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