The ruination of a Serenelli

[Ffingers]

I've just started investigating the innards of an ever-so-badly-mistreated, top-of-the-line Serenelli - here is an assortment of pics. ( Don't cry too much folks.)
Quite a lot of the waxing seems to be original though there are a couple of apparent renewals where it seems that a reed has been replaced.
The reeds are blued on the reverse side and seem to have had very little tuning work done on most of them.
No rust, either.
As I get into it further I'll offer up more images for the benefit of those who, like me had no concept of the intricacies of these magnificent machines.
If someone could offer an opinion of its likely Date of Birth, model name etc I would appreciate it.

 

[Dingo40]

Ffingers,
It looks pretty salvageable to me: nice!
Age wise, it appears to have stylistic characteristics straddling the late '40s into the 1950s.
Mistreated would be gouges, abrasions, dents, splits. breaks (being dropped ), keys bent upwards out of alignment (careless handling), burns (cigarette or heater), rusted up reeds ( reckless storage) and names of notes marked with textacolours or permanent markers.
This merely suggests neglect due to creeping age.

 

[debra]

The accordion links page states:
Francesco Serenelli from Castelfidardo, Italy (active 1903 - 1963)
so that limits the date to 1963. Until less than 10 years before that the waterfall keyboard was popular. This one has the newer style keyboard so my guess would be between 1955 and 1963.
But... I could be mistaken. (My historical information is often not much more reliable than my memory.)

 

[Ffingers]

Ffingers,
It looks pretty salvageable to me: nice!
Age wise, it appears to have stylistic characteristics straddling the late '40s into the 1950s.
Mistreated would be gouges, abrasions, dents, splits. breaks (being dropped ), keys bent upwards out of alignment (careless handling), burns (cigarette or heater), rusted up reeds ( reckless storage) and names of notes marked with textacolours or permanent markers.
This merely suggests neglect due to creeping age.

There are signs of mistreatment on the exterior, and, in my opinion, neglect amounts to mistreatment.
It stank of mould when I got it but it seems that most of that was confined to the bashed, battered and rusty hard case that it came inThe couplers are almost seized solid and, as I mentioned, there seems to have little to no maintainance work ever done.
It will take me a very long time to fully assess it fully and to work out whether it is actually worth spending a lot of time on the casing and mechanisms before re-assembling and getting it properly tuned and voiced.
Even then, I'd have to find someone who would want to play it

 

[debra]

There are signs of mistreatment on the exterior, and, in my opinion, neglect amounts to mistreatment.
It stank of mould when I got it but it seems that most of that was confined to the bashed, battered and rusty hard case that it came inThe couplers are almost seized solid and, as I mentioned, there seems to have little to no maintainance work ever done.
It will take me a very long time to fully assess it fully and to work out whether it is actually worth spending a lot of time on the casing and mechanisms before re-assembling and getting it properly tuned and voiced.
...

I always say that in order to determine the value of an old accordion you have to consider depreciation (due to ageing) and maintenance. An accordion that is bought new, then played and never has any maintenance done to it depreciates to zero in 30 or 40 years. The value of an accordion that old is thus essentially the sum of all the maintenance work done to it over the years to keep it in good shape. In your case that is likely very close to zero and considering the age (60+ years) when you are done with the restoration the value of the accordion will be the cost of the restoration, no more than that.

 

[Ventura]

i imagine this is the Euro serenelli, as the USA ones would not have been marketed in Australia

 

[Ffingers]

i imagine this is the Euro serenelli, as the USA ones would not have been marketed in Australia

I believe that it came into Australia with a Polish migrant in the late 60s.

 

[Walker]

Maybe @Ffingers you shouldn't get too close to it in case you get bitten by the PA bug. I would be so upset if a button accordionist saw the light...

 

[Ffingers]

Paul, if I were to go down the road of restoring it, which is highly unlikely, it would be for its value as a musical instrument, not as a financial asset.