How to Repair a Reed in an Accordion

Video Transcript

AMANDA CLAIRE: So, this bank of reeds is in pretty good shape. I mean the reeds are fairly clean. They're not rusted out. Some of them have a little bit of corrosion on them probably from some humidity or moisture. Looks like one of the little leather flaps is missing here, but it's kind of a high reed, it might not affect whether that reed plays or not. Okay? Remember in a diatonic instrument, there would be a different note on the pull versus on the squeeze, and so, the reed there and one underneath this leather flap would be two different notes. If I was a professional accordion restorer, I might look at this and see how some of these leather flaps are kind of starting to pull away. See how they're kinda sticking out? Kinda like little tongues. They're not really lying flat up against it. And so, a really quality instrument will have those leather flaps just always nice and flat up against the side of the reed. But anyway, now you have this out, now what you can do is just make sure that all the reeds were intact. And so, what I mean is sometimes the reason that a reed won't vibrate is because there's a little piece of debris or dirt or maybe a little grain of sand or something that got in your accordion, and it will be lodged just right kind of between maybe the reed and the little metal reed housing. And so then what you can do, if you have bought an instrument where one or more of the reeds isn't working, just open it up, try and figure out which of the reeds isn't sounding and then actually physically get in there, be real gentle and then just see, just make sure that that reed itself can freely move within that housing. And a lot of times you'll find that if there's a reed that doesn't work, it's because it's caught up somehow. Either maybe it's bent a little bit or there's some corrosion or some debris. And if you clean it out and free it up, then that reed will start working again.

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