House of Musical Traditions
7040 Carroll Ave.
Takoma Park, MD 20912
TEL: 301-270-9090
FAX: 301-270-3010
HOURS: 11 am - 7 pm
Tuesday through Saturday
11 am - 5 pm Sunday & Monday
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Squeezebox Information > Buying Used Squeezeboxes | updated August 13, 2003 |
|
These notes, representing on-line squeezer collective wisdom, were collected by Wendy Morrison, squeezebox buyer for the House of Musical Traditions. They represent the common questions people ask in email to HMT and on the Squeezebox Newsgroup about shopping for used accordions. Subj: re:Re: Old Accordion
prices The note below got me thinking about the advisability of buying an accordion for "only" $250 or so. While you might get one that was playable and in tune I wouldn't count on it. Generally once an accordion gets to be 25-30 years old or so you can count on major maintenance items. Generally this is about the life span of the wax that holds the reeds in and may dictate a rewaxing job. In addition no accordion that is 30 years old is going to be very in tune. Other things that are quite likely to pop up are mold in the accordion, rusty reeds, wornout/damaged bellows, bad reed leathers. All of these things tend to run the cost of that "cheap" accordion up rapidly. You could be looking at anywhere from $300 to $1500 for a renovation project. My advice is that if you decide to buy a cheap accordion you consider the hidden costs and decide up front whether it is of a quality that would warrant any outlay of money. Often if you get a cheap accordion and you can live with its defects and only want it as a knock around accordion or a student instrument you might be able to use it for a while...just don't rely on it for any heavy duty use. If you are considering purchasing an old accordion a couple of tests you can do to see if it is facing impending doom are: Bob Berta ----------------------[Reply - Original Message]---------------------- Just now getting around to reading some of the low priority stuff in my mailbox. This sure is an active list!
Me too. The part of the country where you live, and whether you live in an urban or rural area, can have a lot to do with prices. In the DC area, you'd be lucky to find anything *in playing condition* for under $250, although it can be done. Most of the classifieds I see, people around here are asking $300 and up, and most of these need from $200 on up in repairs before they play and sound decent. Wendy, HMT ===================================================================="
I really hate answering these kinds of questions, but since I get to price these things for walk-ins all the time, I guess I should respond. Sight unseen, it's almost impossible to accurately judge the VALUE of an accordion, or any instrument, for that matter. I will tell you this: assuming everything works, the keyboard is level, there are no bad reeds, no internal rattles, no bellows leaks or internal leaks, the instrument is not badly out of tune, and there are no signs of mold on either the case, the straps, or the bellows, you should expect to pay anywhere from $100 to $600, depending on how many decorative touches (fancy deco grille, rhinestones, etc.) it has. A really fine collectors piece in excellent playing condition would be at the upper end, an ordinary utilitarian box in pretty good condition would be at the lower end. A 40 year old accordion, no matter how nice, is due for an overhaul at a cost of anywhere from $300 for a minimal "get-by-cheap" job up to as much as $1500 for the deluxe treatment. When you purchase an instrument of this age, you are taking a chance on the wax holding up until you have gotten your value out of the accordion. The reed plates could fall out of the wax at any time (or not for years), especially in the middle of playing, and then you are faced with the choice of paying for an expensive overhaul, or tossing the instrument and cutting your losses. Even if the reed plates don't actually fall out, as the wax cracks, the sound begins to suffer, and you will have to put up with a lot of annoying buzzes, wheezes, and squeeks from the reeds. Therefore you must also factor in the intrinsic non-musical of the instrument before you make your purchase decision. If it is a really pretty decorative piece, even if it falls apart musically, you will still be able to recoup some of your investment from an antique dealer, who can sell it as a mantelpiece sitter. Or, you may be willing to invest in the eventual overhaul of this accordion. I myself would be willing to spend perhaps up to $400 on such an instrument, but _only_ after seeing it, playing it, and falling in love with it. On the other hand, a run-of-the-mill good player, 40 years old, with not much else to recommend it wouldn't be worth more than $50 to me, and even then I'd have to see some potential in the instrument (what might it sound like if I threw a few hundred dollars at my repairman to work on it?). Perhaps you can make a contingency purchase, with a final commitment one way or the other after you get a chance to play the instrument a little bit. If you can't, I wouldn't offer the seller very much money for it. Hope this is helpful. Wendy, HMT ====================================================================" Date: Mon, Mar 13, 1995 clark@salus.med.uvm.edu writes:
Toni - Your budget has a lot to do with which answer applies to you. What you are describing is the same sort of box I am always on the lookout for. Most likely, we are talking about an older box (30 y.o. +) which means while you can probably find one for under a grand, at that age it's likely going to need the reed plates rewaxed soon, a major undertaking, even if it doesn't require anything else. You can squeek by for a couple of years, usually, without having this done, but sooner or later you're going to have to fork over major money for an overhaul. If you find a box you adore, it's worth it. I recently had Junior (who cost me all of $400 when I first got him) fully rewaxed, leathered, tuned, and other stuff, at a cost of $800. Yes, I minded, but I wouldn't have parted with him for twice that. New full SIZE Italian made PA's, bejewelled or not, can easily run you in the $3000 and up range. Unless they are custom handmade instruments, all modern PA's have aluminum alloy (duralumin) reed plates, as opposed to the brass ones used in older boxes which gave them that great old-time sound, and added to their weight (the reeds themselves are always steel). An instrument with duralumin reed plates can be put together with more reeds and less weight than one with brass plates, but there is a tremendous sacrifice in acoustic quality, in many people's opinions. Models? There are hundreds, at least. I like the sound of the old Hohner Tangos, but they're a bit too heavy for me. Hohner also made some nice smaller 2 reed musette tuned boxes, the Carmen 48 bass, 60 bass and 80 bass are manageable. Some have very nice decoration. One great thing about the old Hohners, from a piano player's viewpoint: the piano keys are full (3/4"); a lot of the "ladies'" accordions, which are smaller and weigh less, have narrow keys, either 5/8" or 9/16", that will drive you crazy if you don't have very small hands. How many basses, and what keys? If you are only looking at 120 bass boxes, along with standard keys and lots of decoration, on a brass reed-plated box you're talking major weight, even if it's only 3 treble reeds. On the other hand, if you can get by with 96, 80, 72, 60 or 48 (I wouldn't go any lower) basses, you may find the weight more manageable. Where to look? Put an ad in your local paper. Put a notice on the Squeezebox mailing list. Haunt garage sales, estate sales, rummage sales, antique shops, flea markets. One note about antique shops: they are never selling musical instruments as such, but as "rare and valuable antiques", and they have NO idea of the true value of what they have. You will see complete junk piles with an asking price of $500. The only thing to do is hope you can reason with the owner and explain the musical value of the instrument (or lack thereof). Wendy, HMT ===================================================================== Jeff Myers wrote:
This has been going on for a LONG time, in the DC area, at least, to my great dismay. What is really hard to believe is that people will pay hundreds of dollars for a mantelpiece sitter that you or I wouldn't pay $25 for. I have had some lively negotiations with antique shop owners over instrument prices (and not just over boxes, but also banjos, fiddles, mandolins, etc.), but one is rarely able to convince them to lower their prices to a reasonable amount based on the "it would take $300 to repair" argument. They know they can sell the instrument for more to a non-player, so they just don't care if they sell it to you or not. Sometimes it breaks my heart, when I see a perfectly adorable little squeezebox that only needs a few hundred bucks in repairs, being sold for 7 times its real value to someone who will never play it or even try to make it well again. One wonders just how much the antique shop owners are paying for these boxes in the first place. Wendy, HMT Date: Mon, 28 Aug 1995 To: hmtrad@hmtrad.com, accordion@cs.cmu.edu Of course, YMMV; antique dealer musical instrument prices depend a great deal on the situations by which the dealer came into possession of the instrument, and the details of the sale to the 'end-user' (that's YOU, kids). Example: I purchased an extremely ornate Art Nouveau 3-stop Cajun box, ca. 1920 in green, blue and silver with gilt trim, WITH its original 1906 instruction book, at an antique dealer in Hopland, California this past April. The instrument was part of a large collection of musical instruments from a Mendocino County estate (woodwinds, brass, violins and guitars, mostly), and the dealer had priced it at $150, because it was flashy. Working with Wendy's advice for checking out decrepit boxes, I determined that there was around $200-300 worth of repairs before a useable instrument resulted (rewax, some cleaning, minor bellows repairs). I explained to the dealer that interest in such an instrument was largely limited to other accordion players, and that the price would be equally objectionable to any player. The dealer was reluctant to make more than small concessions on the price UNTIL... I decided to indulge another hobby, and purchased an old pocket watch. Since I have a great deal more experience and sophistication with watches than with squeezeboxes, I could tell that the watch was reasonably priced at $125, which enabled me to offer $180 for both items, and assume that all the savings for bulk purchases had come from the accordion. The important point here is that, like any retailer, the dealer has resources tied up in the item being sold, and they have to get those resources out plus a bit, otherwise they ain't in business no more. A dealer of used stuff is more likely to accept a discounted price on several items than on just one, and you can amortize the total savings on tagged price any way that makes you feel comfortable. Another point to remember is that few antique dealers specialize in old instruments, and so have little idea what they're worth. My experience in the West (with watches, anyway) is that the items just turn up in a bunch of other items, and the dealer simply guesses at value, based on no information whatsoever. Most dealers are eager to learn the historical (and market) realities of the stock they have for sale, and collectors are the best source of that information. So, educate the tradesfolk, when you get the chance; you may not get those great buys from someone who sells things way under value, but at least you're less likely to get ripped off (and, if you develop a friendly relationship with a dealer, they may be able to let you know when they find something in the attic of somebody's Aunt Bertha). Peter =====================================================================
The basses on a piano accordion are arranged (from the players perspective) in vertical rows and diagonal columns (also sometimes referred to as rows, as in "the C row"). On a full size 120 bass accordion, the count is 6 rows (counterbass, bass, major chord, minor chord, 7th chord, diminished chord) by 20 rows (all 12 tones of the scale, arranged in 5ths, plus 8 which are duplicated to make smooth bass runs and playing in any key possible, even the ones with lots of black notes). Thus you could say, although nobody ever does, that the 120 bass PA is 6x20. However, on smaller PA's the bass arrangement is not necessarily standardized. A 12 bass, the smallest available, is always 2x6, since the only basses available are the bass note itself and the corresponding major chord, and only 6 of the twelve possible notes are included, Bb, F, C, G, D and A. A 24 bass is usually 3x8 (bass, major, minor, and chords from Eb to E), and although I have never seen one, I'd bet someone has made a 2x12 or a 4x6. A 32 bass, the next common size, is 4x8, thus it has an advantage over smaller instruments because it has the counterbass and minors as well as 2 more chord rows. The 48 bass used to be a more common beastie, during the days when more people were taking accordion lessons as children, and there was more of a demand for an intermediate accordion between the 12 bass they began with, and a full 120 bass instrument. Not all 48 bass accordions were created equal. Some had a full size treble keyboard, some had the full complement of keys but those keys were narrower, some had the same or similar keyboard to a 12 bass. But the bass layout is where you really see the difference. Nowadays Hohner and others make a 48 bass with 6 rows (including the largely-unnecessary-for-most-folk-music-please-no-flames 7th and diminished rows) by 8 rows, which leaves out several very important bass rows, especially B and F#. Hohner and several other makers used to make a wonderful 48 bass with full size treble keyboard, and basses in a 4x12 configuration. Thus you had all the chords and basses you really needed, in the chromatic scale, and you didn't have the extra weight of the additional hardware for the 5th and 6th rows and the duplicated bass rows. Wendy - House of Musical Traditions ===================================================================== Subj: Re: two excelsior grands available
This just means that they both have 10 switches on the right hand and one has 6 switches on the left side while the other has only one switch on the left side. What's the point of one switch? I asked John the same thing - apparently it's a toggle, so it works out being the same as having two switches.
A power master is an extra master switch (all of the stops open) that is in the form of a bar on the edge under the keyboard that you can hit with your wrist. What does the 4/6 imply on the reeds? 4/6 reeds means that there are 4 sets of reeds on the right hand and 6 sets of reeds on the left hand. ===================================================================== If there are n reeds (on either side), there are 2 to the n possible combinations, except that one of those is all stops shut, which isn't useful, so there are 2 to the n minus 1 meaningful combinations. Thus, with 4 reeds, there COULD be 15 switches. Typically you wouldn't find an accordion having that many switches because some of the combinations would just sound bad, at least to most ears (or at least to the manufacturer's ears). On these Excelsiors there are 10 switches, or ten reed combinations available, or - ten different SOUNDS available. On the left hand there are 6 reeds, and thus 63 meaningful combinations, but obviously a much smaller number are deemed useful. The extra reeds on the left side are intended more for beefing up the sound than for providing variety in sound, as on the right side. Mike Maddux From: Greg Bullough To: chris@harbour.demon.co.uk, accordion@cs.cmu.edu
Would that this kind of problem (continued stiffness after prolonged playing) could be transferred to other areas of life at will ;-) This seems to be endemic to the particular model Hohner. It's even worse with the 'Cajun' version which has black trim and bellows. The only thing I can think of is to suspend the box vertically from the left-hand strap with the air-button taped open (or even not, as leaks will still exist), and let the bellows stretch out.
|