I assume you're saying Jackie has/had the exact same model - including 4 basses? Funny how ever so temporarily button boxes had the B&W look that was becoming de rigeur for PAs. Seems like everything became red celluloid after that, excepting the odd Shand Morino.
Taking it out of tremolo Americano or swing or whatever Jerry O'Brien wanted is kinda sacrilegious too, ain't it?
I think Jackie may still have the little black one, but I can't say if they're exactly the same because many of that model have wooden soundboards, and mine has an aluminium one.
When it comes to colour, it seems that, at the same time they were making them in dark grey for the British and Irish markets, Paolo Soprani were making those models in red, or black, for the United States and other countries. But the first boxes made for Britain and Ireland that were red were the pepperpots about 1953-4, though they were more "grey" in construction than the out-and-out "red boxes" from 1955 onwards (though those latter were also being made in black, green. turquoise, and even silver-grey!)
If it's sacrilegious for me to want to increase the tremolo on mine by a few cents, from +10 to (maybe) +15 (which could be very easily changed back again), what do you call Jackie Daly's converting his from D/C# to C#/D, and adding a third voice to the D row, or adding a drone button to his "Holy Grey" grey box?
Actually, didn't the Irish Americans just want everything dry, 2 row melodeons basically?
Old melodeons often have 15 cents of tremolo.
I've never heard soggy tuning from any of those old boys, O'Brien/Derrane/Timmy Cronin/Jim McCann/Tom Seiner. It's all quite clean.
My old (1933-34) Baldoni, Bartoli arrived to me from New York in it's original tuning, with the MMMM reeds tuned 0, -15, +15, +23.
Whilst you had Joe Cooley and Paddy O'Brien (seen here surrounded by some of a sea of admiring Irish-American box players) playing on factory-tuned Paolo Sopranis with +-25 cents of tremolo:
(http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b66/StephenChambers/PaddyOBrienJoeCooley.jpg)
Do you still have - or did you ever actually own - a Hohner C/C#/D? Or was that just something you noticed in the old catalogues?
I've mentioned seeing a Ludwig C/C#/D described in a 1928-29 catalogue as "English Scale". I have two 1930's Hohners that were made in that tuning.