It's certainly well worth a try, it has a real 'bark' that many other italian boxes just don't have to my ears. I found the buttons rather hard work and got Theo to weaken the springs a little, this may be a personal idiosyncracy but the other melodeon player for my morris side who plays a Castagnari Mory agreed that the buttons were stiffer than his. All in all I'm very pleased I bought it.
I certainly found the bass a bit heavy to press delicately (if this is not a contradiction) simply cured by lifting part of the bass mechanism out of the way - both pressure required reduced and for me anyway a better balance between bass & treble - others who have tried it seem to like the bass particularly .
it fitted my 3 point criteria for choosing a box
1. I could afford it!
2. I was immediately attracted to the sound it made
2. compared with other boxes of same price (& some more expensive ones) the action, bellows etc felt good( with the exeption of the 'sortable' heavy to press bass)
- It also had the 'bonus' of a switchable low reed set, which is usually the preserve of more expensive boxes.
george.