Gonk
http://mudlark-music.com
This is less of a "How do I" and more of a "How I did" - but I'm curious about others' experiences.
My main piano accordion is a Brandoni (131W). It has shallow keyboard action and swing tuned Binci reeds. I love it. But the bass mechanism is loud and rattly. Just running your hands over it, you hear a cacophony of tinny jittery sounds, and if you don't release a button carefully, it snaps back and the whole mechanism sounds like an angry squirrel in a Havahart trap.
It should, by rights, be quieter than it is. The buttons are bushed. The small prongs on the pistons of the bass mechanism are already sheathed in little pieces of vinyl tubing. But clearly it's not enough.
So I bought more vinyl tubing -- 1/16" clear vinyl tubing, with 1/32" walls for a total 1/8" diameter -- and sheathed each of the arms in the mechanism that contact the prongs. I was concerned that this would depress the mechanism slightly and open the valves enough for air to escape, but the bellows remain rock solid. The improvement is amazing. I recommend this to anyone who has this issue. It took 30-40 feet of the stuff to cover all the arms.
My main piano accordion is a Brandoni (131W). It has shallow keyboard action and swing tuned Binci reeds. I love it. But the bass mechanism is loud and rattly. Just running your hands over it, you hear a cacophony of tinny jittery sounds, and if you don't release a button carefully, it snaps back and the whole mechanism sounds like an angry squirrel in a Havahart trap.
It should, by rights, be quieter than it is. The buttons are bushed. The small prongs on the pistons of the bass mechanism are already sheathed in little pieces of vinyl tubing. But clearly it's not enough.
So I bought more vinyl tubing -- 1/16" clear vinyl tubing, with 1/32" walls for a total 1/8" diameter -- and sheathed each of the arms in the mechanism that contact the prongs. I was concerned that this would depress the mechanism slightly and open the valves enough for air to escape, but the bellows remain rock solid. The improvement is amazing. I recommend this to anyone who has this issue. It took 30-40 feet of the stuff to cover all the arms.
good idea of using vinyl tubing instead of heatshrink tube. I had to cover twice with the heatshrink...
