Settimio Artist VI and Settimio generally

[ike milligan]

I was fortunate to have acquired an Artist VI.
Now I have examples of the Settimio Soprani from the 1920's to the end.
The one probably from 1920s is a Cardinal model with 42 keys and low "E".
Then there is one from the 1930's, and then I think I have an early
postwar with Venetian-blind mutes, a 3/4 or 3/5 from right when they
starte with the Ampliphonic blocks. Then I have 2 or 3 larger
Ampliphonics, one of which I had fixed up and found to be great for Bach
fugues as far as sounding like a pipe organ. Recently I troubleshot
mechanically for a customer, one from the '60's that did not have the
Ampliphonic blocks, So not having gotten to the restoration of the
Artist VI, except starting to make the missing shift on the back panel,
having been interrupted by the guy with the Bugari-Basilis, I have some
albeit sketchy experience with every iteration of the Settimio that I
know of.
BTW, what does that little slide switch on the back panel of the Artist
VI do? It appears not to be a converter, or is it? The Bayans some of
them have a slide switch to convert, which it reminds me of.

Also interesting what can happen after near 90 years to the patented
bass machine of the Settimio. I got one recently to fix from Illinois,
where a couple of the flat flanges in the bass broke loose from the
pistons, due it seems to the zinc plating on the pistons and the solder
joint oxidizing. I found I was out of flux late at night and had a
hassle re-soldering them.

If anyone wants to know what to do about the flat flanges getting bent,
on the Settimio patented bass machine, I have a way to straighten them.
I pull out the wire they ride on, and stick a feeler gauge blade just
the right thickness in the flange, put it on the flat anvil of my bench
vise and tap it lightly with a tiny hammer. If they are not bent too
bad, you can try sticking a shim like that in them without pulling the
wire, and move them up and down bending in or out the friction places on
them. If it is one from the 1930's they should probably all be taken
out, immobilized in a jig, and re-soldered.

[ciao_accordion]

> I was fortunate to have acquired an Artist VI.
> Now I have examples of the Settimio Soprani from the 1920's to the end.

that is the holy grail of the Settimo label, and it is
fitting in some ways, though the design was not original Soprani
and would never have existed had his factory not been Torched

I find the Settimo line very compelling as well, so i'll add
the things i've found and figured out for your amusement...

yes he was responsible for quite a few innovations, he
experimented and went in his own direction when he felt
it was right... there is some evidence that he shared
a friendship with Charles Nunzio, who fleshed out some of
Settimo's ideas and accordions, as well as selling/importing
quite a few under the Soprani and his own private labels.

Specifically, as we note the innovation of Excelsior's rocker
shift patents, which then forced other accordion brands to
follow suit or find another way to compete, as with the
grille mount sideways sliding pseudo rocker shifts as seen
in Italian accordions, until the breakthrough of the modern
shift system of individual shifts for each possible reed combination
that both opened and closed sliderfs in a preset fashion. It is possible the
first production model physical implemetation of this was by Settimo,
in collaboration with Charles Nunzio.

a brave move a the time, but a key item in the achievement
of what has become the modern Accordion

I have also examined the Settimo bass mechanism (with a bit of awe)
there's a blond beauty of his sitting here (a someday project) and
again it seems fitting that many of that brands latter day accordions
then had the Scandalli drop-out bass mechanism... another very innovative
and unique design...

you have noted my recounting of the actual story behind Scandalli
bailing Settimo out after the fire, but now of course the History
re-writers have twisted it all around to have been a merger
etc. etc. Mostly, between the time Settimo Soprani began to
re-build their capability running the overnight shift at Scandalli's
Camerano factory (the old family site) and achieving the rebuilding
of their factory, the man died. The family still owned(s) the brand,
and the business, but were rather dependent on Scandalli to keep it
all afloat and it was during this period you see the Silvio Soprani
name appearing on a few as a kind of inside joke.
(Silvio was Scandalli's first name)
but the sales and marketing had so much strength and follow through
(for example, the Dick Contino line) though of course by then the
accordions were entirely Scandalli under the skin, which is easily seen
in the Contino models when compared to the Blue-grille aluminum
plastic key independant key pivot drop-out basses scandalli's of
the same time frame. And by this time of course virtually ALL of
the accordions were being built in the new Farfisa factory on
the main road between Ancona and Castlefidardo, except for the
very top of the lines, which were still hand-crafted in Camerano,
which was the only Scandalli location that still used the classic
key-action systems.

and THEN there were those few Settimo VI models - yes exactly the equal
in every way of the Scandalli Super VI - but simply branded and
cosmetically a bit different as SettimoSoprani... far more rare than the
Scandalli model obviously

Once Silvio passed, and Lear-Siegler purchased the company, Camerano
was being phased out, and they really only kept the accordion segment
as long as it had legs, but were far more focused on the Farfisa electronics
(which did result in the SyntAccordion... likely the best true
Organ-accordion design ever built)

After Lear's period of ownership, Bontiempi purchased the company, and
that's when you saw the bastardization of the Super VI with all sorts
of weird models and configurations sporting the VI moniker, as well
as Ampliophonics that weren't ampliophonics at ALL in any way shape or form.
Bontiempi only wanted the Farfisa patents, designs, and business contracts
and quickly shuttered the Scandalli and Farfisa factories - leaving the
tooling to rust and rot - that is when the Accordion industry lost
all the Scandalli innovations and unique machinery - the designs may
still be available, but who could afford to re-tool now?

Then as far as i can tell, the Settimo brand went dormant for awhile.

the Scandalli brand was psrt of the Bontiempi purchase, and they bled
it to death, rented it out to different other companies and groups
from time to time till currently it's licensed to the Dungeon up on
the hill and being bled yet again...

the Settimo name has also been recently licensed to Maximilliano,
who has been attempting for awhile now to get a classic old brand
under his wing, and do a successful resurrection... he tried first
with Ranco Antonio, and things were going fairly well, but he got
all caught up in that legal mess surrounding Gabbanelli and Monterey
and lost the momentum with Ranco. Currently he IS offering brand new
Settimo Soprani Super VI accordions that are said to be built to the
highest current standards, and they are gorgeous, but of course how
much under the surface, if we had one next to yours on the workbench,
would they share? it has been said they DID use an original Settimo VI
and dimensionally reverse-engineered the body and wood.etc.

Yes from the Cardinal to now, the Settimo name has meant a lot to the
Accordion world... the Man himself a true Empiric, always creating,
as was his friend Scandalli... so their legacy, though each stands
well on it's own, fittingly shared history for awhile, and the
ultimate realization of that was in the Settimo VI you have
in your hands

to me, it's almost like the World Cup, or Stanley Cup, as a token
of the pinnacle moment when Settimo Soprani and Scandalli converged

ciao

Ventura

[ike milligan]

It appears that at least some of the machinery for stamping the
Scandalli parts may have been sold to someone in Brazil, who made a
Scandalli clone under the Hohner nameplate, and perhaps later to Parrot
in China?

[ciao_accordion]

> It appears that at least some of the machinery for stamping the
> Scandalli parts may have been sold to someone in Brazil, who made a
> Scandalli clone under the Hohner nameplate, and perhaps later to Parrot
> in China?

wow wonder if any of it still survives?

i think there was also a "Parrot" brand from Brazil (South Am.)
waaaaay back when - maybe short lived? or maybe they were not
successful maintaining production locally, then got something
going with Asia for bodies and stuff?

who knows

there was no way for me to identify by sight in the rusting piles of
rubble and trash the specific purpose of the machinery that was left
as unwanted junk when bontiempi abandoned the Farfisa/Scandalli
factory(s) - but i tell you it was sad to see the once great - perhaps
the greatest modern factory location ever for an Italian accordion
and electronics company - laid in ruins by the weather and animals...

begun in 1946 this was the greatest achievement of Silvio Scandalli
who literally re-invented Post-War Italian accordion and electronics,
by building a place where his inventions and dreams could become reality.
Without Farfisa there never would have been an ELKA, or a CRUMAR, or ORLA,
while the 2 great advances in accordion action with the drop-out Bass
assembly, and the independant treble key system brought prices down
while bringing manufacturing and service simplicity as well as a far
greater level of consistent quality.

Lear saw the value in keeping it going, and hired the best available
people to do so, but once they exited the music business and sold controlling
interest to Bontiempi, essentially the whole of the substance that made
Scandalli accordions was tossed to the curb

what little accordion building they continued was at their original
Family Accordion factory, which was kind of a joke by comparison.
But hey you know how it is... make it LOOK the same and..............
while the Farfisa segment was moved a couple of towns over to a Bontiempi
facility that had been building the little Bontempi keyboards sold
by SEARS in the USA. I did find the place, think it was in Recanati...
Farfisa had a lot of lucrative contracts building Organs for several
huge American brands as well as their direct sales in Europe and Japan.

anyhow i'm glad that Artist VI ended up with you - someone who
can actually appreciate it as well as tweak it back to perfection...
when they talk about the "Golden age" perhaps that accordion
is the bookend or swan song that closes the "book"

ciao

Ventura

[ike milligan]

Tho only Parrot accordions I have seen were made in China, and had
largely untuneable reeds with stiff inferior steel, but the mechanism
was Scandalli. I don't know if the brand is still being made, but later
Chinese accordions had inferior copies of the Scandalli bass mechanism,
and some were looking like hybrid Scandalli-Hohner but with very flimsy
and not terribly precise designs that were mostly not repairable by me
anyway.
A Nice Chinese lady brought me something like a Ying Jie that one of the
children had pushed a button in, and they tried to fix it themselves,
and at first I refused to work on it, and emailed her back and forth
until she mostly did it herself (she was real smart) and then she
brought it to me to troubleshoot, and after all that I couldn't say no.
Later her family gave me a ticket to a Chinese folk concert of a
lifetime, at the Montgomery College auditorium with performers from all
over China. Out of the capacity crowd there were maybe half a dozen
Westerners. Frankly it blew me away.
idk if I posted about that concert before in this forum. i joked it
sounded like "Irish music on triple steroids" but the Chinese don't seem
to get that joke.
Later I fixed her keyboard on it at the family condo, but the last time
she called me. I waited a month or so to call back, as I was bummed out
about life in general, and after that she would not take my calls.
Any other people want me to repair any Chinese box, I won't let it in
the door of my house except for Hohner, but not Hohnica. which is not
really a Hohner, though they sell it.

[ciao_accordion]

> Tho only Parrot accordions I have seen were made in China, and had
> largely untuneable reeds with stiff inferior steel, but the mechanism
> was Scandalli.

> later Chinese accordions had inferior copies of the Scandalli bass mechanism,
> and some were looking like hybrid Scandalli-Hohner but with very flimsy
> and not terribly precise designs

i had noticed the similarities in the cosmetics of the Chinese boxes
to the Scandalli Sylvana/Imperio/N series models, but didn't realise
that inside they were also clones of a sort...
perhaps they "reverse engineered" based on Scandalli's they had purchased

I know this series was a major component of the line, and was brought
to market at the end of the 50's / beginning of the 60's, and ran through the end of the LEAR ownership. These models ran middle to professional grade,
and mostly Black though i've seen them in the Silver MOP and rarely White.
The Blue or Gold anodized grillework series, more plastic looking bodies
which are far more commonnly seen seemed more beginner to high-level
Student quality to me, though that 3/4 size 4 reed treble i have
is a bold sounding and decent playing box - great for strolling
in the nursing homes when i go room to room.

Walters Scandalli, which he got in Poland as a youth, was from this series
Sylvana/Imperio/N and is physically identical to a Settimo Ampliophonic
of the same time frame (except for the cosmetics) which i examined a couple
years ago... unfortunately the Settimo wasn't worth fixing - had first been
totally dried out in a hot attic, then left to mould and moisture in
a basement for another 10 years...

Walters accordion has the stainless steel reeds, which as far as I know
only Gola and Scandalli ever achieved viable rust-free reeds to market

> but not Hohnica. which is not
> really a Hohner, though they sell it.

yes, i remember feeling totally appalled when i saw the first honica's...
think i reported on them long ago in those travelogues...
but it was a MusicMarkt Pfieffer in Germany - a HUGE store and they had
not only the entire current line of Hohner, but being an old retailer,
they also had a ton of old/new stock Hohner models that were no longer
in the catalog. We were in the Mannheim area for 3 months and i spent a lot
of time hanging out there. They were ashamed of the Honica's, but had to
carry them because of their Dealer's agreement with Hohner, so they put them
on display in a tiny hallway off the accordion floor, which was actually
the back utility staircase customers never really used.

the only other new Accordions as crappy as the honica's which i
ever saw in Europe were those E. Soprani's on display in Rome
(with the 3 day warranty) that i later found out were brought
in by a castlefidardo company and "remade/labeled" as italian boxes

ciao

Ventura

[ciao_accordion]

while net-searching patent info in Europe, ran across
this thread about the scandalli-cloned Parrot brand

it sounds like they did "reverse-engineer" to create
the mechanism's, as apparently a Lawsuit was originated,
facing which they stopped (getting caught) producing them

http://www.accordionists.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1693

[ike milligan]

What year were you born into
?