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There should be several pins next to the bellows, that can be removed by prying out with a butter knife, or sometimes have to be pulled out with pliers. DO NOT BEND THEM. If stuck, rotate carefully. For badly-rusted Hohner steel bellows pins, apply a drop of oil. There will be six, seven or rarely eight such pins (rarely, screws are used, usually on very old accordions) and sometimes on the top and bottom side, so be sure to get them all out (to avoid cracking the bellows frame, if one is left when you separate it). Also If the accordion has electronic mics or pick-ups installed, be sure that you can unplug the microphone or other wire running through the bellows to the other side. It is of course easier, less hazardous, and cheaper to send the left side only for repair, if that is the only thing you need fixed, rather than the whole accordion. In rare cases where the bass still has a problem that requires having the whole accordion there to trouble shoot, you can always send the whole accordion a second time, and the work is guaranteed so that you will only pay shipping. This has never happened yet.
Accordion Care Tips!!!
Accordion Bass ProblemsYou can remove the left side of your accordion and send it in separately, and I can fix it for you. For how to do that thing, read along.
One frequent problem with accordions is a malfunction of the bass section. Most accordions are 120 bass and have a somewhat complicated looking bass mechanism. If anything goes wrong in there it can make the accordion unplayable due to constantly sounding notes. Sometimes the repair can take a couple of minutes, other times several hours.
A very common problem, caused by roughness in shipment, is that all the bass buttons fall down and appear stuck about even with the top of the panel. There are only 12 springs holding up 80 chord buttons, on a 120 bass accordion. If several chord -note levers get stuck, in the wrong position, all the springs will no longer have upward pressure on the chord bass-button pistons.
Sometimes the whole accordion bass section will be sluggish due to some corrosion on the friction parts. this can sometimes be helped by very lightly placing a thin lubricant on the metal parts only. If oil gets on the wood, or the valve pads it can cause an expensive and/or time consuming accordion repair to be needed. NEVER put powdered graphite into an accordion. IN FACT you might really be better off to let me fix it, unless you are very mechanically inclined and super-intelligent.
If these remedies fail it may be necessary to disassemble the accordion bass mechanism completely, and while it is apart, to go ahead and overhaul it completely, including the valves. If the accordion bass comes out in one section, most noteably in Hohner, Weltmeister, and Scandalli accordions and Scandalli copies such as the Chinese Parrot, then the repair of the bass key valves is usually simpler. CAUTION: Do not pull all the buttons out of the grid holes, ESPECIALLY Weltmeister, but with all Hohners I have ever seen they are supposed to come out. It is very rarely necessary or desirable to disassemble a one-piece accordion bass machine. In most other accordions, however, the bass has to be disassembled piece by piece, and the many parts kept in order for re-assembly. I could throw them all in a box and shake them up, and still know how to put them back together, but I'd rather not, so I lay them out in rows on a table. Some people make a rack with 120 or more holes to hold the bass rods.
How to remove the bass side of the accordion for shipment
(The mechanical action is not inside the bellows, but inside the back panel.)
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