Start those toddlers off right!

[Ffingers]

...and yet another example:

 

[Harrytulipan]

Just shows: often it's what you play and how you play it, not what you play it on!
Another:

I think hearing someone play very well on a cheaper accordion can be way more interesting than hearing someone do it on an expensive one.
I also find that the more expressive accordions I have tested did not feel as good as my cheaper accordion.
I have two accordions (both cheaper ones)
One is not that good do I only use it for practicing. It was really cheap.

The other accordion is from the 1940's of early 50's. I tried the more modern ones in the shop but they felt wrong for me. I guess older accordions feel better.

 

[boxplayer4000]

Harrytulipan: I remember when Hagstrom accordions were on the market here. I didn't have one or was ever involved in any repairs but given the Swedish reputation for steel making I suspect that the reeds might have been superior. Like yourself I have a soft spot for older instruments.
Referring back to the head of this thread I think there's a big risk of killing any ambition at all by presenting anyone with one of the cheap toys (of the type from Walmart etc.)

 

[Harrytulipan]

Harrytulipan: I remember when Hagstrom accordions were on the market here. I didn't have one or was ever involved in any repairs but given the Swedish reputation for steel making I suspect that the reeds might have been superior. Like yourself I have a soft spot for older instruments.
Referring back to the head of this thread I think there's a big risk of killing any ambition at all by presenting anyone with one of the cheap toys (of the type from Walmart etc.)

Yeah kids need a real instrument!
Like this:
That's how he started out.

 

[Siegmund]

But if accordions are so difficult and expensive to build, how did they become popular and stay widespread for some decades?

Their traditional competition wasn't guitars and fiddles, but upright pianos and those small 1- or 2-manual home organs: "the accordion can do (almost) everything your keyboard can, and you play it the same way (with one hand), but it doesn't doesn't weigh 500 pounds and require you to give up half a room in your house."

The supply of casual students was redirected, in part, to guitars in the 50s and 60s. But I think a big or bigger factor is that for the past 40 years or so, cheap, portable, and very capable electronic keyboards have moved into the same piano-replacement role the accordion once did.

Heck, the electronic keyboards even have one-button chords. I wonder where they got THAT idea, which was never part of mechanical keyboard instruments? (My first electronic organ as a kid actually had separate buttons for chords. Most since have a toggle to turn the bottom octave of the keyboard into chord buttons.)

 

[Dingo40]

Harry T
"Yeah kids need a real instrument!"
A funny moment in BGT ( Britain's Got Talent) was when, during her introduction on stage, Lettice Rowbotham (violinist) expressed her outrage at the gift of a plastic toy violin from her father (being aged 4 at the time) whereas she'd been wanting a real one!
See here: