Some time back I decided to attempt to learn to play the chromatic button accordion. Like the piano accordion, it has all the notes in the chromatic scale available, but it has buttons instead of a keyboard. In North America, not so many people play these, but they are quite popular in Europe and in Russia. There are two types, called B-griff and C-griff and the button layouts on the right side of these instruments are mirror images of one another. In some countries one or the other layout dominates.
I sold off two piano accordions and a little one-row diatonic box and with that money I got one of my diatonics tuned up and put the rest of the money aside for a chromatic accordion. Today I bought the one pictured above. It’s an old C-griff accordion. There is some normal wear on the outside, but the bellows are in good shape and the reeds look fine. The five rows take full advantage of this system, which makes it simple to switch keys by moving up or down the button board. This accordion was likely built in the 60s. It still sounds good.
Now to turn my attention to learning the fingering and trying out some tunes.
27th Street 
Love the colour. What’s it made of?
The body is made from layers specially formulated cellulose laid on a frame constructed of wood. The cellulose is sanded and buffed to get that typical accordion look.
What a gorgeous instrument! Seems a bit daunting, but so worth it. 🙂 As a piano accordion-playing noob but longtime enthusiast of *all* things accordion, I have MUCH respect for your adventure!
It’s a gorgeous instrument. I would never be able to learn to play one, but I wouldn’t mind carrying one around, impressing people.
That keyboard looks like a wholotta Go tiles.
haha, true….the black buttons are the sharps and flats. Good to see you the other day by the way.
Li’l Wally didn’t play the piano accordion. He played a Chemnitzer Concertina, which is a diatonic instrument.
Here’s the difference. On a piano accordion, as with a piano, you have to learn different fingering for every key – different black keys as part of each scale. A diatonic accordion is organized more like the neck of a guitar. You can take one set of fingering and move the starting point and voila, you’re playing the song in a different key. The other thing is that because the buttons are in a bunch instead of linear like piano keys, it’s possible to play faster on a button accordion than on a piano accordion. If you don’t believe me, just check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVbuIZ-5-8o
This is prolly a dumb question but if the chromatic button accordion can play all the notes just like a piano accordion and a piano accordion is more popular on this continent why would you not simply play the piano accordion? After all, Little Wally could have chosen a button accordion but he didnt. There must be some sort of serious difference between the two. Fess up.
Here’s the other thing. A piano accordion is fairly easy to learn if you’ve already learned piano, where it might be daunting to some to learn the CBM because it may seem foreign. However, with the CBM, you don’t have to worry about cross-over and it’s easier to stretch from octave to octave.
So if the same person played the She Loves Kielbasa polka on both instruments with equal skill levels the two would sound pretty similar?
Well, yes and no. If the two accordions were made by the same outfit, the reeds should be basically the same so the sounds produced should be the same. At the same time, the configuration of notes makes certain patterns or arrangements more obvious or easier on one box vs the other. For the non-afficianado, OK, they would sound similar.
I am in fact a non-afficianado. I was interested in whether the difference was a playing style thing (if you want to play “this” sort of music you will want one of these and if you want to play “that” sort of music you will want one of those) as opposed to the 2 instruments sounding quite different in the way that say a banjo and a guitar sound different even though they are both stringed instruments. I think I understand now.