Inherited my grandfather's Iorio & Sons accordion. Would like to learn more about it.

[Scuromondo]

If it is a 4/5 accordion and Romanogli are quoting tuning every reed in it, I’d say $1200 is a fair price. However if, as others here have suggested, you only need tuning on the reeds that are far out of tune, then you might be able to request a spot-tuning just for those particular reeds, which should be somewhat less than $1200. Of course if even a third of the reeds need to be turned, or if the cost of spot-tuning is much more than half, I’d probably choose to have the tuning done in its entirety

 

[dak]

Now, I am no pro, but just for checking, I don't inherently think using an electronic tuner is a bad thing... and not that it is important but I doubt 1% of us or less could detect a 2-5 cent difference. For educational purposes, NOT to really tune with, I'd not deter someone from trying.

I really, really, really disagree. A cent of difference between an M and H reed, and you get beatings which are easy to hear for unskilled listeners. If a reed is up 2 cents and its tremolo reed down 2 cents, and the next note the reed is down two cents and the tremolo up 2 cents, scales will sound so uneven that it hurts.

Using an electronic tuner for tuning tends to be based on the belief that you can tune every reed independent of other reeds, but that only holds when you are essentially totally correct, and that is essentially impossible. A proper tuning scheme will distribute the tuning errors to where you cannot hear them easily. If you are unsure while laying the tuning basis (one octave that then is the reference for everything else) whether the beatings in your tempered fifth are from the fifth being smaller than pure (as it should be) or larger, checking with an electronic tuner before messing up your base octave is, of course, prudent. But other than that, the result is better if you tune according to established tuning schemes that, by the way, have been employed by piano and particularly organ tuners for centuries.

 

[Tom]

I really, really, really disagree. A cent of difference between an M and H reed, and you get beatings which are easy to hear for unskilled listeners. If a reed is up 2 cents and its tremolo reed down 2 cents, and the next note the reed is down two cents and the tremolo up 2 cents, scales will sound so uneven that it hurts.

Using an electronic tuner for tuning tends to be based on the belief that you can tune every reed independent of other reeds, but that only holds when you are essentially totally correct, and that is essentially impossible. A proper tuning scheme will distribute the tuning errors to where you cannot hear them easily. If you are unsure while laying the tuning basis (one octave that then is the reference for everything else) whether the beatings in your tempered fifth are from the fifth being smaller than pure (as it should be) or larger, checking with an electronic tuner before messing up your base octave is, of course, prudent. But other than that, the result is better if you tune according to established tuning schemes that, by the way, have been employed by piano and particularly organ tuners for centuries.

I think the good tuners use the electronic tuner *only* as a reference aid, as you mention. This was certainly true when I watched Jerry S. tune accordion reeds. Use electronic as a guide, but tune with your ears. So you’re both right! Just sayin….

 

[JerryPH]

I really, really, really disagree. A cent of difference between an M and H reed, and you get beatings which are easy to hear for unskilled listeners. If a reed is up 2 cents and its tremolo reed down 2 cents, and the next note the reed is down two cents and the tremolo up 2 cents, scales will sound so uneven that it hurts.

David, take a second and re-read my post... on a single reed, if someone is playing with a digital tuner just to see where their tune is at and the tune of several reeds is off by 1 cent, I am very sure they won't be able to tell that... they are not tuners, they are merely gathering info, perhaps to just know their accordion or maybe find out whether their instrument is off so much that they need to send it to a professional.

No one on this board (even Paul D.) can just by ear tell me that they can tell if a reed is off by 1 cent... which was my point. That is 1/100th of a single tone, and that is a TINY variation.

Now, if you want to count beats and they are not mathematically perfect, you *might* be able to say that the sound of a high pitched note feels off... but which one, is one piccollo reed high or is the base reed flat? Remember, we are talking a 1 cent difference

 

[dak]

David, take a second and re-read my post... on a single reed, if someone is playing with a digital tuner just to see where their tune is at and the tune of several reeds is off by 1 cent, I am very sure they won't be able to tell that...

With regard to rereading: you were talking about 2–5 cents as unnoticeable, and I pointed out that even 1 cent will become noticeable when playing high reeds together, so 2–5 cent cannot be a tuning target, in particular since that implies that the relative difference between two reeds off in different directions will be 4–10 cents then.

they are not tuners, they are merely gathering info, perhaps to just know their accordion or maybe find out whether their instrument is off so much that they need to send it to a professional.

No one on this board (even Paul D.) can just by ear tell me that they can tell if a reed is off by 1 cent... which was my point. That is 1/100th of a single tone, and that is a TINY variation.

There is an ear training application called "Solfege" where you can check the kind of interval with separate notes that you can recognize as being above or below pure. It's kind of impressive what one can actually detect even without the help of beatings. Granted, I've been singing in choirs for eternities and playing the violin, both of which require some longterm pitch memory (when I was pretty proficient at violin, I could tune it without any reference, and I could hum the note of a tuning fork before striking it).

Now, if you want to count beats and they are not mathematically perfect, you *might* be able to say that the sound of a high pitched note feels off... but which one, is one piccollo reed high or is the base reed flat? Remember, we are talking a 1 cent difference

We are not talking about "mathematically perfect" but rather "half speed". The normal beatings for an equally tempered fifth correspond to 2 cents. Being 1 cent sharp means that the beatings are half as fast. Being 1 cent flat means that the beatings become 50% faster. 2 cents sharp, and the beatings stop altogether (this is what you tune 2⅔' reeds to, a pitch slightly different from the octave and fifth in the same reed block).

The question "which one" at the time a particular combination starts to annoy you tends to be "both" since you get the largest difference when one has wandered up and the other down. You need to compare with more references then. If the answers are all over the place, there may be the time for retuning everything because fixing the worst offenders is going to become increasingly a whack-a-mole game.