Description

Restored Hohner button accordion in the key of C from circa 1940. This was made in Germany in the Hohner factory. It is in excellent condition overall. The burl veneer wood case is in great shape but shows normal wear for an instrument of this age.  The original bellows are airtight and have beautiful colored papers and gold taped edges. It has 10 treble buttons and 4 bass buttons. The treble, chord and bass reeds are steel on individual zinc plates and have the ‘H’ marking. These are from what I think is Hohner’s finest reed making era. The reedplates have all the corners rounded which was unique to this time period. To my ears, these are some of the best sounding reeds Hohner ever produced.

The original leather one way valves on the large bass reedplates and some of the treble reedplates were all removed and replaced with modern plastic one way valves for long trouble free life. The chord reed leathers and some of the treble are working fine and were left alone. Final tuning occurs in situ with the reedblocks attached to the case. New bellows gaskets were also fitted.

This has had the pallet pads replaced with new felt cushioned pads both sides. The button travel on the treble side has been limited so the buttons don’t ‘disappear’ down into the holes. The buttons stop when they are about flush with the top of the keyboard.

As the photo shows, the metal grill is in nice shape with no dents or missing pieces. The grill cloths were replaced front and back. The wooden keyboard is intact with no cracks or missing pieces. The keyboard and back have been repainted black. Often there are cracks or entire sections missing between keys on some of these old accordions. The thumb, bass and bellows straps are all new replacements.

Most of these older Hohner accordions are found with numerous notes out of tune, wheezing or not sounding at all. This was just fully tuned. There are 56 reeds in this instrument and every single one has been tuned. The treble reeds were tuned with a tremolo beat frequency of approximately 1.5 Hz at the low notes gradually rising to about 5 Hz at the high notes, for a sweet tremolo. Since this is a one row instrument I have tuned the thirds flatter than equal temperament, closer to just temperament for a sweeter sound. This technique doesn’t work well on multi-row instruments as any particular note could be used in different keys so equal works better in that case.

Unlike most of the older Hohner boxes purchased used, this is ready to play without further adjustment required.

Click here for video