[Harp-L] steel and accordions



Smo Joe writes:

You're right Jonathan. I should have explained that further. Most of the cheaper diatonic accordions (like my Cajun model) use brass. The slightly better ones use blued steel. The large expensive accordions use blued steel.


And Dave Payne writes:

"If I remember correctly, the accordions I've seen have used steel for the low reeds and brass for the highest octave(s). "


Perhaps in older models. I am nearly certain that all reeds (with the caveat perhaps of toy models, though not the smaller folk models) throughout the range of the accordion have been made of steel for at least sixty years, probably much more than that. I have one pre-WWII accordion, and several post-war ones, from the 60's or 70's. All the reeds are steel. These are Hohners, and while not the lowest end, they are not the very expensive Italian-made piano accordions or the big Russian Bayans, which also use steel (though the type of steel and processes of manufacture create a strict series of levels regarding reed quality in accordions). Similarly, the various Concertinae have used steel reeds for at least that period (probably earlier).


There are many reasons why harmonica reeds have traditionally been made of brass, including ones purely of manufacturing. Steel is a lot more expensive to work with than brass. It is significantly rougher on machines, for one. That increases the price of the instrument. Harmonica players are ridiculously cheap. Thus for the most part manufacturers have little incentive to introduce expensive changes to their line-up, when the overwhelming majority of their money comes from the least expensive parts of that line-up--or at least the mid-level expenses. Moreover, harmonicas are mass-produced instruments, and the market for higher-quality, higher-end instruments is only a few decades old at most, and still quite small-- add to that the point that less than any change in design, the main thing that improves performance of the harmonica is very fine quality control or individual set-up and the market for a high-price instrument which plays about the same as most other harps is obviously limited.





 ()()    JR "Bulldogge" Ross
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