Vintage Super Scandalli restoration sort-of-a-blog

[tcabot]

The Maugein is likely to be French bass. Is that 'shrooms on Morino? Nice.
I've seen steps on a Yasnaya Polyana, and as Paul says, if you order a new box, the manufacturer can fit anything you want in any shape or form. But I'd still say that on old instruments it would be unusual to see Belgian & French without steps.

 

[debra]

The Maugein is likely to be French bass. Is that 'shrooms on Morino? Nice.
I've seen steps on a Yasnaya Polyana, and as Paul says, if you order a new box, the manufacturer can fit anything you want in any shape or form. But I'd still say that on old instruments it would be unusual to see Belgian & French without steps.

Depends on what you call "old". A friend of mine bought a Bugari 505/ARS about 20 years and ordered it with 3+3 Belgian bass. It came with straight buttons (and not stepped) like every other Bugari 505/ARS I have seen. Maybe you consider 20 years old enough?
The mushroom buttons are typical for French models, but rarely, if ever (?) found on other models that normally have straight buttons. Asking for Belgian bass does not imply that mushroom buttons will be fitted.

 

[dak]

The Maugein is likely to be French bass. Is that 'shrooms on Morino? Nice.
I've seen steps on a Yasnaya Polyana, and as Paul says, if you order a new box, the manufacturer can fit anything you want in any shape or form. But I'd still say that on old instruments it would be unusual to see Belgian & French without steps.

Not sure what "French bass" means in this context: I can imagine using that expression for 3+3 bass systems (probably with two stacked major thirds in one bass column), but the Maugein is 2+3. The Morino, by the way, is standard 2+4 with the diminished row where you'd expect it to be.

 

[tcabot]

Oh, you're right. It's missing a bass row.

 

[nou]

Another jackpot today, the bellows is 100% airtight!



Treble side gasket is holding nicely enough to leave it be for the moment. WIth that out of the way it was time to hunt pallets with insufficient coverage margin and/or force, since there was no way of ensuring this without the action plate mounted. There were five that needed re-padding. One lever reqired adding a secondary spring to close completely, but this increases the button force, so I may revisit this one later. I have to figure out a way to clean the guide slot at the axle, as there is some kind of slight clog just at the very end of the movement. A dentist string perhaps? Also, I adjusted lever angles on some of them, so button posts are now reasonably level along the rows.


This is the coupler and those secondary levers I mentioned earlier. Those little lever tails will have to be precisely adjusted against those flat pushers (this picture was taken before reinstalling the action board, that's why those pushers are so uneven). This whole assembly hinges between engaged and disengaged positions. You can see a register switch interface on the left.

 

[dak]

Another jackpot today, the bellows is 100% airtight!



Treble side gasket is holding nicely enough to leave it be for the moment. WIth that out of the way it was time to hunt pallets with insufficient coverage margin and/or force, since there was no way of ensuring this without the action plate mounted. There were five that needed re-padding. One lever reqired adding a secondary spring to close completely, but this increases the button force, so I may revisit this one later. I have to figure out a way to clean the guide slot at the axle, as there is some kind of slight clog just at the very end of the movement. A dentist string perhaps? Also, I adjusted lever angles on some of them, so button posts are now reasonably level along the rows.


This is the coupler and those secondary levers I mentioned earlier. Those little lever tails will have to be precisely adjusted against those flat pushers (this picture was taken before reinstalling the action board, that's why those pushers are so uneven). This whole assembly hinges between engaged and disengaged positions. You can see a register switch interface on the left.

Déclassement I guess. Good use of space for a particular sound effect. Looks like you are making headway! Looking forward to what this will end up to be.

 

[nou]

Déclassement I guess. Good use of space for a particular sound effect.

Declassement? I'm afraid I don't understand what do you mean by that...

[edit: ok, I found the explanation in another thread on this forum. Yes, that's it. Probably why L voice sounds so nice on this box.]

 

[debra]

Declassement? I'm afraid I don't understand what do you mean by that...

[edit: ok, I found the explanation in another thread on this forum. Yes, that's it. Probably why L voice sounds so nice on this box.]

Declassement is kind-of the poor man's substitute for cassotto. But it makes the keyboard mechanism more complex and there is room for just one set of reeds (always used for the L reeds). It was later abandoned as cassotto became more popular.

 

[nou]

Now this one took about four hours of sisyphean work...



Because of where those pushers are mounted on the main levers, their full travel is only about 3mm. Since they activate low register, any gap larger than a hairline a) introduces a delay to already slow bass reeds, b) limits the pad lift making the pitch more unstable on the draw. Moreover because the secondary spring will engage halfway through the button travel if there is an initial gap here, the button will have an unpleasant "choppy" feel to it. On the other side, if there is even a slight initial pressure to the secondary lever, the then the seal on the low register pad will worsen. What was even more annoying, the whole coupling mechanism is engaged with the thumb, but uses only the force of two springs to disengage. So, in addition to the requirement of a very precise lever height, the curvature of those levers also had to be set properly, because if just a couple of levers have even a slight "bulge", the mechanism will get stuck in engaged position. All of this in a tight space with awkward access. To make things even worse, those levers are made from quite springy steel, requiring bending beyond desired position and hoping for the best.

But it works like charm now

 

[nou]

Today something much easier. Originally the grill was held by two 2.5mm diameter machine screws and proper nickel plated brass inserts. But when I bought it, original screws were long gone and there were two random wood screws holding the thing on nothing more than a prayer, as there is no wood to screw them into under those brass inserts. One of the inserts has already been redrilled to 3mm, and both had their thread worn. I redrilled the other one to 3 mm and retapped both of them. Happily enough, those were originally punched instead of drilled, so there was a bit of material on the back, that allowed saving the already enlarged one. I then spent quite a while sorting through my stash of 3mm screws to find a pair of aestethically fitting ones. The gill is in overall very good shape, only two short sections of the decor required gluing them back. About 5cm of the black lining is missing on one of those stripes, I'll fill it when I figure out what to do this with. The biggest problem is that the celluloid shrank a bit over time and separated from the aluminum on concave areas. Nothing disastrous though, and as it still looks aestietically enough, I'm leaving it be or now, as I never worked with celluloid before.

The other thing done is the keyboard cover and button posts. As much as 1/3 of all button holes required filing them wider - 70 years of wood and celluloid deformations caused button posts to catch edges end get stuck. The previous "restorer" tried to make all of his "repairs" without removing the buttons and generally without any major disassembly of anything, so there were also wooden bumpers glued under two buttons, some of the holes were widened from the underside using a dremel type of tool, and some of the button posts have been shaved, both of those types of "repairs" required tidying them up. I've removed leftover felt and glue from button posts and cleaned the keyboard cover from years worth of accumulated grime. I'm not polishing it thoroughly though, it's shiny enough for my taste and I don't mind the minor scratches and imperfections on a vintage item. Maybe one day I'll change my mind.

 

[nou]

Ok, so I've re-assembled the inside of the treble side, took a deeper look at the reeds and discovered some peculiarities. It looks like the previous "repairer" had a strange fetish for E3 reeds First, the M voices:

This accordion should go down to E2. Both E2 and F2 reeds for both M voices are not original, F2s are fine, but E2s are... E3s. I don't know why bother at all putting in a reed an octave too high. There is also one other instance of this E3 fetish, in the low register, again what should be an E2, is substituted with E3, entirely out of the blue, surrounded by other reeds from the proper octave. But that is not the strangest thing. I present you, the low end of the L register:

The lowest pitch existing in this register is B1, fourth reed from the right (this is one of the three low register reed blocks, others look similar, only with C2 and C#2 as lowest pitches). Everything that should be lower, down to E1, is one octave higher than it's supposed to be, and those reeds are original, not substitutes (well, at least six out of seven are, one has either been flipped around or has been replaced). It makes no sense at all, as the transition between proper LM or LMM from B1 upward to this bizzarre MMM is clearly audible... Have any of you ever stumbled upon a similar case?

Other than that, M registers' reeds are in very good shape given the age, low register reeds are a bit rusty here and there, but everything looks serviceable. Of course everything is more or less out of tune. Valves have stiffened with age, but are straight and close/seal well enough for now. Some of them were stuck though. I'm not tuning anything at the moment, I only need everything to speak freely and be responsive to iron out any leftover air leaks and quirks in the mechanism. Once everything else is done and I can learn some basic fingerings of B-system and see if I like it or not, then I'll have to decide if I'm going to only try to clean and tune those as they are, or do a proper, full service - removing everything to a full blank slate. If so, I would also consider rebuilding reedblocks for leather mount as I hate wax with a passion.

 

[nou]

This box came with very nice, real mother of pearl buttons. They have of course yellowed and dimmed with time, some of them were also unpleasantly rough to the touch and sadly one is missing. I'm hunting for a suitable replacement, but to no avail so far. Perhaps one of you might have a spare, old, yellowed, 15,5-16mm real mother of pearl button lying around? After a proper bath in mineral oil they are now very nicely smooth and look great. I decided to provide myself a subtle learning aid in the form of differently coloured bumper felts, that follow the B-system layout. The keyboard required significant re-levelling after screwing the buttons back, which in turn forced me to adjust declassement coupler yet again...



But with that done, the aesthetical and mechanical renovation of the treble side is done!

So, now it's time for acoustics. This box will be 100% played at home, so it needed toning the volume and timbre down to levels that allow proper practice sessions in small closed spaces without my head exploding. In order to do that, I installed leather baffles (full airtight seal) under the grille and in the declassement opening behind the keyboard. Now the main source of sound and an air intake/exhale is through the keyboard. The sound is now way nicer, full but smoothed out. L register is now more "woodwind" in nature and M voices (brass plates) lost some of the harsher metalic overtones and now sound nicely trumpet like. However, that doesn't solve the main issues. There are two, one with the box, and one with... me.

First, the issue with the box. As I mentioned before, the lowest octave of the L voice is not there. It's annoying, as it shortens the useful range of LM/LMM configuration compared to M/MM, which results in the paradoxically higher overal sound of those configurations. I can source the missing reeds, but since those missing reeds need to be up to 11mm longer, I'll have to modify the bellows frame to accommodate the necessary higher reedblock. I have a nice idea how to fit this aesthetically with the rest of the box, thanks to the Art Deco design of it. However, I currently don't have the capacity to do this properly - I'm in the middle of the from-the-ground-up renovation of my workshop, currently on hold due to spine injury. So I don't know when I'll be able to do this.

In the mean time, I may be able to resolve the second issue, the one with me. This box is LMM, originally tuned very wet, around minus 22 cents (everythinng is out of tune by a couple of cents, so it's hard to tell what tunning it was in exactly). When I first discovered the issue with the lowest L octave I contemplatet turning this into MMM box and have a full musette box. But as it turns out, my neurological condition objected to this idea. You see, I'm an epileptic, and while recordings of musette accordions are completely harmless, having a fast tremolo live, loud, and so close to my ears creates a phase shift issue equivalent to strobe lights. So wet tuning is now out of the question, but adjusting reeds up by 20 cents to a slight detune of 2-4 cents is a serious strain on the reeds. I also don't really like piccolo reeds and H register, so there is very little incentive to rebuild the box to LMH... I had another idea, to replace the brass M- voice with a zinc M and have a third base timbre, but it would double the cost of the whole box when ordered new from harmonicas.cz. But by fortunate coincidence I managed to source an almost full voice (G2-E6) of reclaimed zinc DIX reeds! They're on the way. I don't know the scaling, so if I'll have to significantly rebuild the reedblocs to fit them, this modification will also have to wait for the end of my workshop renovation.