Accordions

The three-row button accordion and its key:

almost every accordion heard in Panamanian folk music is diatonic, with rows of buttons for the right hand, a small set of basses for the left and two notes on every button, one pushing the bellows and one pulling. Piano accordions and chromatic button accordions, which have every sharp and flat, show up as student instruments, at church or in European repertoire, but are rarely heard on a dance-hall stage. The electric guitar and bass that complete the usual folk line-up have their own place under guitars, and a learner torn between a piano accordion and a keyboard can compare it with the instruments under piano and keyboards.

G, F and the boxes retuned in between:

the key matters more than the colour. Factories ship diatonic accordions in a handful of keys, mainly G-C-F, A-D-G and F-B♭-E♭, and Panamanian technicians move them up or down a tone or a semitone into the flats and sharps the factories leave out, keeping the intervals between the rows. Many folk players also prefer the tuning local technicians give a box to the brighter factory sound, and the music leans heavily on minor keys. So the right box for a learner is the one in the key their teacher or band plays, not the cheapest one going. After the key, compare voices: most learner and mid-range boxes sound two reeds per note, while a three-voice box sounds fuller and weighs more on the shoulder. A child with an eye on contests such as the national accordion contest named after Victorio Vergara is better served by a light two-voice box than a full-weight professional one.

Reed blocks and bellows set the used price:

a button box keeps or loses value according to what is inside it. A replacement set of treble reed blocks for a professional box costs around $500 as a part and a new bellows around $250, before the technician’s time, so a box with several hoarse buttons or a tired bellows should come down by roughly that much against a sound one. At the top end, handmade boxes from makers such as Gabbanelli start around $4,000 new, and a well-kept one is nearly always worth retuning rather than replacing.

Where a button box shows its years:

in the button springs, the wooden valves and the voice of each reed. Play every button push and pull, one row at a time, and listen for a note that has turned hoarse or gone silent, or a button that sticks, clicks or comes back slowly: springs and valves are the usual repairs on a box that has played a lot of dances. Do the same on the bass side. Then check the tuning row by row with a tuner app on your phone, because a retuned box may no longer be in the key stamped on it, and a local technician’s tuning sounds different from the factory one. Ask who tuned it last, and to what.

Listing a button box with its key and its history:

the key comes first, written out for all three rows, with the make, the number of voices and whether it has registers, the switches that change which reeds sound. Say whether it has been retuned or rebuilt and by whom, and whether the tuning is the factory one or a local technician’s: many players have a technician they trust and will want to know whose work they are buying. Record a short video playing each row push and pull and a few bass chords, close enough to hear every note, and photograph the bellows opened out, the straps and the case. Say how it was used, because a box that played weekend dances with a band has worked harder than one that stayed at home. A player driving in from Tonosí to try it will want to play a whole piece in their own key, so give them the key and any retune before they set off, not when they arrive.