Workshop
Accordion and Bandonion Workshop Hoyer
Klingenthal in the Vogtland in Saxony
A look into Mr Hoyer's formerly privat workshop in Klingenhtal.
When playing harmonicas, air is constantly sucked in, which leads to dust deposits on the reeds and reed plates. In addition, the vibrating reeds work on the rivet to which they are attached to the reedplate. Both lead over time to the detuning of an instrument. The most important furniture to fix them is in a workshop the tuning table.
Mr Hoyer completed his apprenticeship as an instrument maker at VEB Klingenthaler Harmonikawerke and worked there for several decades.
In order to be able to tune the reeds of accordions effectively, they are pre-tuned on a tuning table.
In the Klingenthaler Harmonikawerke, this was the workplace of the so-called bank tuner, who had received special instruction in the last six months of his vocational training as an accordion maker.
The foot pedal can be used to tune the necessary wind and blown into the windchest of the table top, which is screw clamps attached to the tuning board is sealed airtight.
In the centre of the picture, a zinc reed plate of a bandonion lying on the tuning board.
Bank tuners had placed a so-called sample plate next to the reedplate, which served as a reference for tuning by ear. This sample plate was always freshly tuned before starting work.
After the bench tuner, a final tuner checked and corrected the tuning of the assembled instrument.
The final quality control before delivery was in the hands and ears of a so-called play-through player.
The tuning itself is carried out by finely scraping the surface of a reed with a file, which changes its mass distribution and thus its vibration behaviour and the pitch. (Detailed in the next text in german.)
The traces of the processing can be seen in the picture as light-coloured spots on the reeds.
A tongue protrudes slightly out of its vibration channel, which is called pretension. The pretension determines the response (transient behaviour) of a reed. To prevent the pretension from changing during filing, a thin metal or wooden is pushed underneath it.
Mr Hoyer, many thanks for your explanations!
The craft of a tuner have not changed to this day, as shown by as these three of eight pages of a repair manual by Alfred Band from the mid of the 19th century.
