I had bought one, with every intention on sending it back, even before I got it. I was just anxious to see how sh*tty it actually was. And man, that thing is sh*tty. Gobbles air, is quiet as a mouse, and the tuning was completely out of whack. It's an over glorified Arriette. Hahahah, and the box it comes in resembles something from Toys 'R' Us. Piece of dung.
Ok, bad quality. No doubt.
But doesn't the fact that they're making them show some kind of demand from people learning cajun music? That's the only good possible point here.
I do alot on a regular basis to foster enthusiasm for Cajun music (hope everybody else here does too) and maybe the new guys who are buying these might stick with it long enough to upgrade to a real Cadien built box just like I did?
I knew I wanted to keep learning and went from an Ariette to a Martin. From the bottom- all the way to the top in one move. BAM! The Ariette was only a cheap stepping stone.....a foot in the door.
Now I play only slightly worse than Jerry Moody!
Well, you could always buy the iPad version of the instrument for $2.99 :-)
Here's a live video of our local San Diego Cajun band "Billy Lee and the Swamp Critters" using the Hohner Cajun SqueezeBox app, based on sampled sounds of the LMH and LMMH reed sets of the Cajun IV:
I have a Hohner Cajun IV, the one I used to sample for the app. It seems quite nicely built, but since I'm a traditional Irish player, and not a Cajun player I can't compare it to anything except my Saltarelle Irish Bouebe and a restored 1930s 2-row.
If there are any questions I can answer about it, please let me know. The app sounds in the videos pretty much match the LMMH reed sounds of the real instrument, perhaps I could do a demo video showing an A/B comparison of the real one with the app.