Need help identifying 1950s accordian

[John Doe]

I think that early giulietti is Julio’s dad Luigi?

Given the L Giulietti on the grille and the fact that he was the Giulietti in charge through the forties until his death in 1950 when Julio took over that seems likely. The instrument in question was probably from the twenties. Interestingly "I read on the internet" that L Giulietti was involved in the founding of Italo American*- as were a host of other "to become big name" accordion makers.

A catalog from 1934 is here : .

The NY special grill style apparently ran over quite a few model lines and was clearly not exclusive to those models. The style appears on many instruments of the era and it seemingly became as generic as "Kleenex" in regards to the grilles of several models by different makers.

As an aside- the things were not priced at "$2800" or anywhere close. The payment book pictured in the previous posts might well refer to something other than the accordion- although time payment plans have always incorporated huge markups in return for the convenience.

* "Giulietti accordions was founded in New York in 1923 by Luigi (Louis) Giuletti.
He had learned his trade with Soprani in Italy, emigrated to the USA in 1914 and co-founded Italo-American; in 1919 he traveled to New York, worked for Galizi for a while.
When Luigi died in 1950, his son Julio Giulietti (°1910) took over."

 

[mikeoramy]

Thank you for the abundance of input on this post!

I was also curious if the ledger was for some other unrelated purchase… so I dug it out again and noticed on the cover of the book a point system for practice, and the numbers match up with the ledger (50 pts for “excellent”). So it wasn’t about payments, but points awarded by what appears to be a music school.

 

[mikeoramy]

I figure it to be a "house brand" from the music store that sold it. There are a lot of those out there- and it might be a perfectly nice instrument for all that it isn't adorned with a big name manufacturers name. There are Excelsior/Giulietti/Italo American "N Y Special" accordions out there which were pretty clearly all assembled by the same factory as special bulk orders -often for an Accordion School- whatever the name might say.

When dealing in the student line models the name on the grille (no name in this case) is not at all neccesarily the maker of the instrument. Quite possibly one of the 367 "Younamehim Soprani" clan shops. Made in the 50's- seventies in all probability- way later than the "Specials".

I respectfully disagree with the estimable Dingo40 on the made by Lira assessment. The distinctive Lira switching mechanism (Centromatic) has been around a long time, they were usually "Lira by International" or just "International" in some cases (of course sometimes just Lira), and though I've sort of spent a lot of time looking at Lira models and there are a very few without the Centromatic I've never seen a Lyre design of that style on any Lira.

The Lyre is an image employed by a cornucopia of instrument manufacturers of all types.

The instrument you have is a two reed right hand, four (possibly five) reed left hand instrument and at some point someone needs to pop the back panel off and fix the B. Most likely the shaft for the b button has jumped over the pin it's supposed to push down on causing all the left hand B's to descend into the case. This would be a very nimor fix assuming that's the case- probably caused by a sharp bump at some point.

Good luck-
Henry

Thank you for the tip on the fix. Will have it looked at soon.
Mike