PIECES / PARTS IN ACCORIDIONS

[Chickers]

A rather rhetorical question:
About how many parts are in a full size 41 / 120 piano accordion ?
Also, how about a full size CBA (I'm not very familiar with CBA accordions, so I don't know what would be considered "full-size)
For reference; I understand there are approximately 6500 parts in an up-right , 88 key piano.
These are quite complex pieces of "machinery" and craftsmanship. Something to really appreciate.
I thank you for your comments.
CHICKERS

 

[AccordionUprising]

I would like to know this too. I've heard "there are more parts in an accordion than a grand piano," but not seen it confirmed.

The book Things Come Apart by Todd McLellan includes an accordion broken down into parts.

Things Come Apart - TODD MCLELLAN MOTION/STILLS

Project of disassembled objects shown in detail in a flat lay. Once laid out, the pieces were thrown through the air.

www.toddmclellan.com

In that book, he disassembled a 1960's Argus Accordion which had 1,465 parts.

It looks like it has six treble registers (3 reeds?), and one bass register (? reeds), so a mid-range accordion. A fancier instrument would have more parts.

Of the objects in the book, only an upright piano (1,842) and a small airplane (7,580) have more parts. Modern electronics like computers and cellphones have nowhere near as many (all the micro bits are hidden in the chips).

I believe a more complicated accordion would have more parts than the piano. I don't know if an upright piano has more or less than a grand. Seems like the upright might be more complicated to fit in a smaller space? (Just a guess?)

I don't know if he counted all the parts of the reeds as separate. The reeds/frames/rivets/leathers aren't taken apart in the pictures. But his piano photos don't take apart all the mallets either. Maybe he counted the littlest parts but didn't take them all apart for the photos? Further research is needed.

The book is great: here's the list of objects.



I see you can even get poster prints from him!

Disassembled Accordion - TODD MCLELLAN MOTION/STILLS

Things Come Apart series, the Argus accordion. Disassembled and photographed neatly arranged. Art prints available in a few sizes.

www.toddmclellan.com

Apart Accordion - TODD MCLELLAN MOTION/STILLS

Things Come Apart series, the Argus accordion. Disassembled and photographed flying through the air. Art prints available in a few sizes.

www.toddmclellan.com

 

[AccordionUprising]

Steinway says their grand pianos have 12,000 parts, so they must be counting a different way:

Piano - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Cites this Steinway page: https://web.archive.org/web/2014111...acts-about-steinway-and-the-pianos-they-build:

There are 12,116 individual parts that make up a Steinway grand piano.​

The action for just 1 key is made up of over 57 individual parts (so for 88 keys that’s ~4,500 parts)​

​

I don't know if this means counting all the parts of accordion reed-blocks, pallets, etc and manufacture would be more or less. ??‍

 

[debra]

It's hard to do an exact count and each accordion is different, even each 41/120 accordion is different. But there are many many parts. You can do a count for yourself, but you have to consider that something that looks like one part may be itself constructed from several sub-parts. Consider for instance a bass piston. It mainly consists of a single piece of aluminium, with a plastic (celluloid) button top. But then, for a chord the piston has 3 stubs (that push levers) and these metal stubs often have a small plastic tube over them to dampen the noise from the metal stub hitting the metal lever. So that means that single bass piston is actually made of 8 parts. For the base notes only one stub, meaning 4 parts. So just the 120 bass buttons add up to 80x8+40x4 = 800 parts. Another example: the treble reeds: Each reed plate has two reeds and two rivets, making up 5 parts, times 41 times 4 (voices) means 820 parts. The valves you really have to count, because many leather valves will have a booster spring, meaning 1 piece of leather, 1 metal spring, 1 paper or leather circle to support the base, 1 drop of glue to hold the booster and paper onto the lather and 1 drop of glue to hold the leather to the reed plate. And this goes on both sides of the reed plate... etc. It all adds up quickly to a staggering number of parts!

 

[Chickers]

Great comments.
Thank you.
No simple answer without REALLY qualifying the term "parts". Like mentioned, depends on a part being a singular part, and
an integral part of an assembly, or the "major" parts that make up an assembly.
I think it would make sense to count "functional" parts, and not all the minute' of tiny screws, nails, glue drops, and all such items.
Hard to even put a qualifier on this.
I love the comments, and the variety of the depth of perception held by various people.
I guess if we were to actually manufacture an accordion, we would need to make up a "Bill of Material" to include everything required
to accomplish the manufacture, but from a user, and /or a person of general interest, a "general parts count" would be adequate.
Thanks again:
CHICKERS

 

[debra]

Great comments.
Thank you.
No simple answer without REALLY qualifying the term "parts". Like mentioned, depends on a part being a singular part, and
an integral part of an assembly, or the "major" parts that make up an assembly.
I think it would make sense to count "functional" parts, and not all the minute' of tiny screws, nails, glue drops, and all such items.
Hard to even put a qualifier on this.
I love the comments, and the variety of the depth of perception held by various people.
I guess if we were to actually manufacture an accordion, we would need to make up a "Bill of Material" to include everything required
to accomplish the manufacture, but from a user, and /or a person of general interest, a "general parts count" would be adequate.
Thanks again:
CHICKERS

I would define "part" as something you buy (wholesale) to build an accordion, or as something you need to use in the assemble as a separate item. So a drop of glue then does not count as a part, but screws and nails are parts. And you do not buy completely assembled bass pistons (made out of 4 or 8 items) or treble keys (consisting of a key top, wooden base, aluminium lever, pallet and fels+leather). So the elements that make up these items are parts. A catorcetto however (as used in the bass mechanism consists of steel rod parts that are welded together, but you buy them already welded, so a catorcetto is then just one part... Similarly, although a reed plate, two reed tongues and two rivets are needed to construct what we call a "reed" you typically buy "complete" reeds, so instead of five parts together they are then just one part.
But... as you can buy a complete set of reeds for a 41/120 accordion as one purchase item... is the set one part or a large number of parts?
Similarly you can buy a complete keyboard (minus the pallets and felts). Is that one part or a set of 41 parts?
The only thing I really count in an accordion is the number of reed tongues I need to tune. And that's already a lot. A typical 41/120 4/5 accordion has 448 reed tongues to (measure and) tune.

 

[AccordionUprising]

"Parts that need tuning" is a good measure!
Piano strings = 230? Much easier to tune a piano. But they go out of tune more easily I expect?

Any competition is meaningless, unless you're trying to justify buying a Pigini or a Steinway, but it is an interesting question.

Really comes into play when asking why guitars became popular. Guitars have like 18 moving parts! How many "make your own accordion" videos are on youtube? Compared to "I made an electric guitar out of random objects."

"How long it takes to make one" is another question that would drastically vary by instrument quality.

For whatever reason, comparing with piano construction is fun. Maybe because each has a bunch of moving keys/buttons. Handling a huge iron frame has to go up against miniaturizing for compactness.

Either one might have the most parts of any acoustic instruments except I assume big organs? ?