ouchie!), but even if you found one, it would not be new, as Petosa has said that this model has been discontinued, and honestly, the Helikon or Tuba bass bass sound on a 41/120 were a very niche product so not many were made.
Here is a small video of the accordion:
The day started early by us getting up early, having a small breakfast, packing the car and starting the trip. The weather was PERFECT, sunny and warm and crossing the border was 2 minute affair. The scenery is always beautiful in that part of the country and the Adirondack mountains are ever majestic. Once entering the New England area, we start to see the now familiar structures... they really do have their own unique flavor that just doesn't exist anywhere else. Being the middle if summer, we notice another trait of the area... these people are fanatical about their lawns and keep them perfectly manicured, with not one straggler visible.
Arriving at the museum I am again struck by the beauty of the building. A few years earlier when I first visited the museum, it was located as an extension of Paul's home and during that visit, we all went for lunch and passed by the building where he is located now. I turned to Paul and mentioned that this would make an AMAZING location for the museum. At the time the building was old, faded and pretty much dilapidated, covered in graffiti and looked like a hundred year old unused husk of it's former self and some parts looked like it had lived through a fire. Little did I know that my words would ring true a few years later!
I always love just walking in and taking in the atmosphere that over 200 years of accordion history. Not only is the visual impact of looking at hundreds of accordions an experience, the smell is just so pleasantly unique too.
Now, while on my last visit in May, I picked up the Hlavacek diatonic accordion. It's mostly for decorative purposes, but it does work and it does have the signature deep Helicon bass sound. I had often said that it would be amazing to have a piano accordion with Helicon bass. Prophetic thoughts!
Doing my usual looking around, Paul showed me a very unique accordion that he had recently got in, and it was a very well ornamented Petosa Antico accordion. The thing that made this special was that it had something called "Tuba Bass"... wow, never heard of that before, and though it was not truly Helicon bass level deep, it was much deeper than any other accordion that I've ever seen or heard, a PERFECT accordion for European folk music, thanks to its LMMM strong musette tuning and powerful bass. At the time I had a thought to make a short video of it and "advertise" it for Paul on the accordion forum. After processing it, I noticed that I had by accident made the video right underneath the blasting air of the AC outlet and the noise was unacceptable for advertising purposes and so I dropped the idea... but as it turns out, it was perfectly acceptable as a documenting of a memory of the first time that I played the accordion! My mother was graciously the videographer at the time. I placed that little memento on my website.
Well... at the start of the day, as we entered North Canaan, my mom popped the surprise on me that my sister and her had conspired together and made a present of this accordion to me for my birthday! Wow!!
Now, though normally, I am not a big fan of Petosa accordions (though I do like Zero Sette and the irony is that Petosa accordions are *made* by Zero Sette... haha), there were 2 things that caught my attention, this is the most decorated accordion I have seen (but not in the gaudy ways I have seen others done), with massive amounts of adornments all over 3 of the 4 sides of the accordion and the unique floral designs on the bellows, and of course the Tuba Bass which really sets it apart from all other accordions.
I've had some short time with the accordion and now want to share my first impressions. it's a strongly tuned musette on the right hand (great for German/Czech/French folk music) and on the left hand it has a set of reeds that are 1 octave deeper than what one would normally hear on a standard 41/120 and there is a switch to turn them on and off. Very unique on this unit compared to other Tuba Bass or Helikon bass instruments, it also has a choice of 4 registers on the left hand side on top of a switch that activates the Tuba Bass.
Mine has a set of Harmonik microphones out of Brazil. These are supposed to be like the 2nd or 3rd best sounding mics on the market. I've already made a bit of an audio/video test, and they do sound very good (they have a small switch to select between mono and "stereo" which basically separates the left and right hands, which is my personal preference), but they are not quite as sweet sounding as the Limex mics, but I've not played with the tone controls, all I did was set the tone controls to the center and adjust the volumes to a nice levels, so I am not fully aware as to how much the tone knobs change the sound, but I do know that they're very clean and have amazing left/right separation but in my opinion lack a little "brilliance" at that position. The build quality of the electronics/boards, though, is sincerely top notch. The system is the AC 5001-Plus model, a 5 mic right hand, 1 mic left hand setup that just really works well with this accordion.
The keyboard is very shallow and very fast, but has a small amount of mechanical clatter if you pound the keys a bit harder. The bass buttons feel different from all my other accordions in that the movement is shallower and a touch stiffer. Looks like this accordion was designed for people that love to play fast but have a gentle touch.
Doing some fast searches I found one place online that mentioned the "new retail" price for these accordions to be in the $10,900US range from Petosa (ouchie!), but even if you found one, it would not be new, as Petosa has said that this model has been discontinued, and honestly, the Helikon or Tuba bass bass sound on a 41/120 were a very niche product so not many were made.
Here is a small video of the accordion:
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