Waterfall Keyboard

[TonyChicago]

Hi,

I don't remember if I ever played an accordion with a waterfall keyboard. What I do remember when I was first looking for an accordion was that I ran across some keyboards that where utterly terrible. Lots of travel and the keys were actually painful to play. On a waterfall keyboard, is the action supposed to be fast or is it some antiquated thing best to be avoided?

I think I saw a rebadged Dallape Organtone selling for a cheap price and it has what I believe to be a waterfall keyboard. It looks like this accordion, down to the chin switch.

Thanks

 

[TonyChicago]

This is pretty interesting. How the accordions can be lookalikes. Here's three accordions I found that are so similar in appearance outside.

A Lucchini, Cooperativa L'Armonica, and a Bonvicini. They all look like the Dallape in the video.

 

[debra]

A waterfall keyboard just has the top of the keys "flow" down at the end. It does not imply faster or slower action, nor the depth of the key press. What it does imply is that you are less likely to "catch" under the edge of a key and accidentally pull it up (requiring repair, which can be easy (non-cassotto) or hard (cassotto accordion).
Waterfall keyboards became out of fashion and replaced by the style we have now some time in the fifties. So a waterfall keyboard means the accordion is from before 1960.

 

[TonyChicago]

A waterfall keyboard just has the top of the keys "flow" down at the end. It does not imply faster or slower action, nor the depth of the key press. What it does imply is that you are less likely to "catch" under the edge of a key and accidentally pull it up (requiring repair, which can be easy (non-cassotto) or hard (cassotto accordion).
Waterfall keyboards became out of fashion and replaced by the style we have now some time in the fifties. So a waterfall keyboard means the accordion is from before 1960.

Thank you for explaining.

 

[Ben-jammin]

This is pretty interesting. How the accordions can be lookalikes. Here's three accordions I found that are so similar in appearance outside.

A Lucchini, Cooperativa L'Armonica, and a Bonvicini. They all look like the Dallape in the video.

I believe a lot of accordions from that time frame built in Stradella have a similar aesthetics.

 

[TonyChicago]

I believe a lot of accordions from that time frame built in Stradella have a similar aesthetics.

It sure seems that way.

 

[Ventura]

well you just saw in another recent thread the depth of
Copycat deception, where Borsini accordions (which are fine
instruments and need no trickery to be appreciated) nevertheless
because of greed and perhaps frustration at not being able to land
an Excelsior dealership, or perhaps simply because he wanted to
sell at a lower price that Excelsior allowed, some American accordion shop
talked/bribed them into disguising themselves as Excelsior

there was a famous West coast accordionist who also piggybacked on this
deception using Borsini accordions

then you have Dallape.. a seminal brand and factory who set the standards
and trained vast numbers of apprentices, many of whom went on to
start factories of their own..

the Co-Operativa town further North in Italy, when first estabished was
hugely reliant upon Dallape trained workers, and so of course you had a lot
of look alike Dallape's with names like Royal and such turning up all over the place..

would the typically uninformed American moms and dads getting talked into
accordions for their young Prodigies have a clue as to the look-alike but isn't accordions ?

at least in some cases, it was more admiration and what the apprentices had
learned about how to do things rather than greed and envy

but make no mistake, an accordion that was intended from the start to
be a deception was also designed to make a higher profit while undercutting
the brand name's pricetag.. therefore in no case will the "fake" be as good
an accordion as the "original"

if they were, they would have cost the same price

and as we have noted before, the most famous piece of copycat engineering
was the Chinese who got their hands on a Scandalli Silvana, and ever since
have been building look-alikes of very dubious quality...
by the boatloads

 

[TonyChicago]

Great post Ventura!!