Swiss and Tirolean accordions query

[Chris Ryall]

This was prompted by the 'Heligonka' thread elsewhere.  6 years ago I biked to South Switzerland and found one of their accordions in a shop. It looked like ours but had a more complex left end and was not something I was going to pick up and play. Any ideas?

Googled 'Heligonka' and all the sites are Slovakian - is the Swiss type related, or are they ... yet more variants? D3R (on field trip to Lapland)

[Bill Young]

It was possibly a Schwyzerörgeli. Wikipedia article here.
There are lots of YouTube examples.

[HallelujahAl]

Am restoring a Heligonka here
Drumkilbo of this forum plays an orgeli - he kindly sent me a recording of his efforts and it blew me away - great sounding instrument and played by a real box genius! Really worth getting in touch with him for more info about this kind of box. Can you tell us a little bit more about it - how many rows did it have, what tuning was it? etc
AL

[MartinW]

The Shwyzerorgli I have has 3 rows on the right hand, the outer 2 are a standard Eflat/Bflat layout. The inner row is an assortment of accientals and reversals.

The left hand end has 18 buttons. These are similar to a small piano accordian -9 pairs of note and major chord, the same push and pull, with G at the bottom, then C, F, Bflat, Eflat etc.

I bought it in Interlaken a few years back, having bought a small 1 row (in F sharp!) at the same shop a couple of years earlier. It is fun to play and has a nice sound, but I haven't really used it a lot. The left end is quite heavy, and it needs a different style of playing with less changes of bellows direction or your left arm tires quite quickly.

Martin   

[Drumkilbo]

Many thanks for that Al.I'm not sure that a genuine orgeli player from Switzerland would think much of it tho' !
Martin W sums up the instrument well, altho' I have the A/D rather than the flats [ thinking of the fiddler]
Fascinating box tho' and such a distinctive and appealing sound.

Ian.