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Author Topic: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice  (Read 4049 times)

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Eliza Russell

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Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« on: August 17, 2017, 09:57:49 AM »

Hi everyone, first post on a new forum, how exciting!!  ;D

So I recently acquired a CF melodeon from auction for the grand price of £45 and don't have any idea what is is or how old it may be... I was wondering if anyone on here would have any ideas? I was told about this forum when I posted pretty much the same thing on the morris dancer's facebook page... I have had a friend guess at the age and he came to the conclusion that is is around 1930s-40s which would make sense, but am curious to hear from "the experts!" :D

It has 37 pencilled in it on every piece inside, and this morning I also noticed that it says ? "weiss?" on the inside of the bellows frame... It has a Stahlstimmen label on the side.
It is a smaller size than my Hohner Erica and I have attached a picture of the two of them together for clarity. Also, I notice it has the old type bellows in yellow and black...

I will be needing some advice regarding doing it up at some point soon as I believe the bellows are a little leaky as when I have tried playing ti a lot of air is used very quickly, and it has been tuned so one of the reeds on the F row plays the same note in both directions which is very annoying! I do know a guy who has a tuning table setup who said he would help me with this but I have no idea where to start! I want to tune it so that instead of it having a MM voice, it has ML and would like to possibly one day be adventurous and try adding stops, although the priority right now is to get it back to good working order. It definitely needs a re-tune as it quite tinny! If I do successfully manage to add stops on it in the future, I would also like to do the same with my Erica.

I would like to build/ have new bellows built for it but don't know which option would be cheaper? I have seen the bits to build available to buy through cgm and would like to try to do it myself, as that was the idea behind getting the box in the firts place, but would need guidance as how to go about this! The only maintenance I have done on a melodeon previously is to felt the fingerboard and change a few springs, so am very excited and extremely open to advice and willing to learn!

I will post pictures of the interior in a reply to this post as I can only upload 4 attachments at a time. It has been worked on inside, albeit poorly by the looks of things as someone used an open safety pin as a makeshift air button spring!

Any assistance aging the melodeon or guessing where it may have come from originally (I was told Germany) would be helpful, as would tips and pointers in fixing it up!

I am toying with the idea of sanding off the pearloid and staning then varnishing it to make it more personal, however rather like the pearloid as it looks really old and gives it character. Not sure yet... If I were to sand it off would it decrease in any little value it may have?

Eliza Russell  :|||:
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Eliza Russell

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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2017, 10:03:38 AM »

A few pics of the insides... :)
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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2017, 10:38:32 AM »

Apart from the treble pallet fixings, the innards look the same as my titchy no-name, even down to the single bevelled edge on the bass pallets. But I've no idea of the age or origin of that, either!
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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2017, 10:51:26 AM »

Welcome to the forum Eliza, and great that you want to learn how to get your new box into good playing order.

I'll just pick out a few salient questions from your post.

It would have been made in Saxony in what is now eastern Germany most likely in the 1930s.   Weiss is German for White and might be an owners name.  Stahlstimmen is German for "steel reeds"

Before you condemn the bellows check careful where the air is escaping.  Leaky pallets are very likely and the gasket where the bellows fits onto the ends are also often leaky.  Either of these is more likely to be the source of the leakiness than the bellows themselves.

My suggestions for how to approach this renovation would be to deal with things in this order:

1 Identify the air leaks and fix them.  Unless you can get the box airtight there is not much point in doing anything else.  Its fundamental to making the instrument playable.

2 Do a full reed overhaul.  This means taking the reed plates off the reed blocks, replacing all the leather valves, tuning up to concert pitch if necessary, changing the the C/C button on the F row to C/D.   Then re-waxing the reed plates.  Your reeds are on long plates so this makes the waxing simpler.

Good luck and keep asking questions.



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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2017, 11:13:55 AM »

Hi Eliza, and welcome to the Melnet forum! You will doubtless get a lot of advice and hopefully encouragement here; there are some very knowledgeable people around, with lots of experience with both playing and fettling melodeons.

I would guess that your melodeon is a relatively cheap instrument that were mass produced in their thousands from the Klingenthal area in what used to be East Germany, close to the border with the Czech republic. I would also guess that it dates from the 1920s or 1930s but I may be wrong.

'Stahlstimmen' means steel reeds, which are normally considered to be good, but I see from your photos that the treble end reeds consist of a single zinc plate with multiple reed tongues - not normally a sign of high quality. This sort of reed plate was abandoned long ago in favour of the modern design of a push/pull pair of tongues on a single reed plate for each button.

The leather valves are badly curled, only to be expected for an instrument of this age. Replacing the valves would immediately improve the response and cure some of the air hungriness, but there may well be bellows leakage problems too, either from compressed or worn gaskets, and/or splits and other defects in the bellows components.

It would not be possible to convert the instrument to LM with the current reeds. It might be possible with new reeds, but it would depend on the dimensions of the underlying reed chambers; L reeds are generally significantly larger and on longer reed plates, so it might not be feasible to fit L reeds on the existing sized reed chambers. In any event, it could work out to be an expensive modification to attempt and personally I wouldn't recommend it.

I would suggest your best course of action would be to accept the MM tuning as it is, but strip everything down, clean off all the old wax, replace the valves and re-wax the reed plates and retune it to modern pitch in C/F. It would be a good exercise and learning experience for you, but I would hesitate to do much more than that on an instrument which, no matter how much work you put into it, is probably never going to play particularly well.

The note on the F row which plays the same (C, I guess) in the same direction is known as the Gleichton, and is a feature of the 'Club' system of tuning, which was developed in Germany. It allows for more smoother playing of tunes in F by cross-rowing mostly on the pull. While many Club tuned instruments have been de-clubbed, the system still has many adherents today, especially in Germany.  To be really versatile, Club instruments usually have a half-row ('helper row') of reversals and accidentals. Details of Club layouts are here:
http://www.forum.melodeon.net/index.php/page,keyboard_25_row.html

I'm sure that's enough for you to be thinking about for the moment. No doubt others will chime in here too!

Edit - While I was writing this, Theo has just posted more or less the same advice as me, but as usual, he gets straight to the point whereas I am more long-winded!  ;)

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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #5 on: August 17, 2017, 11:51:08 AM »

While it should be possible, I would be a little wary about retuning that Gleichton C/C button on an instrument with long reedplates; one slip of the file could become an expensive-to-fix problem, compared with a melodeon with individual pairs for which replacements are readily available.

I rarely, if ever,  use that D pull on the F row preferring even on a non-club box to pick up the "missing" note from the outer (C) row where it falls readily under my little finger (Try it on your Erica, Eliza; trust me, it works, and feels quite natural).

(And for those amongst us who are wary of cross row playing (c'mon, hands up!), it's a good place to begin.)
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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #6 on: August 17, 2017, 11:57:07 AM »

A knuckle of pork is a hock. Sorry, it's a compulsion.
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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #7 on: August 17, 2017, 12:10:08 PM »

A knuckle of pork is a hock. Sorry, it's a compulsion.

?????
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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #8 on: August 17, 2017, 12:37:43 PM »

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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #10 on: August 17, 2017, 01:04:32 PM »

Getting back to the topic ...

The number  37 pencilled onto various parts is most likely to be a batch number used in the factory to keep all the parts of one instrument together.  It's unlikely to be a year of manufacture.

Looking at the treble pallets it's clear two have been re-fitted, possibly a previous  attempt to fix a leak.
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Eliza Russell

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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #11 on: August 17, 2017, 01:14:54 PM »

A knuckle of pork is a hock. Sorry, it's a compulsion.
What the?! I take it you must be the forum nut? LOL! There's one in every forum! Are you a morris dancer/ musician as well?  :M ;D

While it should be possible, I would be a little wary about retuning that Gleichton C/C button on an instrument with long reedplates; one slip of the file could become an expensive-to-fix problem, compared with a melodeon with individual pairs for which replacements are readily available.

I rarely, if ever,  use that D pull on the F row preferring even on a non-club box to pick up the "missing" note from the outer (C) row where it falls readily under my little finger (Try it on your Erica, Eliza; trust me, it works, and feels quite natural).

(And for those amongst us who are wary of cross row playing (c'mon, hands up!), it's a good place to begin.)

Ah this is really interesting! I've never come across club tuning to play (just heard of it) as I've only been playing for around a year. Although in that time I've managed to go from self-taught beginner to teaching other beginners as I do about 4 hours of practice/ playing  a day... And my morris side actually sent me on an all-expenses-paid trip to Halsway for their inaugural DG workshop this year where I managed to cope with the advanced group. Not sure how that happened but guess practice does pay off? It's a passion anyway, and one that drives my poor mother and neighbours to distraction as they get melodeon from breakfast to bedtime!

As for row crossing, some of the best tunes are played across the rows. My personal favourite to play is Edges (Andy Cutting- he videoed it for me when I went to Halsway in May) and that is played entirely across the rows! Love a good crossing tune, but as I play primarily for the morris I mainly stick to the boring up and down type of playing so that my basses aren't too eccentric compared to everyone else and fit better and I guess just because that is how I learned those tunes. That's why I found that note rather inconvenient because it breaks the pattern in my brain for the morris tunes, but I am sure I could adapt to it very quickly. I have been adding lots of treble chords into my morris tunes to make them a bit more interesting, so could see that helping there as well. I always go on about wanting more reversals, and now I have one I'm ungrateful for it haha.  ;D

Welcome to the forum Eliza, and great that you want to learn how to get your new box into good playing order.

I'll just pick out a few salient questions from your post.

It would have been made in Saxony in what is now eastern Germany most likely in the 1930s.   Weiss is German for White and might be an owners name.  Stahlstimmen is German for "steel reeds"

Before you condemn the bellows check careful where the air is escaping.  Leaky pallets are very likely and the gasket where the bellows fits onto the ends are also often leaky.  Either of these is more likely to be the source of the leakiness than the bellows themselves.

My suggestions for how to approach this renovation would be to deal with things in this order:

1 Identify the air leaks and fix them.  Unless you can get the box airtight there is not much point in doing anything else.  Its fundamental to making the instrument playable.

2 Do a full reed overhaul.  This means taking the reed plates off the reed blocks, replacing all the leather valves, tuning up to concert pitch if necessary, changing the the C/C button on the F row to C/D.   Then re-waxing the reed plates.  Your reeds are on long plates so this makes the waxing simpler.

Good luck and keep asking questions.




Hi Eliza, and welcome to the Melnet forum! You will doubtless get a lot of advice and hopefully encouragement here; there are some very knowledgeable people around, with lots of experience with both playing and fettling melodeons.

I would guess that your melodeon is a relatively cheap instrument that were mass produced in their thousands from the Klingenthal area in what used to be East Germany, close to the border with the Czech republic. I would also guess that it dates from the 1920s or 1930s but I may be wrong.

'Stahlstimmen' means steel reeds, which are normally considered to be good, but I see from your photos that the treble end reeds consist of a single zinc plate with multiple reed tongues - not normally a sign of high quality. This sort of reed plate was abandoned long ago in favour of the modern design of a push/pull pair of tongues on a single reed plate for each button.

The leather valves are badly curled, only to be expected for an instrument of this age. Replacing the valves would immediately improve the response and cure some of the air hungriness, but there may well be bellows leakage problems too, either from compressed or worn gaskets, and/or splits and other defects in the bellows components.

It would not be possible to convert the instrument to LM with the current reeds. It might be possible with new reeds, but it would depend on the dimensions of the underlying reed chambers; L reeds are generally significantly larger and on longer reed plates, so it might not be feasible to fit L reeds on the existing sized reed chambers. In any event, it could work out to be an expensive modification to attempt and personally I wouldn't recommend it.

I would suggest your best course of action would be to accept the MM tuning as it is, but strip everything down, clean off all the old wax, replace the valves and re-wax the reed plates and retune it to modern pitch in C/F. It would be a good exercise and learning experience for you, but I would hesitate to do much more than that on an instrument which, no matter how much work you put into it, is probably never going to play particularly well.

The note on the F row which plays the same (C, I guess) in the same direction is known as the Gleichton, and is a feature of the 'Club' system of tuning, which was developed in Germany. It allows for more smoother playing of tunes in F by cross-rowing mostly on the pull. While many Club tuned instruments have been de-clubbed, the system still has many adherents today, especially in Germany.  To be really versatile, Club instruments usually have a half-row ('helper row') of reversals and accidentals. Details of Club layouts are here:
http://www.forum.melodeon.net/index.php/page,keyboard_25_row.html

I'm sure that's enough for you to be thinking about for the moment. No doubt others will chime in here too!

Edit - While I was writing this, Theo has just posted more or less the same advice as me, but as usual, he gets straight to the point whereas I am more long-winded!  ;)



I shone a torch through the bellows and noticed that the light shines through some of the leather corners and not others... I think they are made of a different leather though as those particular corners are white and not black like the others. It doesn't shine through like a hole though, more so that the leather looks thinner in those areas. The bellows are like this in about 10 places, so if this is causing the leakage then I would rather build new bellows than patch the old ones. I guess I just really want to turn my hand at bellows building if I am truthful.  ::)

The gaskets on the end of the bellows are actually coming loose, and I did have to spent half an hour scraping some form of sealant out from that area to open the box up in the first place, so I think you could have hit on the cause of my issue here! Silly me, I didn't think to play the box before I did this so can't know for sure. The bellows do need re-taping on the back as the black tape is very worn, so I am looking to do that but will need advice about how to go about it. I know where to buy the tape and adhesive (although heard PVA works well?) but don't know quite how to go about it.

My hohner has plastic reed valves inside and I have seen that I can buy these offline also. Would it be better replacing with plastic or should I stick to leather? Does the material make a difference to the overall sound of the box? I've decided that I'll keep the MM tuning and maybe re-tune my Erica if and when I can. I've been toying with building a custom box but didn't want to jump the gun so figured that I could try fixing one up first, which is where this little box comes in. I'd rather like to retain the CF tuning (been told I should re-tune to DG!!! :o) as I can sing along quite nicely and fancy whipping it out for that purpose during pub sessions with the morris as nobody in my side currently does that. It's not massively loud either, unlike my Erica, but guessing that could be all down to the airflow and lack thereof?

Anyway, thank you everyone for the useful feedback and warm welcomes!! :) I'll keep the questions coming...
I bought the box out of my buskings from the other week (I make around £50 an hour) and now need to get out there again and busk a bit more so I can do it up! Hard up student and all that. This will be a very gradual process, but I appreciate everyone putting in the time to help me out! :)
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Eliza Russell

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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #12 on: August 17, 2017, 01:23:58 PM »

Forgot to post this pic earlier and find it quite impressive :D
Nothing like a box in bits...  :|||:
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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #13 on: August 17, 2017, 03:10:38 PM »


boring up and down type of playing .

Excuse me?   BORING???!!!
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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #14 on: August 17, 2017, 03:22:57 PM »


While it should be possible, I would be a little wary about retuning that Gleichton C/C button on an instrument with long reedplates; one slip of the file could become an expensive-to-fix problem, compared with a melodeon with individual pairs for which replacements are readily available.


Just looking at your photos again, (and the crossword clues >:E ), and unless my eyes are deceiving me, it looks like the F row *might* be individual reed pairs, not long plates like the C row. In which case you can probably ignore my earlier warning about attempting to change the C/C to a C/D if you really wanted to.....


boring up and down type of playing .

Excuse me?   BORING???!!!

Probably a bit like the difference between the Quick Crossword and the Cryptic....   8)

(...coat)
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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #15 on: August 17, 2017, 03:30:45 PM »



boring up and down type of playing .

Excuse me?   BORING???!!!

Probably a bit like the difference between the Quick Crossword and the Cryptic....   8)



Frankly I find that even more insulting than the original.
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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #16 on: August 17, 2017, 03:34:22 PM »

Just looking at your photos again... and unless my eyes are deceiving me, it looks like the F row *might* be individual reed pairs, not long plates like the C row.
Yes, that reed plate puzzled me too. I can see the darker stripes which look as if they might be channels filled with wax, but the nearest and rearmost edges of the plate(s?) look very uniform as if it is or was a single plate. Possibly it was originally a single long reed reed plate which has been sawn into individual pairs?

There is always a potential problem of getting a good air seal between the reed chambers on the underside of long reed plates. Possibly this has been a problem in the past and someone has sawn the original plate into pairs in order to get a betteer wax seal between the reed chambers. You won't be able to tell until you start stripping the wax and the reed plate(s).

Good luck with the renovation, Eliza!

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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #17 on: August 17, 2017, 03:43:58 PM »



boring up and down type of playing .

Excuse me?   BORING???!!!

Oh yikes! Just a matter of opinion, although I love a challenge and adore learning new tunes, especially crossy ones as they have leeway to be a bit more creative in the bass hand. No offense meant, just my preferred style of playing. I do love playing for the morris but have to say that a lot of their dance tunes aren't very stimulating... Or not with Sompting Morris ladies anyway as they plod along and the tunes get rather durge-like, so much so that us musicians end up changing up the key halfway through a dance just to make it a bit more interesting and stop ourselves from falling asleep!!

Just looking at your photos again... and unless my eyes are deceiving me, it looks like the F row *might* be individual reed pairs, not long plates like the C row.
Yes, that reed plate puzzled me too. I can see the darker stripes which look as if they might be channels filled with wax, but the nearest and rearmost edges of the plate(s?) look very uniform as if it is or was a single plate. Possibly it was originally a single long reed reed plate which has been sawn into individual pairs?

There is always a potential problem of getting a good air seal between the reed chambers on the underside of long reed plates. Possibly this has been a problem in the past and someone has sawn the original plate into pairs in order to get a betteer wax seal between the reed chambers. You won't be able to tell until you start stripping the wax and the reed plate(s).

Good luck with the renovation, Eliza!



I'm out at the moment but will get some pictures of both when I get back home later... Very weird if that is so! Thanks for the luck, it sounds as though I MAY just need it!!  :|||:
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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #18 on: August 17, 2017, 03:46:44 PM »



boring up and down type of playing .

Excuse me?   BORING???!!!

Oh yikes! Just a matter of opinion, although I love a challenge and adore learning new tunes, especially crossy ones as they have leeway to be a bit more creative in the bass hand. No offense meant, just my preferred style of playing. I do love playing for the morris but have to say that a lot of their dance tunes aren't very stimulating... Or not with Sompting Morris ladies anyway as they plod along and the tunes get rather durge-like, so much so that us musicians end up changing up the key halfway through a dance just to make it a bit more interesting and stop ourselves from falling asleep!!


This is going really well - you've now managed to insult an entire morris side as well......
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Among others, Saltarelle Pastourelle II D/G; Hohner 4-stop 1-rows in C & G; assorted Hohners; 3-voice German (?) G/C of uncertain parentage; lovely little Hlavacek 1-row Heligonka; B♭/E♭ Koch. Newly acquired G/C Hohner Viktoria. Also Fender Jazz bass, Telecaster, Stratocaster, Epiphone Sheraton, Charvel-Jackson 00-style acoustic guitar, Danelectro 12-string and other stuff..........

Squeezing in the Cyprus sunshine

Eliza Russell

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Re: Mystery Melodeon- Aging and Fixing Advice
« Reply #19 on: August 17, 2017, 04:04:29 PM »



boring up and down type of playing .

Excuse me?   BORING???!!!

Oh yikes! Just a matter of opinion, although I love a challenge and adore learning new tunes, especially crossy ones as they have leeway to be a bit more creative in the bass hand. No offense meant, just my preferred style of playing. I do love playing for the morris but have to say that a lot of their dance tunes aren't very stimulating... Or not with Sompting Morris ladies anyway as they plod along and the tunes get rather durge-like, so much so that us musicians end up changing up the key halfway through a dance just to make it a bit more interesting and stop ourselves from falling asleep!!


This is going really well - you've now managed to insult an entire morris side as well......

A morris side I have been with for the last 21 years, since I was 2, and who know my humour! All us musicians speak about the tunes quite openly and a lot of the dancers agree! I love the morris though, they are my second family.

I have to say that I am not quite sure whether you are joking or not as I have issues reading tone...
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Eliza :)
(Morris musician with SVM, busker and general melodeon nut.)
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