Ebay item 220454578764, a diatonic:
http://cgi.ebay.com/A-VINTAGE-LUDWIG-PIANO-ACCORDION-NO-RESERVE_W0QQitemZ220454578764QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_MusicalInstr_Keyboard_RL?hash=item33541dea4c&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A10|66%3A4|39%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A200
I have had a couple of these and still have one in storage, not as attractive as the one for sale here.
Hi Paul,
I've had a few of them, and seen plenty more over the years, at antique markets, auctions etc. In Britain they're invariably in the C/C# "English chromatic" system, and the example that I now have formerly belonged to the old West Suffolk melodeon player Cyril Stannard, who played any system as long as it had a C row - well actually, that was
all he ever played on them...
The Gebr. Ludwig factory was at Zwota, beside Klingenthal (there's a museum there now - which I visited a few years ago) and they seem to have made this model in the '20s and '30s, decades when the piano accordion was becoming more & more fashionable and some button accordions (both diatonics and CBAs) were built to resemble it.
There's an illustration of a similar one (probably also a Ludwig, but of a more "Italian Model") in
How to play the Chromatic Accordeon by Pietro Piandosi (1932), in the
First Step series:
The Ludwig is very cheaply made and mainly of historical/organological interest.
Yes, I don't think they ever made any expensive models, and the reeds are always on long plates in them.
I have seen a pre-war Paolo Soprani diatonic with similar melody keyboard that was much nicer ...
Was that this G/C one?
Or maybe this one?
But the keys on these are more like the spade-shaped ones on the old-style, stepped-keyboard Italian organetti, with the bar-shaped inside-row ones stained black - like this "Special Accordion with white and black keys" from a 1920's catalogue:
... and a photo of a 1940's Baldoni version also.
I have a Baldoni, Bartoli & Co. catalogue, from around 1930, that illustrates two models:
The upper version is more ambiguous, but the lower one is described as "False Piano" and "made to resemble a piano accordion," having longer keys and three of the "black" notes in white, so (from a distance) it looks more like the real thing. But both are described as "full tone-simple" (rather than "semitone"), so probably in fourth-apart tuning.
Somewhat related (although with smaller, less piano-like keys) are the Polish style instruments including some sold by Hohner.
The style is illustrated in a 1931 Hohner catalogue, described as the Polish or Russian model;
... though diatonic accordions with piano-style ebony keys on the inside row go right back to 1830's France;
... and this 1840s example, with a piano-like keyboard is believed to have been made in Vienna;
I guess button accordions have been haunted by the spectre of the piano keyboard from very early on in their history, going back even before there was such a thing as a piano accordion...
Anyone know who made Joe Flanagan's pseudo-piano-keyboard accordion?
I don't know who made it, but I strongly suspect it was one of the Italian-American firms.
It would remind me somewhat of one I have by the Guerrini Company in San Francisco (the pioneers of piano accordion making in America, in 1909), stamped on the reedblocks "P. PETROMILLI & C. PIATANESI MAY 25 1921 2269" (don't you wish
all makers did that!
), only that one (though really a 2-row diatonic) has an amazing 3-row "piano" keyboard - the inner and outer rows acting on the same levers, so it'd play C/F/C (in high pitch), though if I restored it I'd be tempted to make it C#/D/C# (at A=440):
Whilst an instrument with a similar-looking treble keyboard, but Stradella bass, appears in an early 1900's catalogue from the Tyrolean maker Fidel Socin - only the alignment of the keys is different and it's a true 3-row. The description says that the white keys are for the naturals, and the black ones are for semitones, so I'd suspect it's in the continental G/C/B tuning (what the French would call a "système mixte").