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If you tune one set of reeds at 440 Hz as your reference point, and then another entire set at 441, the beat rate will not stay constant throughout the instrument.  The higher notes will have a higher beat rate than the lower notes.

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If you tuned a whole set of reeds to 440Hz they would all be the same note. You wouldn’t do that. If you tune a set referencing A=440hz,(and the other set A=441) the difference in frequency (and hence the difference in beating) would be faster as you go up the scale. So yes you are right, the beat is not constant if you tune this way, but this doesn’t disprove the idea that 441-440 = 1 hz gives you the beat frequency. That would be the beat  freq only at A in your scenario.

I'm not that keen on novelty videos, but this did surprise me and I think it's probably actual.

https://www.facebook.com/brandoncarline.carver/videos/974125494273155

Seen on Traditional Irish Button Accordion website

I've heard it said that Chuck Berry used to tune his guitar slightly sharp in order to make it stand out from the band.
Possibly an urban myth?

this gives, to the ear, a perceived tuning of D4+10 cents that being the centre of the two reeds. This can be detected by people with good pitch perception and can annoy some fiddlers as the whole box will sound slightly sharp.

Does it though?

10 cents is wildly out of tune - if memory serves me right (Jannsen psychoacoustics course), an average Joe considers anything over 4c to be "out of tune". This threshold is a lot lower for people with perfect pitch, experienced musicians and tuners. So in this case, then any accordion with MM de-tuned to >7c will never be able to play with, say, a piano, as most listeners will consider one of the two to be out of tune.

I've found that a lot of Italian accordions, as well as some Hohners, are tuned with the 'on-pitch' reeds at 442 Hz. This was often intentionally done in an effort to make the accordion 'stand out' or sound 'brighter' (like it needed that help!). The sharp set of reeds is then often an additional 5-20 cents on top of that.  When played along with a guitar or piano that's tuned at 440, I've found that the average person won't perceive the accordion to be out of tune with the accompanying instrument, possibly because the tremolo - with it's varying pitches - tends to mask a lot of that.  A dry-tuned accordion tuned sharp of an accompanying instrument and played alongside it would stand out more noticeably.  Also, many people just understand that there's no such thing as an 'in-tune' accordion 

It's also interesting to note that there generally seems to be a greater tolerance for a person's vocals to be sharp than a musical instrument.  It may have something to do with the timbre of a person's voice.

If they are tuned slightly apart, there will be a tremolo effect in the sound and the rate of the tremolo is a function of the frequency difference. If reed #1 is at 440 Hz (Hz=vibration cycle per second) and reed #2 at 441 Hz, the rate (beat) will be once per second.

This came up in a recent post wherein I suggested that the correlation was not quite so simple.  If you tune one set of reeds at 440 Hz as your reference point, and then another entire set at 441, the beat rate will not stay constant throughout the instrument.  The higher notes will have a higher beat rate than the lower notes.

You have a msg

Willem, what you proposed is basically the numbered musical notation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered_musical_notation

I learned to read the staff as a kid learning the piano, but when I started to play in the band and communicated everything in solfage on a Bb instrument (on the bass clef), numbered notation worked great!  Of course, after a short while I learned to sight read the bass clef staff notation anyway.

I think you will become an expert reading staff notation with your system sooner or later.
But either way, music notation is just notation. Whatever helps you to note the music is all that matters! 

this gives, to the ear, a perceived tuning of D4+10 cents that being the centre of the two reeds. This can be detected by people with good pitch perception and can annoy some fiddlers as the whole box will sound slightly sharp.

Does it though?

10 cents is wildly out of tune - if memory serves me right (Jannsen psychoacoustics course), an average Joe considers anything over 4c to be "out of tune". This threshold is a lot lower for people with perfect pitch, experienced musicians and tuners. So in this case, then any accordion with MM de-tuned to >7c will never be able to play with, say, a piano, as most listeners will consider one of the two to be out of tune.

and then of course there is "Dedic" tuning........ (Which can be explained by someone who understands it

(sigh) I thought I would avoid getting into that with my Typically, since it's not really relevant to the OP's question:

Typically, reed #1 is tuned to nominal note frequency and reed #2 is tuned slightly above.

But now that we're happily thread-drifting, I might as well mention that the usual statement about perceived pitch being the center (or average frequency) of the 2 sounding reeds is only true if the reeds have equal loudness. If one reed is louder, the perceived pitch will be closer to that reed's frequency, an extreme and obvious case being when one reed does not sound at all (!).

   To "be annoying" to fiddlers?   Or not to "be annoying"? 🤔

  Most tunes are made up of a sequence of musical phrases. It's a bit dull, but a great learning exercise to take a phrase that you've got working against a push G … and try it against pull Em instead. As the cross fingering on pull is much more fluent than on push … you'll be amazed how often that works!

  A lot of vigorous G tunes,  written to a G=>G=>C=>D chord lick will transfer to a more interesting G=>Em=>C=>D!  The "trip to wherever" 6/8 jigs a particularly good source for these.

  You've just done a chord substitution, and also re-balanced your bellows air better!

  A further step in substitution, again working more often than not is A(minor) for C. Amaj is *wrong in the key of G, but A_bass is fine. So is using C chord with that A_bass 👍

  Once you've got those fluent … move on to once on G, next time on C, last reprise on the C/A cross chord. Instant variations! 😎

  *A triad has a C# in there! 🥴