LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Accordion: Piano Accordion
built 628 days ago
The Piano Accordion first appeared about a hundred years ago and initially they were like a melodeon with a piano keyboard, and a limited number of basses. During the 1920’s, great improvements were made to the design and sound, and with the Stradella bass system, a full left hand accompaniment became possible. The Accordion became enormously popular in the 1930’s, and ended the era of the Concertina.
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Accordions are complicated; a full size professional accordion has at least as many reeds, as a grand piano has strings. Nearly all accordions contain perishable materials. The reeds are usually held in place by a mixture of beeswax and pine rosin. This grips the accordion's reeds tightly in place on the wooden chambers, and is airtight when properly applied. It makes it possible to remove the individual reeds and clean and service them. When an accordion is more than 40 years old, the wax will usually need to be replaced.
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The accordion of today’s world consists of a body in two parts. Each part has a rectangular shape and generally separated by bellows. On each part of the body, you will find a keyboard that contains buttons, levers or piano style keys. It is these buttons, when pressed, that travel in a direction perpendicular to the movement of the bellows, which is towards the performer. Well, it is worth noting that most of the modern accordions ... have buttons that are capable of producing entire chords. This feature basically what sets concertinas’ buttons from the modern accordions as the former produce only single notes.
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Accordion is a handheld musical instrument used mostly in folk music. This portable instrument has rectangular bellows, with keyboards on both sides of them. Instead of piano-styled keys, these keyboards have a series of buttons or levers. The expansion and contraction of these bellows between the hands, and the pressing of these buttons produce the sound. The former action results in the airflow moving across the reeds. The buttons are pressed in a perpendicular direction to the movement of the bellows.
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The keyboard on the treble side of the accordion can have various configurations. A popular style is the piano-type keyboard. Each key is extended into the body of the accordion and has a device attached to it called a pallet, which covers the holes of the reed block. When the key is left undisturbed, the hole in the reed block is closed and air can not reach the reed below. Depressing the key causes the pallet to open, allowing air to flow to the reed and producing sound. The treble grill covers the action of the keys on the pallet.
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Pricing for complete reed restoration is usually based on the total number of reed plates in the accordion. The reeds are cleaned, new reed valves installed and new wax is poured.The acoustic (non-electronic) accordion contains multiple sets of reeds. Quite often there are more reeds inside the accordion than the number of strings found in a Grand Piano. Diatonic or 'button" accordions, which play a different note when squeezing or pulling, have about half as many reeds as larger accordions have.
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Piano Accordion