Re: Tiger

[Alan Sharkis]

This old geezer, me, remembers reading about the Tiger and I congratulate all who own one.

What’s rattling around in my brain is the supposed mount for a vocal mike on top of the treble section. I read that there was one, but I can’t remember where. Were Tigers actually equipped with this mount? Was it a standard or an optional feature, or just something that an accordionist somewhere rigged up himself? In any case, how did the mike cable get routed — out through a hole in the mount where it would surely have gotten kinked — or perhaps down through the accordion itself where it may or may not have tied into the internal mike’s wiring?

What I’m trying to say is that, unless someone knows better, that the vocal mike mount on the Tiger never really existed, and that the absence of holes where they would have existed on the accordions backs me up.

What do you think?

 

[OuijaBoard]

I dunno, I've never tried or messed with the electronics, just reveled and continue to revel in the acoustic properties and riveting eye candy of my glorious blue Tiger. And its marvelous red bellows. I've barely even messed with the "Quint" switch. Its LM setting is a jazzy, tango-y charmer. Very soon after I started playing accordion around the late '90s, I drove out to a suburb an hour or so out of my huge megalopolis to look at vintage accordions a wacky older guy was selling out of his garage along with floor-to-ceiling boxes of junk. Listed "For Sale" in a hard-copy weekly "shopper," remember those in the pre-Craigslist era? And he had these two beautiful-condition accordions for a couple hundred each. A white LM Contello 37-key . . . and . . . the TIGER! I was there for the Contello, but when I saw that TIGER . . . somehow managed to cough up the extra cash and get both into the car. Mine is the smaller 36-key. They simply don't come snazzier than THE TIGER.

There's been a good couple of thread discussions about THE TIGER here on this site.

 

[JeffJetton]

What I’m trying to say is that, unless someone knows better, that the vocal mike mount on the Tiger never really existed, and that the absence of holes where they would have existed on the accordions backs me up.

What do you think?

Well it's not technically a "mount". It's a 1/4" input jack on top of the instrument. You can see it in the photo on this page, for example.

My assumption is that there would've been mics available that just had a 1/4" plug sticking directly out of their end, or you'd use an XLR-to-Phone-Jack adapter (like this).

The jack itself is the mount, in other words. That's how I always figured it was supposed to work, at least. There is no mic cable to route anywhere--the signal is combined with the pickup and sent out the same output jack. No "mixer" knob, so the balance between the mic and the pickup would be up to how loud you sang vs. how loud you played. In this picture (my own Tiger) you can see the wire running from the bottom of the jack on the left to the back of the volume pot. (The other potentiometer is the "tone" knob.)

I don't know if they all came with this, or if it was a feature like the "Blues Bender" register that just showed up on some variants. I seem to recall a print ad that mentioned them, so maybe it's on all of them?

Full disclosure, I've never tried using it and don't even know if mine works.

 

[Alan Sharkis]

Thanks for your detailed explanation. If I was cynical about the vocal microphone, you set me right. So it was really just a jack. I can imagine a mike with a 1/4” plug sticking out of its bottom, but some sort of swivel on that plug would have made it much more practical.

 

[dak]

Thanks for your detailed explanation. If I was cynical about the vocal microphone, you set me right. So it was really just a jack. I can imagine a mike with a 1/4” plug sticking out of its bottom, but some sort of swivel on that plug would have made it much more practical.

These days "gooseneck microphones" (available for things like the talkback section of a large mixer) tend to have an XLR plug foot, but that would not really match the era of the Tiger.