In this post I describe all the accordions I’ve owned. I should probably make similar pages for acoustic pianos, electromechanical keyboard instruments, and synthesizers. That feels like a lot of work… maybe someday. Even this page isn’t finished; you’ll see some one-line reminders below where I intend to come back and fill in the info.

Accordions I Still Have, In the Order I Got Them

Baleani Lawrence (ca. 1967)

I purchased this accordion used from Boaz Accordions in Berkeley, California (long since closed) for about $1800 in 2003 or 2004. I paid more than I ever imagined investing in an accordion, but it came recommended by my then-teacher Mike Zampiceni and has been entirely worth the money.

It’s hard to get much info about the Baleani brand. Info on the web suggests that the full name of the brand is Altimoro Baleani, and for sure they were located in Castelfidardo. This accordion is a full-size piano accordion with a “LAWRENCE” badge on the front; it’s hard to tell what the “LAWRENCE” badge means because the same badging was used on other, less full-featured Baleani accordions.

LMMH on the right, 5 ranks of reeds on the left, 41/120 Stradella, with 11 registrations on the right and 5 registrations on the left. No tone chamber. I don’t know the provenance of the reeds. The reed blocks and other wooden parts inside bear the mark “1967” in pencil and it would make sense that that’s the year it was made. Like most accordions of its age, this one has a low C on the bass side and the contralto reed bank straddles the tenor and alto evenly (F –> F#), as it normally did with accordions of this era.

The musette tuning is interesting and unorthodox: It’s a straight-across, untapered +12-cent tuning, which I like despite (or because of) its sounding less refined than a tapered tuning.

This instrument was obviously played a lot before I got it, and had been modified by technicians of different skill levels. Over the years I’ve had several rounds of work done to bring out the best in it: voicing and light tuning touch-ups by Yakov Puhachevsky and keyboard setup by Petosa are the most significant. The keyboard setup was especially unjustified from a financial perspective but it made the difference that allows me to use the instrument fully and confidently in performance. I like this accordion so I wanted to make the investment and I’ve been very glad I did.

I play this accordion in public frequently with Bistro Moustache because, lacking a tone chamber, it’s the quietest accordion I own on the bassoon and clarinet registrations, and we often play in small spaces where the acoustic sound of an accordion can make it hard for acoustic guitarists to hear their guitars well enough. Also, the unusually raw-sounding middle-reed tuning suits a lot of the French musette repertoire that this group plays.

Serenellini Professional Cassotto 414 (2020)

Black celluloid, 41/120 Stradella, 4/5 LMMH with LM in cassotto, +10 cent musette tuning, 15 treble and 7 bass registrations. Artigiana B-Turbo reeds with winkelbass on the left. The left side has low A bass and tenor ranks with C-tuned soprano, alto, and straddle ranks.

In 2019 when I got serious about learning to play accordion at an acceptable level for public performance, I realized I would want to own a good tone-chamber instrument to perform with. I had visited Petosa already and had put myself on their waiting list for a new AM-1100. But I knew that would take a long time so I kept my eyes open for other possibilities. I saw a post on Facebook by Ami Salesevic at St. Louis Accordions, and I reached out to him. I learned that he represented Serenellini accordions in the US. He was generous with his time and information, including plausible and candid explanations of why he worked with Serenellini instead of other brands. He struck me as a no-nonsense guy, much like everyone at Petosa. He was patient with my naïve questions and his answers made sense. Long story short, in Autumn of 2019 through St. Louis Accordions I ordered a custom accordion built to my specifications by Serenellini.

I wanted:

• a black celluloid-finished, 41/120 LMMH double-tone-chamber instrument with all 15 registration possibilities on the right side,
• some less common left-side registrations focusing on the midrange reeds rather than combinations I never expected to use like bass soprano,
• a tapered +10 to +12 musette tuning of the middle reeds,
• Stradella bass
• low A on the left side with contralto, alto, and soprano ranks dovetailing with the low A rather than leaving them in the old-fashioned C-tuning octaves as most modern low-A and low-G accordions do (to preserve the relationship between chord voicings and key tonalities that players of older instruments are accustomed to),
• and L-shaped (“winkelbass”) reed block on the left for the bass and tenor reeds, and
• the most responsive reeds available, even if it meant sacrificing some power.

I preferred a simpler, less ornamented grille design and as many treble registrations as possible, so Serenellini recommended that they build my instrument around the Professional 414 Cassotto chassis rather than their nominal top-of-the-line Imperator, which has a fancier grille but essentially no other differences from the 414, if I recall correctly. They agreed to build me that instrument. Through conversations with Ami and Mr. Luciano Serenellini at the factory, we settled on Artigiana B-Turbo reeds.

The COVID-19 pandemic swept brutally through Italy when my accordion was partly built in the Spring of 2020, so it was no surprise that finishing the instrument took longer than anyone had planned. I received the accordion in San Francisco on June 29, 2020 after it made a stop in Saint Louis for Ami to give it a final check and make sure it was all working correctly.

The accordion arrived with one of the bass registrations configured incorrectly and with the contralto, alto, and soprano reeds pitched in the usual way rather than dovetailed with the low-A bass and tenor reeds. Fixing the registration was a simple matter of cutting and installing new slides which Serenellini gladly provided, and the accordion sounds so good as built that I decided it wouldn’t be worth trying to get the bass side reeds changed to meet my original specification.

This instrument immediately became my top choice for live performance, and remains one of my top choices even as I’ve acquired several other beauties. Its keyboard and button action are smooth and are among the quietest, the reeds respond very well and hold their pitch quite steady at different bellows pressures, and the tuning is the most even and precise of all my accordions. Especially with the pickup system I use, the bass is rich and powerful. It’s a beautiful instrument for live performance and recording; check out its bassoon and bass piano registrations here.

Petosa AM-1100-ESM Concert (2012)

Black celluloid, 41/120 Stradella, 4/5 LMMH with LM in cassotto, +9 cent musette tuning, 11 treble and 9+master bass registrations. Voci Armoniche hand-made reeds. The left side has low A bass and tenor ranks with C-tuned soprano, alto, and straddle ranks.

Shortly after I received my Serenellini from Ami at St. Louis Accordions, he contacted me to let me know he had acquired a late-model used Petosa AM-1100 ESM Concert that he would be selling. He knew I was on Petosa’s waiting list for a new AM-1100 so he rightly thought I might be interested. Through conversation with Ami and exchange of photos with Joe Petosa, I learned that this one had several unusual attributes, all of which made it more attractive to me, the main ones being that it was in original factory condition and that it was a +9-cent LMMH instrument. Most AM-1100s are either 3-reed-musette instruments (LMMM) or are dry-tuned LMMH instruments.

After the instrument received Joe’s endorsement of its excellent, factory-original condition based on the pictures I was able to share with him and his guidance that the price was reasonable, I pulled the trigger and became an AM-1100 owner much sooner than I’d expected. I had been looking long enough to know I wouldn’t easily find another one matching my preferences, and indeed I haven’t seen a used one for sale in the roughly five years since.

This instrument’s ESM designation means “Electronic Stereo Microphone,” i.e., that it came from the factory with a stereo mic system (Sennheister MT-04N) built in. Like the Harmonik system I favor, the MT-04N can be switched between mono output (signal on TS mixing the signals from the two sides of the instrument) and stereo output (providing separate signals for the two sides of the instrument, one on TS and one on RS).

This ESM instrument came with its original grille set up with the factory-installed microphones; this grille is lined with a mute that can be opened and closed with a slide on the outside.

Joe Petosa explained that the instrument was sold originally with two grilles; in addition to the mute grille I’d received, it had also had a so-called “power grille” with nothing but the usual acoustically transparent grille cloth obstructing its openings. First I asked Joe what it would cost to have a new power grille made for this instrument and he demurred, saying it would be prohibitively expensive. I figured maybe I could work that out somehow, but before trying to convince Joe to make me a new one, I asked Ami about the power grille and he said he hadn’t received it with the instrument but much to my surprise he seemed optimistic that he might be able to track it down. And track it down he did! I don’t know how nor from whom, but it wasn’t long before Ami shipped me the instrument’s original power grille in fine condition.

My history of adding Harmonik AC-5001-PLUS to the power grille, leaving existing system functional.

My history of cutting and installing new register slides bought from Petosa so I can select any combination of bass reeds.

Sale history: 2012 Richfield, Ohio, then for sale in New York in 2019.

Character: Keyboard is fast, not the quietest.

This instrument is one of my top choices for public performance, especially when there is a bassist in the band.

Victoria Poeta C-system (probably 2018 or maybe early 2019)

Bare wood, 42/120 Stradella, red and off-white keys, 4/5 reeds LMMH / LMMM interchangeable blocks, double tone chamber, Stradella. Cagnoni hand-made reeds. The left side has low A bass and tenor ranks with C-tuned soprano, alto, and straddle ranks.

In late 2021 or early 2022, when this accordion showed up on Petosa’s page of certified pre-owned instruments, I bought it pretty quickly. I was interested in experimenting with the C-system button layout for the right hand, one of several layouts that seems more ergonomic and simpler than the piano-key system I’m accustomed to. With some time invested sporadically, I can say I still feel the C system is fundamentally better than the piano-key layout but I still play the piano layout much better because I’m much more familiar with it.

This instrument was originally made LMMH. The first owner of this instrument had additional reed blocks made for it so that by interchanging them one can get LMMM also.

This instrument had a checkered history with its original owner who reported that he had to struggle mightily to get the instrument delivered to him as it had been promised, including a wait of nearly a year while the instrument stayed at the factory to have the extra reed blocks made and installed. And still some aspects weren’t what Victoria had agreed on with him. Even though he wound up with a nice instrument in the end, he sold it to Petosa because the experience had left a sour taste in his mouth.

For my part, I’m happy with it because for me it was never supposed to be anything but what it actually is.

Petosa Chambertone (1958)

Black celluloid, 41/120 Stradella, 4/5, LMMH with LM in cassotto. 11 treble and 6 bass registrations. The left side has traditional low-C design for all ranks (F# –> F straddle). This is my only dry-tuned accordion, which definitely influences the situations where I’ll choose to perform with it since no musette tuning is available and instead you get an absolutely massive, gorgeous concert tuning. See below for more discussion of the reeds.

Anand Joseph, a fellow bay-area resident and student of my former teacher Mike Zampiceni, has become a friend of mine and seems to enjoy buying and selling accordions almost as much as he enjoys playing them. From time to time he and I get together for show and tell, and it was one of those times when I played a 1959 Petosa Chambertone that he had purchased, I think from Guenadiy Lazarov and I believe it was on that occasion that I learned the Chambertone is the progenitor of Petosa’s AM-1100 flagship model line. Anand’s 1959 Chambertone had the famous Guidobaldi reeds, the work of Elio Guidobaldi who made a name for himself as one of the great reed artisans in the heyday of the accordion in Italy.

I enjoyed playing Anand’s Chambertone but it had some wear and tear that made the keyboard a bit noisy and uneven. To the extent that I could tease my experience of the reeds apart from my experience of the rest of the instrument, I really liked the reeds: They had a broad dynamic range and seemed to respond very well.

Some months later I saw this 1958 Chambertone for sale through Petosa’s certified pre-owned program. It’s a year older than the one Anand had let me try, and best I could tell its mechanical parts were in better shape. I went ahead and bought it, knowing that for the price of return shipping I could send it back for a refund if I didn’t like it.

Actually receiving the accordion was more of an adventure than I hoped, because it got broken in shipping. One of the wooden bosses holding the bass machine in the left side of the accordion was broken away from the bass foundation plate. This experience, not my only instance of having a professionally packed and shipped accordion damaged in transit, is part of why I always try to avoid shipping these instruments. No matter how well they are packed, there is a high chance of damage.

Of course Petosa was great about taking the instrument back, repairing it, and returning it to me stronger than it had originally been. Now, with the instrument working perfectly, I could see that my hopes were realized: The keyboard action was even and mostly quiet. To make it as quiet as possible I had to do a little light work to resolve some rubbing that was taking place. Now I could experience my true entrée into the world of Guidobaldi reeds without other aspects of the instrument distracting me from the reeds.

My impression of this instrument: It has huge dynamic range and is a bit of a beast. The mechanics of the buttons and keys are, unsurprisingly, not as smooth as the modern AM-1100, but that’s character more than it’s an impediment. I call this my muscle-car accordion, partly because of its visual styling and partly because when you play them loudly the reeds speak with a seductive rasp that reminds me of a gas-guzzling American sports car with an open exhaust system.

Like the La Melodiosa that I had to repin to fix its incorrect G7 voicing, this accordion also had a wrongly pinned Stradella dominant chord from the factory. In this case it was B7 chord with a fifth in place of the seventh and I had to repin that piston to fix it. I guess there’s so much oom-pah out there that even on professional-grade instruments these faults can go unnoticed for decades. A sad state of affairs.

Bugari G1 (2024)

Black lacquered paint, 41/120 Stradella, 4/5, LMMH with LM in cassotto, +9 cents tapered musette tuning. This is my only instrument with all pearl-black keys. The left side has low G bass and tenor ranks with C-tuned soprano, alto, and straddle ranks.

I learned of the Bugari G1 when I visited Castelfidardo in October, 2024, and at that time they had one in their showroom at the factory. It wasn’t love at first sight but it was clear the instrument is distinctive, interestingly different from anything else I’d played before.

Anyone especially interested in my impressions of this instrument should check out my unboxing video from when I received it after a protracted saga in which UPS (temporarily) lost the package in San Francisco. In that video you will hear a little bit of playing that can give you a rough understanding of the sound. Rough because the sound in the video is from my cell phone mic, so the reality of the G1 is much better than the sound in the video.

As you can see in the unboxing video, the instrument arrived with some tuning issues. The video doesn’t show the full extent of the tuning problems because I made the video quickly, before I had a chance to really spend time playing the instrument and understanding its sound. I was able to take the instrument to have the tuning refined at Petosa Accordions and they did the work under warranty because they have a close business relationship with Bugari Armando. If taking the instrument to Petosa had not been possible, I would have had to return it to Bugari Armando in Castelfidardo for that work, so I was lucky. I have to say it’s disappointing to me that Bugari Armando would send a new accordion, especially one of this high quality, to a customer with such an imperfect tuning.

One challenge for this instrument in connection with tuning is that these reeds change more in pitch with different bellows pressure than other reeds do. All reeds change their pitch some when the bellows pressure varies, but I have six other accordions that I play regularly, and this one changes the most. The reeds where this happens the most are the in the bass reed rank on the left side, so some of the chords sound a little out of tune with the bass tones when played quietly, but they sound in tune when played loudly, and that’s the situation even after Petosa did everything possible with the tuning. I am more picky about tuning than most players, I think, so maybe there are many accordionists who would not notice a problem, but I notice it. However, I am happy to say that it doesn’t present a real problem for me in performance. I have not performed much on the G1 yet, but I have done one live performance and I enjoyed playing the instrument very much and I was not distracted by any tuning problems. It simply sounded very good.

On the plus side, these reeds are excellent in every other way: They sound warm and powerful, they can be played very quietly or very loudly (they have a broad dynamic range), they respond and produce sound very quickly.

To my ear the left (Stradella bass) side of the instrument sounded a little bit harsh so I did with this accordion what I have done with several of my other accordions: I taped some soft material over the inside of the sound holes on the bass machine cover panel. That one simple step made a big and positive difference for me; I find it much easier now to balance the dynamics of the left and right sides of the instrument when I play.

The keyboard is excellent. It has a soft and light feel and it lets you play very fast. This is true for the buttons on the left also. All of the mechanisms feel tight and precisely built. I have other accordions with excellent keyboards also, and this one feels quite different. I can’t say it’s really better than the others, but it is definitely not worse. It’s a very pleasant instrument to play; it feels like it helps you along, and you never have to fight to make it behave well.

The low bass reeds on the left side, in particular, and the lowest bassoon reeds on the right side all respond more quickly and reliably than I’m accustomed to from most of my other accordions. The G1 has a very rich-sounding low bass on the left, quite different from any of my other instruments. Such a big bass sound might not always be what everybody wants, but I like it. Because the low-bass reeds are quite powerful, their vibration modulates the air pressure in the bellows enough to modulate in turn the loudness of the higher-pitched reeds, which is pretty fun. In addition to this, there is a different character to the “growl” of these reeds. I don’t know whether it’s because of the way the valves (ventilli) are constructed or some other reason. But the sound of the lowest reeds is kind of aggressive in a way that I like. It doesn’t take away from their warmth, it just adds a difference in the sound.

As on my Petosa AM-1100, I ordered a set of uncut bass registration slides from the factory and cut them so I can turn individual reed banks off and on using the registration switches.

So in spite of the tuning issues my new G1 has as a function of bellows pressure, it is an excellent instrument, very enjoyable to play, It is not a “neutral” instrument — it has a lot of personality — so I would not choose it if I had to have only one accordion. But I am very glad to have it and to play it.

Accordions I No Longer Have, Also in the Order I Got Them

Robert’s First Accordion (unknown year and model)

Before I knew anything about accordions and was really only a piano player, I was walking through a flea market with my friend Tamara. She spotted a booth with two heavily used accordions for sale and said, “Accordions! We should buy them!” So we did. Luckily they were priced inexpensively because both turned out to be in awful shape, probably worth even less than we paid (which I think was $40 or maybe $50 each, in year-2002 US dollars). They were Stradella-bass piano accordions, but I don’t remember what brands they were. Tamara graciously let me have the one that was almost playable, and she kept the one that wasn’t even working. I took mine to Boaz Accordions in Berkeley (now long gone) and they showed me enough of its myriad problems that I donated it to them for parts and rented a much better (though still inexpensive) instrument from them. On that same visit they shared contact info with me for Mike Zampiceni so I could begin lessons. Mike became my first and most important accordion teacher and is still an inspiration and a good friend.

La Melodiosa Model 40 (unknown year, before 1973)

In 2010 or earlier, well before I got serious about accordion, I was looking for a backup instrument and I was curious to see what I might learn just by exposure to another instrument different from my Baleani. On craigslist I found a good one for sale locally by the daughter of an accordionist who had passed on, and I met with her and bought it. The only catch was that she insisted I also take the Francini beater accordion listed just below.

What I got for a very good price was a La Melodiosa Model 40 41/120, 4/5, 9/3, A442 instrument in very nice condition with traditional low-C design on the left side. I eventually had to repin a dominant chord piston on the Stradella side to fix a voicing that had been set wrong at the factory (with its fifth scale degree in place of a third that belonged instead), but otherwise it gave me no trouble at all.

I sold this accordion to Clarence in August, 2020. I think it’s sometimes hard for him to take good care of accordions in his possession but I visited him about a year later and he still had this one and it needed just a couple of minor things that I was able to help him with. I hope he’s still enjoying it.

Francini two-reed so-called “ladies’ accordion”

I acquired this instrument when I bought the La Melodiosa Model 40 described just above, and the seller insisted that I take this beater away along with it.

It has two sets reeds on the treble side and it’s a 41/120 instrument but the piano keys are narrow, giving the keyboard an overall span of about 18 inches. It shows signs of being worked on by technicians of varying skill and commitment levels. Most of it is original but for some reason the bellows straps got replaced at some point and some of the ventilli have been changed a long time ago.

Shortly after I got it, I loaned it to a friend who wanted to dabble, and it stayed with her for over a decade. She returned it around a year ago.

After doing a little work to fix up some of the most egregious problems with this poorly maintained instrument that was never very good in the first place, I have permanently loaned it to another new home, this time my barber who expressed an interest in trying it out.

Accordiana (by Excelsior) Model 302N (unknown year)

This accordion came to me when my friend Steve Melander was helping clear a house after the death of its last resident. Steve knew I had owned an accordion or two, and I told him I would help this one get a good home and split the proceeds, if any, with him, which I did when I sold it at a garage sale to a beginner accordionist in my neighborhood in San Francisco.

Ottavianelli Wood Line Super Jazz (ca. 2010-2015 according to Petosa)

Bare wood, natural fir. 41/120 Stradella, 4/5, LMMH with LM in cassotto and +4 cent musette tuning. 13 treble and 7 bass registrations. Voci Armoniche hand-made reeds with winkelbass on the left. The left side has low G bass and tenor ranks with C-tuned soprano, alto, and straddle ranks.

This was the first tone-chamber accordion I owned. I had finally started getting serious about trying to improve at accordion in late 2018, and I soon knew I would want a tone-chamber instrument for the genres of music I was starting to enjoy. In 2019 I had ordered my Serenellini, but there were some delays in getting it made even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Italy very hard during the spring of 2020. Unsure when I would see my Serenellini instrument, and finding the gorgeous Ottavianelli for a good price in Petosa’s used inventory, I jumped on the opportunity to buy a stop-gap tone-chamber instrument in April, 2020. Getting to learn first-hand what it’s like to play a bare-wood accordion was a very nice bonus. I sold this instrument in 2024 to a local player looking to move up from her prior instrument.

Victoria Super LMH (1962)

Black celluloid with a mainly thermoplastic grille, I think. 41/120 Stradella, 3/4 LMH dry tuned. Traditional low-C design on the left side.

I was injudiciously browsing reverb.com just out of curiosity about accordions for sale, and I saw this instrument that I found very visually appealing. The ad was unusually detailed with excellent pictures showing that the instrument was in great shape, and although I couldn’t tell exactly when it was made, I could see that it bore the workmanship of Victoria’s heyday. It was a 3-reed instrument so I knew it would be comparatively light. It was an A442 instrument so I felt unlikely to put a pickup in it since my use of pickups is mainly in groups where A440 is the tuning standard. Curiosity won out: believing I could sell it again if I came to feel I’d made a mistake, I bought it.

After it arrived I needed to do some minor things, as often is the case. On this instrument I noticed that the keyboard action squeaked when some of the keys were pressed and released. Disassembling and cleaning the keyboard, then applying carefully targeted graphite and a very small amount of sanding fixed that.

Around the time I got this accordion, I was traveling a lot to visit my aging parents and help with managing their house and their health. This instrument soon became the one I left at their house so I could practice without carrying an accordion back and forth on each visit. It helped me return from many a visit better prepared for the next day’s gig than I might have been without it.

After both my parents died in 2023 and my brother and I wrapped up most of our business at their place, I brought this Victoria back to San Francisco and in late 2024 I sold it to a young student of Mike Zampiceni’s. I hear she is still really happy with it, and it makes me really happy that she enjoys using it to advance her musicianship.

Stopping in at the Victoria factory during my October, 2024 Castelfidardo visit, I showed pictures of the instrument and its serial number to Elke Ahrenholz, who identified it confidently as having been built in 1962.