Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Stiamh]

Does anybody know when the red 9-coupler models were introduced? Although I thought they were more recent, they must have been out by 1969, if the date of the photo of Kevin Keegan's model on this page is correct: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sean_quinn/psoprani/psoprani5.htm

I ask because someone brought one to show me the other day. It was a D/D# - she had been given it by an Irish colleague after she expressed a whim to learn the box! The basses were tuned to go with the D# row, which I wasn't expecting.

It had a real Joe Cooley sound to it but was leaking air like crazy with a lot of notes not sounding. She said, funny, it was working quite well when I got it a few weeks ago. Removal of the bellows pins revealed that about a dozen reed plates had fallen off and more were about to follow suit. Did you leave it in a very cold or very hot place? Oh... er, maybe!

The couplers were very stiff and generally difficult to operate. Is this fixable? On the only other similar box I've tried the couplers were completely jammed and you had no choice but to play with all four voices.

[george garside]

Does anybody know when the red 9-coupler models were introduced? Although I thought they were more recent, they must have been out by 1969, if the date of the photo of Kevin Keegan's model on this page is correct: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sean_quinn/psoprani/psoprani5.htm

I had one of these in DD#  in if I remember correctly about 1960/61

george
 ]

[an bosca ceoil]

It had a real Joe Cooley sound to it but was leaking air like crazy with a lot of notes not sounding. She said, funny, it was working quite well when I got it a few weeks ago. Removal of the bellows pins revealed that about a dozen reed plates had fallen off and more were about to follow suit. Did you leave it in a very cold or very hot place? Oh... er, maybe!

The couplers were very stiff and generally difficult to operate. Is this fixable? On the only other similar box I've tried the couplers were completely jammed and you had no choice but to play with all four voices.

What a sad tale, though I doubt that it is down to how the new owner has stored it. Probably been deteriorating for years and the reeds were ready to fall off when played again.
If it was unused, especially in adverse conditions for a long time, the stiff couplers could be due to the slides being tight in the blocks, because there is not a lot to deteriorate in the actual switching mechanism.
Obviously it really needs looking at by someone competent before any real damage is caused. Working the couplers, if they are really tight, is as likely to bend something as free them off and the bellows will not take kindly to reeds floating about between the folds!

[Theo]

I ask because someone brought one to show me the other day. It was a D/D# - she had been given it by an Irish colleague after she expressed a whim to learn the box! The basses were tuned to go with the D# row, which I wasn't expecting.

It had a real Joe Cooley sound to it but was leaking air like crazy with a lot of notes not sounding. She said, funny, it was working quite well when I got it a few weeks ago. Removal of the bellows pins revealed that about a dozen reed plates had fallen off and more were about to follow suit. Did you leave it in a very cold or very hot place? Oh... er, maybe!

The couplers were very stiff and generally difficult to operate. Is this fixable? On the only other similar box I've tried the couplers were completely jammed and you had no choice but to play with all four voices.

If it was a gift then I imagine it would be well worth spending the money to get the reeds re-waxed, valves replaced and couplers attended to.  None of those tasks would be out of the ordinary for a good box technician, but as Shy Talk says the couplers could easily be made worse by forcing them.