Accordionist.org

Hi

I have recently purchased a royal standard 120 piano accordion off ebay and although the sound is brilliant i'm not sure everything is right . Even when I press no keys or buttons I still hear a D (D4 from the keyboard by the sounds of it) Is there anything I can do to stop this without spending a fortune getting it repaired? I'm REALLY pushed for money so if there was any DIY way of dealing with this i'd be very grateful to know.
(One of the treble switches also appears to be broken as it does not stay down, this is not as big an issue but I thought i'd mention it in case it might be related to the problem)

I'm really eager to play so any advice is welcome

Thanks
Danny

this sounds like a valve is not seating correct, or that the pad has come loose, take off the grill & look at it, also some accordions have a small rubber pad under the felt pad, that could have come off or is loose, a lil bit of decon cement can fix that real easy, if its a reg none tone chamber acc, then its easy to fix cuz you can get at it, but if you have a double tone chamber box and its leaking in the tone chamber, you can,t get to it without removing the keys, just make sure its the right key you think is causing the problem,, if all looks fine to you, the only way you can find out which key is doing it,, you have to take out the reed blocks, very easy job, then you open the master register, put the acc in a pitch dark room, get a bright flashlight and shine into the valve area or the holes were you removed the reed blocks, if the pad is bad or loose you will see light comming in, then you will know which 1 it is,, you said d 4, so that would be a common key to go bad cuz its in the middle of the keyboard were you play the most, any questions fell free to ask me, i have re-paired my acc cuz i had the same problem and it was the middle d only i had to remove the keys as it was a loose pad in the tone chamber.

Thank you very much for the quick reply!
When I get the time i'll attempt to open it up see what I can do (probably over weekend). I'll let you know how it goes!

Edward is right on. Just wanted to add info about tone chamber- as he said it's hard to get to. Two sets of reeds are put in a box and face perpendicular to the 2 sets outside of the tone chamber. If indeed you have a tone chamber go to a professional. I just worked on a tone chamber model where it was the pad in the chamber- it's alot of work- good luck- steve

Hi sorry about the late reply
I had a look inside the grill and everything seems to be fine and i know think that the drone is coming from the bass section *sigh*
sorry
i guess this is looking like a job for a professional then?
thanks again for the advice anyway i will certainly use this forum in the future

Danny

sorry to hear that danny, yea if the drone is comming from the bass side,, lots of bucks it will cost to repair that, 300 or more at the min,, just to see the pads clear on the bass side,, all the botton rods have to be removed,, the bass part of a acc is the most intricate part of the instrument, its full of springs, rods, levers, pins, screws & other things, and sometimes even a repair shop can mess up too, cuz i had a older acc that had a drone comming from the bass section, and when i got it back the drone was still there, so i just gave up and got another accordion, after spending 600 dollars,, when drones come out of the bass side its usualy a valve pad that needs re-placed, ha ha thats the easy part, getting to it is another storie- and if you did not know on any acc bass side, those bottons - the rods, they only fit in 1 location no exceptions,, this is the reason to be able to play the instrument before you buy it, and accordions also do get damaged during shipment too,, all it takes is a good bump to mess something up.

Receiving an accordion with a drone on the bass side can be a good lesson for anyone thinking about buying sight unseen. As mentioned above it`s one of the costliest repairs on any accordion if it`s a valve that has to be accessed.
And the Royal Standard brand is no better than a Chinese box , maybe worse. The reed valves are heavy paper with a plastic film over it. The gaskets under the reed blocks are also thick paper. The register mechanisms are plastic. I could go on.
These were a product of Soviet occupied Germany and match/made to the standard of their shabby economy at that time.

There's a chance that by removing the bass side reed blocks you could bend the offending pad back to the right position with thin pliers, or you could replace its padding with something more appropriate, like soft leather. It's time-consuming, and if you bend too hard, you could perhaps damage something in the bass mechanism. There's also the risk of dropping something inside the mechanism. The result will not probably last forever either.

Anyway, if the box is unusable and not worth much, why not give the bass mechanism a try? In my opinion it isn't exactly as difficult as it's rumored to be, although it does take a lot of time when you're doing it for the first time. Use common sense, maybe take photos of every step in case you forget what it looked like originally.

One evening me and my brother dismantled a 5-row 80-b****machine to replace the pad valves which were worn out. I don't know how much more difficult this is with a 6-row machine! I had received the box for free, since it was completely broken: bass reeds were organized wrong by the previous repairer, the keyboard had taken a hit from a blunt object etc. So we thought why not give it a hand, it's not like the box could get much worse.

We took out the button rods and the bass plate out first in one piece (be very very very careful not to let the rods fall out of the holes) with the ends of the button rods still attached to their support bar. This part required some degree of manual dexterity.

Then we started taking out the round bars which operate the pads one at a time. I taped all the round bars together in the order I removed them (and afterwards reassembled them in the reverse order). And of course kept the chord bars and bass bars separate.

After that I lifted the springs off the pads, removed the pads, cleaned everything (including the rods and bars) up as good as I could. At this point you might want to pad the places where to rods and bars connect with silicone tubing or something similar if the bass system doesn't already have them in place - it reduces the mechanism sounds to almost nothing and raises the action. To compensate for raising the action, use a thicker felt+leather on the pads than what originally was there - the pads won't sink as low as they used to, and consequently the buttons won't protrude so far out of the bass mechanism.

I also cut off the bars in the bass pads that open the chord pads too when a bass note is operated. I like to just get the bass notes out of the bass buttons. The higher notes are reserved for the chords only.

Then backtrack everything you've done in reverse order. The most difficult part is getting the button rod + bass plate system back correctly. You have to turn all the round bars as close to the "button down" position as possible, that is the crossbars that connect with the button rods must face out of the mechanism so that they are as far away from the bass plate as possible. Otherwise you'll end up with button rods that do nothing, because the crossbars are on the wrong side of the rods. This is where gravity will work against you, because you'd want to face the bass plate down to keep the button rods in place, but to get the crossbars to the correct position, you'd have to have it exactly upside down... I highly recommend having a pair of helping hands here.

I slipped a pencil inside the chord button rod support bar to keep all the buttons in their "up" position. The bass buttons were not as difficult, so I didn't need a pencil there. Before setting the button+plate system back in place, make absolutely sure all the crossbars are in the correct position. Nothing sweeter than getting 79 of the 80 buttons right, then having to take the button + bass plate system out again. This is easily the most harrowing part of the whole operation.

Anyway, this is all from memory, so I hope I haven't forgotten anything important. Also, it was a pretty old box, so I can't make any guarantee that yours will be similar. I don't think there are that many places where you can ruin your box if you're careful. Getting the button rods + bass plate back in place is difficult, and that's where I fathom you could run into trouble.

For me, knowing that I can indeed replace the pad valves myself does not mean that I will not use the services of professional repairmen; rather now I appreciate why it costs so much. It takes so much time that doing it yourself isn't really worth it (count how many hours you spent repairing it, multiply by your hourly salary to see how much money you could've gotten if you'd done in a few extra hours at work instead, and it probably adds up in favor of having a repairman do it), especially taking into account that you may have to take it to a professional anyway if you make a mistake.

Bottom line: if you're interested in such things and are willing to take the risk, go for it (as long as you have decent pad valve materials available, it's absolutely NOT worth it to spend so much time on dismantling and reassembling the bass machine to put in second-rate valves). Otherwise it's probably financially more viable to have it repaired by someone who really knows what he's going.

Edit: Chances are there's a better way to get the button rods + plate back in place, maybe by taking out all the buttons and carefully arranging them in order, and then inserting them one at a time, but I didn't want to risk getting them wrong, because finding the correct place for every rod would take forever.