Who says Chinese accordions are c**p?🤔🙂

[Giovanni]

"Made in China" competes on the price of unskilled labor. Once we are talking about the market value of established craftsmen, the price advantage and availability and language barrier does not make it all that attractive to load off work to China. Chinese masters can easily undercut European masters by half due to different cost of living and other considerations. But we aren't talking about a factor of 10 or more then, and then all the inherent disadvantages of "Made in China" (including customer expectations) are making export less attractive than with instruments where the cost of unskilled labor is the dominating factor.

A few years ago I purchased a Yamaha Genos Keyboard .........all are made in China !!!
I don't believe their top of the range Acoustic piano's are made in China .....but it would never surprise me

 

[xingfan1227]

There is propaganda and there is reality Open any Chinese accordion and check the quality of the materials and the assembly. In several Chinese Hohners I saw reedblocks made from wood that we use here to make fruit crates, metal parts and wood parts glued together with a glue gun for the register sliders, reed tongues with rust spots, etc. There might be good instruments made there, but there is also lots of garbage!

As I mentioned in my post I linked, this is a parrot accordion in the 90s when parrot was a great brand and parrot accordions were used by all the professionals in China.

There is no brand in China like that today.

 

[xingfan1227]

Here is another video using an old Parrot accordion..



In the beginning what the text says is:

"The accordion used in this video was from the composer of this song Mr. Wang Yuping. This accordion was specifically made for Mr. Wang by the Parrot accordion factory in 1971 and it's the first ever cassotto accordion made in China. [...]"

(Mr. Wang passed away in 2020 at the age of 80)

 

[OuijaBoard]

The export Parrot accordions coming out of China in the 1990s were ghastly. Apparently the export-level Parrots have improved a couple of notches up from ghastly to the point of being somewhat playable. But again, I suspect Parrot at one time made, premium models with parts, components, and construction very different from their ordinary export stuff. Perhaps the premium examples were available in China. They certainly weren't around elsewhere.

 

[xingfan1227]

The export Parrot accordions coming out of China in the 1990s were ghastly. Apparently the export-level Parrots have improved a couple of notches up from ghastly to the point of being somewhat playable. But again, I suspect Parrot at one time made, premium models with parts, components, and construction very different from their ordinary export stuff. Perhaps the premium examples were available in China. They certainly weren't around elsewhere.

I don't know much about the export ones but from what I heard, they were mainly going to third-world countries (in Africa etc.), more for diplomatic purposes. I'm not sure if they were actually exported to europe or not.. but I wouldn't think so.

 

[dak]

I don't know much about the export ones but from what I heard, they were mainly going to third-world countries (in Africa etc.), more for diplomatic purposes. I'm not sure if they were actually exported to europe or not.. but I wouldn't think so.

Parrots were certainly exported to Europe and did not have a high reputation. Later Chinese brands ("Goldencup" is one I seem to remember) were more detrimental to the reputation of Chinese accordions. Quality was so unreliable that for a while importers made a business of basic overhauls and selling under rebranding. "GEDO" was one I remember because they were in my town at that point of time, also reselling a lot of string instruments. They quit the accordions several years ago but occasionally an instrument may pop up for resale. I see quite more "Solton" accordions, a rebrander of Italian instruments from decades earlier. So I doubt that the Chinese rebranding was going all that well.

 

[OuijaBoard]

Export-quality Parrots were definitely in the U.S. in the 1990s. Buying one was like throwing your money out on the street. At the time, the word was that they were lower-price, bottom-quality products put out or purveyed by Hohner. I have no idea if that is accurate or if Hohner had or has any involvement in Parrots, but that was what I was told years ago, by more than one player and/or accordion tech. , , , , Yes, I remember the Golden Cup era as well. By that point discussion forums were a thing, and there was plenty of online lamentation over the Golden Cup product.

 

[dak]

The export Parrot accordions coming out of China in the 1990s were ghastly. Apparently the export-level Parrots have improved a couple of notches up from ghastly to the point of being somewhat playable. But again, I suspect Parrot at one time made, premium models with parts, components, and construction very different from their ordinary export stuff. Perhaps the premium examples were available in China. They certainly weren't around elsewhere.

Decades ago I was on a choir tournee in China. After having visited a tea house (I think in Xian) I bought some medium-priced green tea in a tea shop in Shanghai to take home. When I had used it up in Germany, I wanted to continue that habit. Low-priced green tea in Germany was more expensive than the medium-priced tea from Shanghai. It was also not comparable. You needed to actually go rather high on the price scale (which was quite higher than in China to start with) to get close to average quality in Shanghai. "Export quality" in this case apparently was "good enough for foreigners".

Now of course with accordions, China has less of an expert history compared to Western countries than with tea. So I doubt that the situation is comparable. But I would not rule out the dynamics (probably also including exporters'/importers' ideas of their cuts after taxes and tariffs) leading to such a result.