Opinions of Hohner Atlantic IV
ike milligan
What is the consensus about these?
I have a few of them, and have "restored" one of them. However I swapped it
for a fancier unrestored Hohner. Now I am wondering if anybody thinks it is
much good for other than Polkas and waltzes. There are a lot of junk ones
around because the valve pads always went bad. there were some I have seen
where someone tried to re-valve the key pads, someone in PA or NJ is doing
them entirely wrong. The last one I repadded had traditional felt 1/8" thick
put on with epoxy. Had a devil of a time getting the old stuff off without
bending the key pallets. Have one here with the same material, actually a
Musette IV which is an Atlantic IV with LMMM instead of LMMH. The same pad
material, but they sliced the tops off all the rubber grommets that hold the
pallets on the rods and poured some weak Chinese-type reed wax on them so
that the only thing holding the rods on, is the edge of the wax where it
touches the edges of the grommets.Now waiting for new pallets to be sent
from Germany.
The only stuff you can use for the pads is something called "neo-felt" which
is a self-adhesive sandwich of plastic foam with a layer of felt in the
middle and surfaced with thin sheepskin. It has to be 3/16" thick or
sometimes 1/4" or the keys will be too high. They are very hard to adjust
as the rods are some kind of hard alluminum alloy. To bend it, it has to be
gripped in 2 places or the all-plastic key is likely to snap in two, and it
can't be mended, as far as I know. The bass pads also have to be replaced as
the stuff in them will also be mashed down to about 1/2 thickness causing
constant reed noise in the bass section. For that I use 1/16" self-adhesive
foam pads.
If any oil gets in the part of the switch mechanism that transmits motion
form outside to inside, it is ruined. If that part is still good and the
grill parts that hold the grill on haven't broken, or other parts of the
grill depending on when it was made, etc. Of course the bellows gaskets are
bad and have to be replaced, and the magnesium-alloy bodied Atlantic IV's
can get leaks if the bass side bellows frame bolts are too tight. And other
parts may break off, like the brace beside the bass switch.
So if all this didn't go wrong, or in some cases fixed, then once all the
reeds have been overhauled, I still wonder if that accordion is worth all
the trouble it took. Does anyone have an opinion of this instrument, when it
is working properly? Ever played one like that? The reeds are better than
the Hohner T-reeds, after all.
Len Killick
wrote:
Hello Ike,
we get these various Atlantic / Lucia / Pirolla models on an almost
daily basis, I guess there must be thousands of them laying around in
Germany. Typically one of these is taken out of the attic/cellar after
20 years of non-use and at first sight it looks good. Then the happy
owner starts to play, and after a few hours/days suddenly notes are
playing on their own (foam pad disintegrated completely), or not at
all (leather come off foam pad and stuck across the air hole) the keys
are sticking up at all sorts of angles and the instrument just seems
to have self destructed.
I don't find them at all a problem to repair - simply remove the
pallets (at least simply when they are fitted with the normal rubber
fittings), remove the old foam mess and clean the pallet, then fit pre-
cut pieces of 3mm or 4mm felt/leather (Hohner red for the treble,
Hohner blue for the bass) with a couple of spots of contact adhesive.
Clean out any rubbish that's fallen into the reeds, refit the pallets
and it's done... sometimes a few keys need adjusting, and often the
"wechselgummi" - the link rubber piece for the pallets which are on
reverse direction arms coming from the top - need replacing.
I've no idea why the tops would be cut off of the pallet fitting
rubbers as you describe. Occasionally they get too loose (mostly if
someone has mixed the pallets up from the two rows and tried to force
a small rubber onto a fat lever), but then the rubber can be replaced
on the pallet. I haven't ever had a problem with adjusting the keys as
long as you are careful not to put strain on the joint into the key,
but there's enough of these instruments around to keep a couple of
scrap models for spare parts in an emergency!
What is really woth keeping them for is the reeds, as you rightly say.
I think they are a super reed, that rarely goes out of tune (except
when they are full of foam crumbs - and in that case can be retuned
with a vacuum cleaner!). The instrument itself is still very popular
here, both for nostalgic reasons (a lot of older people learnt on
these) and for it's relative light weight with the mostly metal
construction.
I don't know about in other countries, but here they also used the
same sort of foam as a seal on swing out, hinged across the middle,
roof windows. In this application the foam also auto-disintegrates
overnight when it's about 30-40 years old. So it's a common failure
and I guess one we can't blame Hohner this time as no one foresaw
this aging effect!
Len Killick
ike milligan
"Len Killick" <l...@killick.de> wrote in message
news:021e0225-41bf-4d47...@a35g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
Hello Ike,
Len Killick
Well Len, it's good to hear from you!
The theory, in these parts, is that the Hohner replacement pads are
inferior, and I am using "Neo-felt" invented by Frank Romano. The blue-felt
pads you are describing I have seen on a couple of them that came in here,
but 4mm is too thin and then they get smushed down more after a while and
the keys are too high. The thinnest I use is 3/16" neo-felt which is almost
5 mm. I seems to hold its shape extremely well. Sometimes I use 1/4"
thickness. There are tricks to applying it, so that it makes a good seal.
For that matter it is, I have found tricky and aggravating to cut to shape,
but it can be done with practice.
The one where someone cut the rubber grommets, they cut off all the top
halves of them and tried to pour wax like you would on a wooden pallet. Of
course the wax did not flow under the rods and probably would have damaged
the rubber if it had been hot enough to stick. The pallets were barely held
on by the edges of the wax on the top side of the rods. On this one they had
also used the blue felt like the last one I repadded with neo-felt that the
PA or NJ person had put on with the hard glue.
The main problem I have seen with the Atlantic IV construction, once it is
repadded, is that the keyboard seems not to support extremely fast playing
like Serbian Kolos for instance. A Balkan-origin fellow had brought his
Guerrini in for some spot-tuning, and tried the Atlantic IV, and found that
it did not play fast enough. That's the main thrust of my question. Do any
hot-shot players like to play it other than to make a lot of noise? I have
one here that has a resonator that goes over the top of the valve holes that
is wider at the bass end and tapers off at the high treble end. I found that
when using that resonator, I had to glue a piece of felt inside the
resonator to avoid arrest for noise violations. The thing reverberates even
with the felt in it.
gordon
wrote:
Hello Len and Ike,
In my humble opinion the Atlantic is a milestone in accordion
construction. Where else can treble and bass ends be dismantled in
seconds without spanners or screwdrivers? The later alloy/metal bodies
are an advance in weight reduction and distinctive sound and the reeds
remain a challenge 50 years on in response and full range of
harmonics!! The foam(mousse)/leather pallet liners were, in the long
term, a disadvantage but we must see this against a felt liner which
would, with regular playing, have hardened up in the same time scale
and required replacement anyway. Also the foam/mousse liners can be
easily replaced with Hohner's own replacement felt/leather (red and
blue) so no problem there.
ike milligan
"gordon" <gor...@oldtoasty4000.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:014bd486-3a59-49cb...@c4g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
Thanks for your input!
The pads Hohner sells for replacements seem inferior to the neo-felt sold by
Frank Romano. The neo-felt will last longer and seal better when applied
properly. Applying it and cutting it to exactly the right size are
necessary, and a sp[ecial technique for applying it. I have seen two
Atalantics so far that had the Hohner replacement pads. Both of them had the
pads compressed to the point where the keys were rising too high.
As for ease of dismantling, I have never had any problem dismantling an
accordion when necessary. Putting the treble casing back on the Atlantic
bellows can be aggravating without a certain amount of practice.
Many of the models had the front cover badly designed. The latches on the
sides holding the cover over the key vlaves break easily and can't be
repaired without the original parts. An older model I have, had side screws
holding the cover on, that penetrated all the way inside the bellows area
causing air leaks. If oil gets in the part of the switch that interfaces
with the inside bellows area, this assembly can't be easily cleaned out,
i.e. disassembled without permanently damaging it.
The later body designs using the light alloy, can be bent out of shape by
tightening the bolts too much. Some of the metal braces holding the back
cover oin place, can break off.
The air button has a long spindle set inside the wide cast metal brace that
can cause excessive friction.
The bottoms of the reed blocks are cardboard.
The reeds are pretty good, but the blued area is not the same kind of bluing
as the traditional reeds and rusts more easily.
The keyboard may not respond as precisely as the traditional keyboard with
the hard wax connection between the pallets and the rods, rather than the
flexible rubber connections on the Altantic. Also I wonder if the reeds can
respond as fast to the needs of velocity as some players would demand.