Re: Beginner - bought an e-bay special - now what?
I will admit that my lack of patience bested me here! However, for the price, I figured the worse that could happen is a I have a nice shelf ornament, best case I could invest a couple hundred bucks to test the water to see if an accordion and I could come to some type of agreement!
I did open it up and took a peek inside. I uncovered the treble grill and immediately found some rogue valves - one of which was under one of the button paddles that was causing the button to stick 'open'.
I also removed the bellows and took a look at the reeds and found quite a few more missing valves - mostly on the high block. There is some corrosion on the reeds, but otherwise to my untrained eye they look OK. Some may be out of alignment but I'm not sure if I want to mess around with those at this point. I took a few photos - you can find them here:
http://imgur.com/a/n5OFv
After I got it back together, it did seem to play better. Before it felt like it was leaking air, but this time I felt like it took less air to make notes, and of course the stuck button is no longer stuck.
John - I have been in contact with the Krewe de Walleye. I'm going to head to a dance or jam to talk to some of the players here. I've also reached out to a few other folks but this time of year is tough to track anyone down! Until then I'll have fun figuring things out on my own!
Re: Beginner - bought an e-bay special - now what?
Hey Nedro, are you saying that $2500 Cajun accordions are ok? Because I dont think so. And for the black Amedee Ardoin...it was probably a years wages, but his was bought for him by a kind white farmer.
Re: Beginner - bought an e-bay special - now what?
Deduct $600 worth of parts, and 85 hours of labor at $20 per hour ($1700), and that leaves $200 gross profit to operate the business.
The labor intensity is extraordinary, placing the burden of success directly upon the quality of individual skill and methods. With such a sparse return on investment, this business model sucks.
The true value of such an instrument based upon common business practices would set the price over $4000.
You're not that guy who was complaining about the $5.00 cover charge for band AND dance lessons, are you?
Re: Beginner - bought an e-bay special - now what?
How's that old saying go....? You get what you pay for. But I see accordions like cars, in the fact that sometimes you can buy used and get a better deal.
Re: Beginner - bought an e-bay special - now what?
"took a look at the reeds and found quite a few more missing valves - mostly on the high bloc"
The smallest reeds=highest pitch often don't have leathers on them. If the accordion has never been opened before, the missing valves should be somewhere inside or the "outside" leathers may be under the flappers.
Re: Beginner - bought an e-bay special - now what?
I had another local guy look at this box today. He pulled it a apart and looked at the reeds. He found rust on most of the reeds both inside and out causing it to sound out of tune. Other than the reeds and valves the box is in good shape and air tight. He said he could get the reeds and valves back in shape and tuned for about $350.
My question for you guys is, is it worth putting this much money into the old HA 114 or should I trade it in towards the Regal I saw at the other shop?
Re: Beginner - bought an e-bay special - now what?
Sounds like he is going to order another set of HA-114 reeds from Hohner USA that costed $176.05 in 2007 and charge you another $173.95 to reinstall and tune the new ones. Maybe no wax needed as the reeds on a 114 are probably held in place by gaskets and screws only. That is a good deal come to think of it.
I just looked at an Acadian I have redone with Hohner Ha-114 reeds from Hohner and 2 rows are missing the bottom two valves, 1 row is missing the bottom five valves, and 1 row has all 10 reeds outfitted with valves. The ones that are not there are not missing....they have been left off intentionally. Only the deep sounding row has all the leathers or valves in place because the reeds are bigger.
Re: Beginner - bought an e-bay special - now what?
"Remember, you have 40 different reeds in there got dammit, so you'll need to narrow down the trouble before taking the accordion apart by using the stops to isolate."
Re: Beginner - bought an e-bay special - now what?
Peter - thanks for the note. I found another guy who seemed to know a thing or two about diatonic accordions who was willing to work on it. He noted the reeds were in rough shape - rust on both the top and bottom. He quoted me to manually remove the rust and tune, but that was quite a bit of manual labor, so he was going to look into getting new reeds.
Unfortunately it's been a few weeks and he hasn't been able to track down replacements from Hohner or anyone else for that matter which seems a bit suspect. I told him to forget about the reeds and I'm just going to hold on to this box for now and pick up a newer box to start on.
FYI - some pics of the reeds here: http://imgur.com/a/n5OFv