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How accordions are tuned.

The accordion reed consists of a flat plate with two slots through it, and on the end of each slot is riveted a steel or (rarely) brass strip, which vibrates in the slot as air passes over it. The strip that vibrates is called a reed, and each plate has two reeds, one for each direction of airflow, according to whether the bellows are squeezed or pulled. When you open the accordion, as described in How to Repair Bellows, you will see some blocks containing the reeds. Never touch the reeds with bare fingers, as salt and acid in your skin will eventually cause the metal to oxidize. Never blow into the reeds with your breath to test them, as the same thing will happen quicker. This corrosion of the metal is one of the principle causes (among many) that will cause unwanted changes in pitch. Also, take great care not to scratch the reed plate where the slot is, or nick the slot, as the slot must have a precision fitted sharp edge to make the reed play right. Most of the reeds have a leather or thin plastic valve on the opposite side of the plate glued down on one end, to allow the air to only flow in one direction, except for the highest reeds, which, if well made, don't waste much air, and may need a little "bleeding" of air to cut the pressure. If this valve is missing or defective it will make the reed out of tune and/or sound bad.

The reeds are usually glued to the wooden blocks, called "reed bars" with a mixture of beeswax and rosin. Other kinds of wax, e.g., candle wax, pure beeswax, parafin, will not work. Some old accordions use other fastening systems, which could be converted to wax, if so desired. The unique function of the special accordion wax is to tightly grip the reed plates against the wood. This is absolutely necessary to produce strong bright sound at an accurate pitch. The wax will usually do its job well for only about 20 years or so, after which it gets brittle and starts to crack. It cannot be well restored by re-melting, as the essential oils have leached out and evaporated. If you try to fix the bad wax with a 30 watt soldering iron, it will not hold for very long, and also the accordion may sound weak. If the wax is still good, it will feel somewhat soft to the touch, and a tiny flake can be warmed and softened in the hand, and smeared between the fingers as a test. Before tuning can take place, bad brittle wax must be replaced.Click here to see a foto I took of my reed waxing tools: a couple of special spoons, a waxing blade, an alcohol lamp, and a warming pot to melt the wax. The spoons are made from metal tubing, and the wax is heated over a low flame to the right temperature before being "poured" between and around the reeds.

A word of warning: Before buying a used accordion!! Most used accordions on the market have never been properly serviced, as this country does not have the accordion repair infrastructure of repair people, like you have for,  for instance, pianos. Pawn shops, music stores, and individuals, even some accordion dealers are selling them for too high a price. After you play an unrestored one for a while, it starts to develop bad sounds. Most accordions have hundreds of reeds and thousands of moving parts. A reed overhaul will almost always be necessary in order to tune and restore the reeds, that is, new wax has to be carefully poured around the hundreds of reed plates, the reeds inspected, cleaned, anti-rust treated, leather valves straightened or replaced, requiring many hours of work. Restoration of an old accordion can cost  hundreds of $s. Compared with piano maintenance, it is not more expensive, when one takes into consideration that pianos need to be tuned once or twice a year, whereas an accordion needs a reed overhaul after 20 years or more if properly stored and/or played nicely. If your accordion was played in smoke-filled bars every night or worse on the street corner every day, it needs to be overhauled every year or so. I would advise against paying more than $100 when buying most used accordions for the simple reason that, in the U.S. at least, very few accordions have ever been serviced, so if any malfunction whatever is noticed, don't pay too much for it. If the accordion smells damp and musty, don't even consider buying it, as dampness problems, e.g., such as arise from storage in a basement, can easily double the time necessary for restoration work . Dampness causes rust on the reeds, corrosion to mechanical parts, warping of wood parts, and on and on.

The Accordion Reeds

Before the reeds on most older accordions can be tuned, they must be cleaned, usually re-waxed, anti-rust treated, reed valves repaired. and reed blocks leveleled to not leak air under the block.  All of this may not be necessary only if the accordion reeds have few problems, it is relatively new and only a few reeds are out of tune. Failure to overhaul the wax and "leathers" before tuning the accordion will give a very bad result. Pouring the wax, cleaning, etc. is a substantial time commitment. The "average" or median accordion is a "3/5" 120 bass accordion meaning 3 sets of treble reeds, times 41 treble keys, 5 bass reed sets consisting of 12 bass reeds. 3 sets times 41 is 123 reed plates plus 5 times 12 (60) bass reed plates. That's 183 reed plates with a reed on each side of the plate, 366 reeds. 99 percent of American accordions have never been overhauled, and need it as the accordion wax will usually be pretty dry after 20 years. The cost of such a job, including tuning, because of the time necessary, is around $500, depending on the condition. Over time accordion maintenance is still less than piano tuning and maintenance if you consider that a piano should be tuned at least every year to prevent damage, at a cost of at least about $100 a year, accordion tuning is not expensive in the long run, compares to piano maintenance, if that makes you feel any better.
 
 

Bad sounding notes have several possible causes. Here is a list:

1. Curled or missing reed valves. All of the reeds, except the very highest pitched,  require a one-way valve glued to the top of the slot on the opposite side of the plate from the reed. This is usually a made from a very special kind of leather, or in the case of newer Hohner accordions, a synthetic material. This is blown outward by the air when the reed plays, and snaps back when the reed on the other side of the plate is activated by the opposite flow of air. This may have a "booster" (tiny spring) glued at the fixed end to make sure it goes back quickly. If the reed valve does not lie flat, then it will either pop back after the reed starts to sound, with a sudden change in pitch and volume, not go back at all, with a sharpening in the pitch sounding out of tune and wasting air, or dance with a "sniffle" or "sizzle" in the reed. This can be due to curling due to humidity and heat, or keeping the accordion stored in a horizontal position which will make half the valves sag open due to gravity. Most accordions are designed to be stored vertically so that the reed "leathers" remain vertical and don't deform.
 2. Rust or dirt on the reeds. If the accordion is played in the rain or worst of all near the ocean, which will totally ruin the reeds beyond repair due to salt rust making pits in the surface, or maybe stored it in a basement, or perhaps someone opened the instrument and blew breath on the reed bars to test the reeds, (which one should never do) the reeds will usually go flat, making the tuning sound pretty bad. Such an instrument will often smell damp or moldy. This type of damage, if severe, greatly complicates the job of tuning, and can make restoration not be cost effective. Incidently, if a customer shows me an accordion, and I think it is not worth repairing, I will strongly discourage having the work done. If I think it is worth it and I like the instrument, I will try to work with an affordable price estimate.
3. Bad wax. The special wax which in most accordions holds the reeds in place will go entirely bad after 20 to 40 years. If  the reeds are nailed in with tiny nails as in some accordions e.g. Hohner, etc. the accordion can still be played with bad wax, all other things being equal, but even then tuning can not be done correctly without pouring new wax. This is partly because the old wax fragments and gets all over everything when disturbed. If the reed is loose in the wax, it can buzz and sound very horrible, or just leak air and sound weak, or go sharp.
4. If a reed is about to break from metal fatigue, it will go very flat, down eventually to a lower pitch, then it snaps off.
5. Improperly glued reed valves. The reed "leather" should not cover too much of the length of the slot where the glue is. It has to  lie the whole length of the slot, to keep the reed from wasting air and going sharp, but has to bend up easily with air pressure off most of the slot to keep too much pressure from building up, which makes it go flat i.e., the thicker the air the slower it can vibrate. The general rule is 20% of the end of the valve has glue.
6. Wrong clearance on the reed tip. The reed tip has to lie slightly above the slot, generally a gap about equal to its thickness. If it is too wide a clearance it will waste air and be sharp in pitch. If not enough clearance, the reed will "choke" when under sudden pressure change.
7. Cheap steel or too much filing during tuning. Both conditions will cause the reed to go flatter as more air passes over it. This can make the accordion in tune at one pressure and out of tune as the loudness and pressure change. The accordion reeds are tuned by scratching or filing, but some amateur accordion tuners may ruin or damage the reeds by scratching the plate, or taking off too much metal.
8. Loose reed rivets. In the worst case they can make the reed not play at all if the reed rotatates sideways over the slot.
9. Damage to the slot, for instance the accordion reed can hit against the metal in the slot and suddenly go sharp as it plays louder. This may usually occur on the highest reeds.

    My accordion tuning method.

Right now you may be wondering... "How does Ike achieve such phenomenal results tuning?"

Here are some points about my accordion tuning methods. In general:
    I use an electronic device i.e.,a "Strobe Tuner" to compare the pitch to a standard which I define based usually on "equal temperament" (the same pitch relations used by most piano tuners). There are other useful systems, such as "well temperament" a group of historical systems which preceded equal temperament, and a knowlege of them is very valuable, because maybe that accordion was not tuned in equal temperament to start with, and it is better to try to preserve the original tuning setup as far as the 12-tone scale setup so as not to tune the accordion reeds more than necessary, because accordion tuning is done by removing small amounts of metal which can not be put back. It is a very bad idea to use a meter type of pitch device to tune accordion reeds. It will give you such an inaccurate reading, that your tuning will be impossible to complete. Tuning by ear, also, is not as accurate as using a strobe device, and even if you are experienced in tunig pianos by ear, you will find it difficult or impossible to tune accordions that way. Most accordion factories use a set of reeds as a standard and tune the accordion to the set with the reed blocks outside on a table.
    Most tuners do not tune the reeds by constantly checking the sound with the reeds inside the accordion, but if you try to do it with the reeds out, the pressure  is different than inside the instrument, and an accurate result is not possible. In fact new accordions are often tuned that way and the tuning is not truly beautiful. It seems that the reeds are usually tuned even at the factory outside on a tuning bellows, using a standard set of reeds as a comparison.  The standard set was tuned inside an accordion, or "fudged" by guessing the pitch differential for the reversed pressure. In either case that is why factory tuning is seldom very well done, but still better than the average amateur.I don't care for that result, as I achieve a better result by my method, which was shown to me by an accordion maker at the Italo-American Accordion Co. in 1979, and ever since then, I have always tuned accordions by taking the reed bar out, making a slight change, and putting it back in the accordion, and then listening and watching my machine, which shows me exactly how the pitch varies with pressure. Outside the accordion, the pressure is reversed, and the reeds that are under negative pressure (vacuum) are the ones that are under positive pressure inside. Some tuners claim to compensate for this by adjusting the "cents" (100th's of a semitone) but I don't believe accuracy can be attained that way.

To be continued... Last update 3-DEC-98.

This page is under construction, and more information will be added soon.

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If after reading this treatise, you have anything to add, or questions,  please don't hesitate, communicate !
I plan to add links to more subjects related to accordion care later.
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