Comparative reed table

Since 2021 the BlueStar® reed has replaced our handmade reed as the top of the range, since the BlueStar exceeds the handmade reed for acoustic and functional potential. Ultimately, the very good characteristics of our handmade reeds in the BlueStar® reeds become excellent: the BlueStar® reed is the evolution of the handmade reed.

The BlueStar® reeds are a natural consequence of our company vision oriented towards music and the musician. They are the conclusion of a process of observation, study and improvement applied to our work and to our product, reeds. And they are a new beginning, for the positive implications that they will have in furthering the improvement of the accordion.

A BlueStar® reed is not a handmade reed. It is not a hand-finished reed. It is not a variant, or a restyling of either of these. The BlueStar® is a new reed, which is completely different from its predecessors because it hosts substantial innovations and improvements:

• excellence i.e., a qualitative value that allows our reeds to stand out in the particular of the single note as in all reeds of the instrument, thanks to their very high sonic and functional potential.
• innovation i.e., a proposal of contents that did not exist before, to overcome previous limitations to proceed towards wider horizons.
• essentiality i.e., simplicity, which is our end goal. Whatever fails to serve our highest purpose can be removed, so that only the very best remains. Simplicity as an extreme form of refinement.
• inimitability i.e., something that cannot be copied or replicated by others, as it is the result of a process, i.e. of premises, conditions, rigorous methods, refined skills and hidden measures, which are implemented on the sub-part of the part of each single reed and then brought together as a whole that can be arranged in trebles or reed harmonies layouts.
• made in Italy i.e., true identity and natural qualification. Consistency with a tradition of quality to be valued, developed and kept alive, but never used as an income.

The basic thought process that led to the creation of the BlueStar® reeds is the consideration of the benefits to be achieved by combining modern improvements with the experience handed down to us throughout the history of our production. The idea of combining tradition and innovation, and simplicity with the highest possible quality possible for us, in terms of functionality and acoustics.

Compared to the handmade reed, of which it maintains and enhances the traditional timbre characterization, the BlueStar® reed has specific improvements: 1) in the consistency and in the overall timbre and functional homogeneity obtained through a process that, according to rigorous dimensional parameters, achieves greater precision and control in the implementation phases of the tongues shapes; 2) in the stability of the final tuning that is further increased to ensure the most demanding tunings; 3) and in the resistance to fatigue failure, improved by the thermal bluing treatment. 4) The thermal bluing of the tongues also improves the steel in its metallurgical properties, consequently improving the functional characteristics of the reeds (usability, ductility, dynamics, homogeneity, corrosion resistance).

The name chosen for the new reeds is inspired by the stars, which shine above enchanting those who raise their eyes looking at the sky. Blue is the colour of steel after it is heat-treated to improve its metallurgical qualities by using traditional watch-making techniques. Blue is also the colour of the sky and the sea, and conjures up thoughts of the precious, rare, and sublime. The blue tongues will also be the mean to allow musicians to easily and confidently check the product when purchasing new reeds, to be sure that that the pre-tuning and tuning of each piece have been made with the utmost care and skill, i.e. that the functional integrity of tongues has not been compromised and the reeds damaged. The colour blue will also be used to safeguard the incredibly fine work we do in our factory and to guarantee sound quality. It will also help to remind those involved in the tuning process to preserve said quality by only removing what is necessary, and never too much. We chose an English name for the new reeds as English is the language of the world, and because the new reeds will be in the accordions and the music all over the world.

Conceived and designed by Lorenzo Antonelli in 2013, the BlueStar® have been gradually created under his careful supervision in later years, with the essential contribution of the employees of Voci Armoniche.

Beware! Since the quality for the reeds is defined in terms of acoustic potential through the four sound parameters, to obtain the maximum result from the BlueStar® we recommend to use suitable reed blocks adapted to these specific reeds.

Although it is generally true that handmade reeds are among the most expensive types, it is not true that they are completely handmade. As early as the 1920s, the Italian craftsmen who made reeds by hand used semi-finished parts, tongues made from nastrino and plates, industrially produced in factories and left unfinished on purpose, then meticulously adjusted and finished by hand. Even then, completely handmade tongues were very seldom seen.

The slang term for the profile of a hand-finished tongue was “tirato”. For decades now, nobody has made the tongue profile entirely by hand, using a three square file and starting from the solid piece. And those artisans that performed all the assembly phases of a handmade reed individually have also long disappeared. Today, a reed that is entirely handmade, like those crafted in the thirties, would cost between 15 and 20 Euro, with no guarantee of its superiority over a well-made modern reed.

Nor does it go without saying that a handmade reed will be excellent just because it is handmade; today, even more so, the fact that a reed has a tongue with a blue edge to the square base, that is, with a tongue made from nastrino, is not in itself a guarantee of high quality. The blue edge of the square base on the tongue of a handmade reed is the element by which it can be most easily identified at a glance: for this reason the blue edge of the square base has become the distinctive characteristic of the handmade reed. The blue edges of the tongue, in the two sides of the square base, are the blue colour of the steel strip from which it is made, which is as narrow as the square of the tongue and so is known as “nastrino” or “narrow strip”.

It is not true that the steel of the narrow strip - nastrino - used to make handmade tongues has superior metallurgical properties to those of standard steel strip: the only thing that differs is the width. Instead the metallurgical properties are identical. Its use in making handmade reeds was favoured because, given the limited equipment available at the time, it was easier to make the tongues from the narrower “nastrino” than from the much wider strip itself.

An important aspect of handmade reeds was, and still is today, their acoustic quality content, which was achieved through the craftsmanship of its maker in the past. Indeed, the manufacturers’ semi-finished parts had to be painstakingly fine-tuned and finished in order to obtain a very precise reed in the gap between tongue and the plate, and a perfectly shaped tongue.

The bombatura – the tongue “convex” shape - of a handmade reed is the result of the finishing process carried out on the surface of the tongue, which is done by hand using a specific method. The finishing process refined the previous work of the file that shaped the tongue, and it was performed with a wooden stick, with a piece of emery cloth attached. Today, the bombata reed is a version of the handmade reed where the surface of the tongue is finished by hand with emery cloth, using a stick, exactly as it had been done in the past.

Today, a handmade reed, to be classified as such, should be riveted strictly by hand, and have a high level of precision between tongue and plate, and a perfectly crafted tongue in every respect. In addition, aesthetics and form in all aspects of the reed, from the radial design of the rivet head to the polished surface of the plate.

Sometimes overrated, since the 1990s the handmade reed has lived in an imaginary world, often cultivated for commercial reasons, evoking a mythical past where the present lacks the ideal and creative resources needed for looking to the future. One should be wary of those who offer reeds that share nothing with real handmade reeds but their appearance- the blue edge of the tongue square - but do not feature the same content, i.e. acoustic potential. There are so-called handmade reeds that are barely hand-finished with a tongue made from nastrino; others only bear the name of handmade reeds, and not the substance, the finish, nor the grace.

In the early fifties, Luigi Antonelli invented the hand-finished reed because he found it impossible to obtain consistent, constant quality from the artisans who produced handmade reeds. In fact, naturally every artisan had his own personal style, and even when the level of craftsmanship was high, there was no guarantee that the reed would be identical. Additionally, handmade reeds were only available in small quantities that did not meet the demand. Quite rightly, Luigi Antonelli designed and made a valid alternative to the handmade reed, while still continuing to produce it, leaving its original characteristics intact and uncompromised. And for this reason he called it the Tipo a mano – handmade-style finished reed. Even hand-finished reeds needed to be adjusted by the craftsman who assembled the semi-finished part on behalf of the company. Since the semi-finished parts had been improved, the craftsman did not need as many skills to make them and it took him less time, but he was still required to take great care in ensuring the precision of the gap between the tongue and the hole of the plate, in tuning the tone and in finishing the piece, also in the aesthetic aspects, such as the shape of the rivet head with radial facets and the cleanliness of the work. The hand-finished reed was a great success: it offered the market an excellent reed, with a consistent acoustic character, at a lower price than the handmade reed.

Today, for Voci Armoniche, the hand-finished reed remains faithful to the original idea of a high range reed: a similar, yet different alternative to the handmade reed, with its own excellent acoustic characteristics.

As for the cheaper reeds, which can be loosely defined as commercial, it is true that they are the reeds that cost the least, but it is not true that their production, in Italy, was and still is completely carried out by mechanical means. The denomination of industrial or “mechanically produced” reeds is ambiguous, and in the past it probably referred not to the production of semi-finished parts, but to the stages of assembly, the latter being a characteristic of German reeds in the 1930s, and of Czech reeds, which were derived from the German ones. In fact, the mechanisation of semi-finished part manufacturing, introduced in the Castelfidardo area as early as in the 1920s, contributed decisively to the improvement of the Italian reeds. Instead, it was the all-Italian ability to finish and refine the reed by hand, in the organised assembly stages, that made the Italian reeds the best, surpassing their German counterparts in the quality stakes.

In our case, today, their assembly involves both manual steps that require skill and expertise; and mechanised steps, subject to careful control of the functional aspects of the reed, which ensure the excellent overall quality of the reed. In addition, the semi-finished parts used for our Super Durall reeds are excellent, as they share the same basic structural elements as high range reeds.

So it is not true that, in absolute terms, the quality of commercial reeds is inferior to the other two kinds of reeds, namely the handmade and hand-finished types. It depends on what is meant by quality. And above all, it depends on who produces the reeds, i.e. the way they are made and where they are made, as is in any case true for all kinds of reeds. And it also depends, very much and always, on how the reeds are assembled and exploited within the instrument.