I found out while ago that holding the accordion's pieces together, without being assembled, does not give an accurate reading of the note. I was in denial about this for years, and would often leave tuning "good enough". These days, everytime I only hold the accordion together, it's only to see if I'm too sharp or too flat. I only trust where the note REALLY is, when the box is assembled. But, there is no accuracy in holding pieces together. If you want to tune the reed on target, it must be assembled. Especially with the bassoon treble bank, and also the bass side.

The compression is far different, with the accordion being held together, than when it's screwed together. Think of tuning an accordion, screwed together, with a hole in the bellows. No good!

Just my observation. I'm open to opinions

You are correct, to a point. I like to refer to it as "playing pressure". Any variance in pressure will affect the response of the reed, and the tuning. Likewise, there is a deference in air pressure between sounding only one reed, as opposed to sounding all four in the note together. With all that said, I use a strobe tuner to get the reeds as close as I can. I try to duplicate "playing pressure" on each reed. Then I sound all four together. Then I screw the frames together and play each button and listen. If I hear anything that sounds "off", I fine tune it from there. I will say this: when sounding all four reeds together, if one of them is off, you can see it on the strobe tuner. It will actually show the octave band that's off. Try it and let me know if it works for you.
Jude

Hey Jude, thanks for your input. Can you recommend a good strobe tuner? I'm fed up with these Korg tuners. I'd like to give my ear a break sometime soon! I can get it right like I have been, but it's frustrating. While I can hear the slightest dissonance of any kind between notes and chords, my ears won't tell me if it's a hair sharp or a hair flat. And at times the analogue tuner won't either.

As of late, I've been only checking any reed with the accordion screwed together. Thank God for batter powered screwdrivers. As for the bellows frame's threading... If it gets worn, I've done my share of fixes in that department.


The way I have been tuning, as of the past couple years, is starting from the mid bank closest to the player. Then I tune the bassoon, and match them, after tuning each rows individually. Then I tune the high bank to match the mid and bassoon. Lastly I'll tune the second mid bank by ear, for either wetness or slight dissonance. I can say for certain the second mid bank gets more of a work out, so to speak. I've been trying to stock up on replacement mid bank reeds, in the case that I feel they're getting too thin.

On the subject of the second mid bank, I'm learning that following a strict pattern for wet tuning, really doesn't do each note justice. Going strictly a number of cents off, for each mid reed, results in drastic beat differences across the board. I'm finding that getting each beat close to each other, but slightly less on the lowest pitched, and slightly more on the highest pitch, to be pleasing to my ears. Even if the beats don't all match exactly, having them close sounds better than the mess that occurs with a strict number of cents to apply to each mid reed note. That's just been my opinion for a while. I get it as good as I can using just the two mid banks...

The trouble with my method is checking all reeds together, and the amount of pressure. But, I still like the end result more than anything I've ever experienced.