Description
This is a carbon fibre 2-voice accordion, built around the same mechanism and internals as the existing traditional wooden ‘Briggs’ instrument. Whilst there are a few carbon fibre accordions around, they are either constructed from carbon fibre panels joined at the corners, or are carbon fibre ‘wrapped’ - a traditional wooden case covered with 1 layer of carbon fibre cloth to give the appearance of being constructed from carbon fibre. This instrument is of a 100% fully monocoque carbon fibre construction.
The size of the instrument is more or less the same size as the traditional wooden 2-voice instrument, with bellow dimensions being 150mm x 277mm.
The sound of the accordion was something which was a bit of an unknown quantity at the design stage - it was difficult to predict how it was going to sound. Fortunately it’s turned out very nice, with people having heard it describing its tone as ‘rich, mellow, strong, accurate and precise’. This might in part be due to the reeds used in the instrument.
One of the advantages of the moulding process was the possibility of achieving nice organic sweeping curves to the body of the instrument. A lot of time and effort was spent at the 3d modelling stage in achieving these curves through the use of splines - a term used in 3d modelling software to describe a curve the radius of which is constantly changing along its profile, rather than a curve with a constant radius which would tend to appear too ‘regular’ and a bit box-like.
