Reed swap

[Ben-jammin]

I have a Titano Stroller converter I had bought online. It arrived really out of tune with rust on the reeds. The seller discounted the price and gave me most of my money back, which I used to get a Titano Grand converter. The Grand is fine, maybe approaching needing tuned up, but serviceable.

The Stroller seems good besides the reeds and I would like to get it running but don’t think I could justify trying to get the reeds restored. I have a 1940s paolo Soprani 4/5 accordion which nominally works and the reeds look and sound ok… ready for new leathers and could use a spot tune. I’m not crazy about the keyboard on the old Paolo. Am I crazy to consider swapping the reeds? Ideally if I did I would like to use the LMM sets to replace the LMH set in the Stroller. I would appreciate any thoughts or options.

 

[JIM D.]

First of all, your Stroller has quality Victoria in house hand assembled reeds & 95% of the time will only need cleaning and leathers.
2nd your Stroller has 3 sets of reeds LMH. The L set has the largest reed size, the M set medium size , and the H set will be the smallest
of the set. In order to convert your stroller to LMM you will have to remove the H set in two of the reed blocks and modify the two blocks
to accept the larger M size reeds. If you haven't done this modification before I recommend you take it to an accordion tech for the
modification. I've done this conversion many times and Labor costs for modifying reed blocks properly is quite costly.

 

[Ben-jammin]

First of all, your Stroller has quality Victoria in house hand assembled reeds & 95% of the time will only need cleaning and leathers.
2nd your Stroller has 3 sets of reeds LMH. The L set has the largest reed size, the M set medium size , and the H set will be the smallest
of the set. In order to convert your stroller to LMM you will have to remove the H set in two of the reed blocks and modify the two blocks
to accept the larger M size reeds. If you haven't done this modification before I recommend you take it to an accordion tech for the
modification. I've done this conversion many times and Labor costs for modifying reed blocks properly is quite costly.

Thank you for the sanity check Jim. I wasn’t sure what would be involved with installing an M set on a block for a H set, but sounds significant. I like the grand well enough but that shortly shorter keyboard makes transition from the accordion I use most often (SEM model 500 midi) difficult.

 

[Ben-jammin]

First of all, your Stroller has quality Victoria in house hand assembled reeds & 95% of the time will only need cleaning and leathers.
2nd your Stroller has 3 sets of reeds LMH. The L set has the largest reed size, the M set medium size , and the H set will be the smallest
of the set. In order to convert your stroller to LMM you will have to remove the H set in two of the reed blocks and modify the two blocks
to accept the larger M size reeds. If you haven't done this modification before I recommend you take it to an accordion tech for the
modification. I've done this conversion many times and Labor costs for modifying reed blocks properly is quite costly.

I’ve been reading on the forum about reed cleaning and I’m going to try to do that myself. I have some reed wax and cleaning supplies on order. I will try it first on a smaller accordion I have.