Staggered Bass Reed order in a Convertor

[John Doe]

I recently acquired a generic circa 1960 ("made in Italy" "Noble") LMMH convertor- very nicely made on the inside; finished reed blocks, nicely tacked reeds which are stamped with a maker's name (which eludes me at the moment) and appear to be "handmade"- surely very responsive and a very nice spring assisted mechanism for holding the reed blocks in place firmly yet lightly.

It has, in addition to the usual suspects in the bass switching (8 total), two convertor options. Really low, pretty low , and medium and pretty low, medium, and high.

Many convertors punt on staggering the bass reeds opting for a straight C to B lineup in the interests of full three octave chromatic LH performance. This one has F# as the low reed in the really deep and pretty deep blocks and in one of the medium blocks (this one not engaged in convertor mode). This gives a very satisfying array of options for use as a normal LH bass instrument without the "Oops, there's the break" encountered in many convertors- but it also means that the convertor really only works right in very low G through the two octaves up F. After that it jumps a full octave for the next range. (in the high converter mode, it has the top two octaves but drops off a full octave for the last range.)

Useable- as a two octave chromatic left hand with a third octave either up or down- but a bit odd?

The reeds appear original (and what with the stamping on the plates et al I'd be hard pressed to believe that they'd been subbed out after the original assembly) and all the slides (there are a lot of them with the two upper blocks having double set ups- slide on slide set up to allow real flexibility in the switching) are working as intended and are clearly in the correct locations.

It appears that there was a consious choice to diminish the convertor capacity to allow a harmonious break-free normal stradella.

Any thoughts? Commonplace practice, though new to me?

Apologies for typos.

 

[Ventura]

Noble sourced his private label accordions from more factories than any
other "brand" over the decades, so it is nearly impossible to just guess
where any given Noble actually came from or the thought process
used in it's manufacture.

Then too, the only thing ever "designed" by Nobel were the cosmetics,
so any given accordion was simply how the specific factory built them,
and the "spec" would be like any other order (reed quality, tuning)
on the high end models, and whatever the factory did as standard
on the lesser models exported by the container.

Having said that, there were only a few factories that could build
a Quint mechanism back then, and if you can get something with
a factory name on it and open them up and compare side by side,
you might figure one out

including private labels made by Victoria.. even when they were
under seriously restrictive contracts with Titano and the whole
Palmer line, some "quint" accordions obviously came out the back door
and ended up in the USA and Europe under various private label names

there are currently two Nobels on Craigslist in the Eastern USA, one
is an older Quint and the other is a later high end model that was available
as both a regular stradeella, and a quint, so these do pop up
now and again

i suggest you publish extensive photo's of the insides, as some old tech who
has worked on a bunch of factory branded quints might be able to recognise
some specific manufacturing details that give the origin away, and then there
may be a further link or memory jogged about how "they" did the quint reed layout
and possibly why

 

[John Doe]

Interesting and thanks- but I really don't care which factory made it. Surely Noble was just an importer rather than a manufacturer much as "CARL FISCHER NEW YORK" was in relation to early to mid twentieth century brass/ woodwinds. (Why I referred to it as "generic".)

My question is as to whether the less-that-full-three octave layout in the convertor for the sake of a breakless normal Stradella is commonplace, or close to a one off.

I can surely see it as a useable trade off myself.

And my daughter who has cornered the local (very local, as in my house) household market on digital cameras is currently in Idaho...

 

[dak]

Really sounds to me like there were different reeds swapped in for a different standard bass experience. A non-contiguous converter does not make a lot of sense. Converters do have a register break between the bass octave and the higher reeds since the bass octave has to have satisfactory signature for use in the standard bass, but that is not a break in fundamental pitch. On my own instrument, I tend to register the bass octave in converter mode as L even when the higher reeds are in LM. That tends to make for a cleaner sound when a polyphonic two-hand passage does dip into the bass octave.

But that kind of break (whether LM to LM or L to LM) is nowhere near what you describe.

 

[John Doe]

It surely is odd. My first thought was that the reeds had been swapped- but I came to discard that based upon their being non generic reed plates and so pretty unlikely to have been swapped without a real tell. (the reeds across the board have been rewaxed in the past ten years or so so that is no indicator) My second thought was that someone in the distant past had monkeyed with the large stack of slides in the switch mechanism and assembled it wrong- but that is clearly not the case.

As a result I believe it to be a built-this-way-decision with a two octave free base range and a full very rich stradella. There are quite a few situations where the music can be confined to low F# and two octaves up. That would be about the RH on a 41 key model from the low note more than halfway.

I can sort of see it- surely owning it and playing it the two octaves is sufficient for most melodic LH bass run accompaniement (though surely not all... though if I wanted all I'd stick with a chromatic C griff LH). And the all-reeds-lined-up-in-the-same-sequence in each bass block pronounced break effect in both my Titano and PanItalia convertors is mildly irksome (although really only if you're listening for it. Sort of like a teenager with a forehead zit- seemingly a third eye worthy of Polyphemus to the kid- unnoticed by the general public.)

Again, here it is with its own quirky set up. I wouldn't chose to have it made this way but it was, seemingly by the factory. Any others out there?

 

[John Doe]

Noble sourced his private label accordions from more factories than any
other "brand" over the decades, so it is nearly impossible to just guess
where any given Noble actually came from or the thought process
used in it's manufacture.

Upon consideration the accordion appears to have been spec'd with a full array of "bells and whistles" designed to be touted by salesmen. Spring loaded grille clips, Titano-esque "tube chambers", two real cassotto reed banks , a gazillion switches, the fancy duded up interior with zippy block hold-downs and name stamped "hand type" plates for the reeds, and "CONVERTOR" arched on the front in chrome letters. Sounds very nice in truth and surely feature laden for a stroll down memory lane.

And does double duty as a physical finess adjunct- it weighs roughly a ton.

But it is perhaps quite possible that the factory simply blew right by the reed block configuration issue. Made for somenone else. QC check; plays fine and the convertor sounds fine unless you actually run it through the full three octaves... Looks ready to ship.

Not to be overly cynical, but I figure a lot of convertors never get played as such- just bought by someone who thinks it would be neato keano.

Ahhh well.

 

[dak]

Not to be overly cynical, but I figure a lot of convertors never get played as such- just bought by someone who thinks it would be neato keano.

Ahhh well.

I've heard of people buying a Morino VI M explicitly because they liked the sound of its standard bass better than the sound of, well, the standard bass models. I think that the probability of people playing converter/freebass is significantly higher if they get one "by accident" on a CBA rather than on a piano accordion.

And then I marvel at the guy whose name is embedded into the bass mechanics of my instrument but who probably never seriously played it. He was so obsessed with "baritone basses" that he got himself an instrument from Morino in the 1910s or 1920s, with only two additional baritone bass rows on the inside of the stradella basses that exclusively used the chord reeds (because bass and counterbass rows already were there to serve the bass reeds and incidentally did not couple into the chord reeds) and went alternating chromatically between rows (the 6+6 system) with the low notes at the bottom of the instrument. While on the treble he played C system (so high notes at the bottom of the instrument).

I imagine that to be a worse brain twister than piano keys on the right and C system on the left. I have enough work twisting my head around C system on both sides.

Come to think of it, this could be part of the heritage of your instrument: the concept of "baritone basses" rooted in the chord notes as a detached entity from "bass notes", with a 3-row integral system for accessing both in the same manner being a novelty that not yet has pressured converter designers into providing a coherent scale for the left hand.

I actually find that typical bayans (which seem to use the low basses with full coupling into chord notes, unlike what I have and what I think is standard for converters in the West) tend to also be considerably out of character with the bass octave in the left hand, though at least not out of fundamental pitch.