Hohner Morino Artiste with free bass converter?

[Morne]

Looks like Hohner was able to make converter free bass decades ago.




The player mentioned in comments on some of his videos that it was made in the 1950s and that its a 5 row converter with 2 rows of stradella. Most likely a custom built instrument, although it makes we wonder why Hohner did not make more converters at the time. Or even if it was made for them, why didnt Hohner continue with it? Were the converter mechanisms that finicky at the time? Or maybe they stuck with M III since that is what their players were used to?

 

[Morne]

I haven't watched all his videos, but from the ones I've seen he's always playing free bass. So it's possible that it's not actually a converter, but rather just a different layout that makes free bass playing easier while still providing Stradella bass for some runs or to have bass buttons that play the actual reed combinations marked on the registers.

 

[JerryPH]

A couple of opposing points... to have free bass, you need to have those reeds in there. Not surprisingly, I have never seen or heard of a Hohner Morino Artiste with converter, much less have I ever heard of a 5-row converter system from any manufacturer and just read about it recently (though who knows what Hohner made in the 50's, they were not great at documenting their history. The Hohner Morino-Artiste X N from the early 70's in fact *did* come in a 185 bass Free Bass version!). In the times that this accordion was made, according to my limited research, Hohner was pushing the 3 extra row chromatic system and didn't make a converter system until the late 70's early 80's.

A bit of Free Bass history:
- The first documented accordion with 3 extra rows arranged in a chromatic manner was made in Vienna in 1901

- By 1910 Hohner was making and selling accordions with 3 extra rows of buttons arranged in a chromatic manner. At the time, they called it (amongst other names) "Baritone Bass" and "Melodiebass" in their documents.

- It was in 1911 that a Belgian made a switch that converted the last 4 rows of a Stradella bass system in to a chromatic order with a 4 octave range. Welcome the converter system in to creation!

 

[debra]

Looks like Hohner was able to make converter free bass decades ago.




The player mentioned in comments on some of his videos that it was made in the 1950s and that its a 5 row converter with 2 rows of stradella. Most likely a custom built instrument, although it makes we wonder why Hohner did not make more converters at the time. Or even if it was made for them, why didnt Hohner continue with it? Were the converter mechanisms that finicky at the time? Or maybe they stuck with M III since that is what their players were used to?

No convertor switch to be seen here.
I have never seen an Artiste with convertor but then, I certainly have not seen all variations that exist. I have an Artiste X S with MIII, so no convertor there but 3 rows of baritone melody bass.