How to Avoid Common Mistakes When Disassembling an Accordion

Video Transcript

AMANDA CLAIRE: All right. So we're going to open this up now. And now, you'll be able to see that system of levers that's inside of them, the bass side of an accordion, all right? So, every time I push a button, you see how it's moving several little levers in here at once, and what that's doing is it's opening several holes in the reed bank at once. And every single button here moves different ones. So, this is a really just brilliant kind of system for doing a lot of things at once. So, you see each button opens different levers. So, for that reason, you might want to be careful and not take this apart because if you did, unless you were kind of a professional accordion builder, you might have absolutely no idea how to put it back together again and you might as well just throw it away. But one thing you can do with this side, 'cause a lot of times you might find a bass button that's stuck or doesn't move well, and that's a little bit different problem from maybe the reed isn't sounding, maybe the reed sound but maybe the button's getting stuck or just doesn't move well, in that case,you might want to open this side of the accordion and just kind of test all those different kind of buttons and look at how they're moving the levers. And sometimes just by looking at it, it'll be obvious that maybe some of the levers are getting caught up, maybe either on some debris or maybe it's bent a little bit and so really without this disassembling much of this mechanism, you can often get in there with maybe needle nose pliers or something. And if something's a little bit bent, you can gently get it back into place. But, again, I just wanted to open this so just kinda demystify what's going on, kinda show you what a cool system this is. All right, so every single one of these things is lifting up is opening kind of a different set of reeds--I'm sorry, a different hole. And, of course, that's a way that music chords are made are several notes being played at once, okay? So, again, really the only maintenance that you might want to do here again or if a key is stuck or something is not really moving very well, you can bend it around if you need to very gently. But so why don't we put this thing back together. Now, you know sort of how to maintain--basic maintenance of reeds and valves and a little bit of what's going on on this side. We're going to put everything back together, and learn a little bit about how you coordinate playing the accordion, both the left and the right hand side, and how to use the bellows.

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