Reply To: Eolina information needed
Hi to everyone,
Melodica-Me, maybe I’m your man. I bought a Vibrandoneon 2nd generation two years ago and before tried out each and every expensive melodica: the Vibrandoneon itself, Hammond 44, MyLodica, Hohner Piano 36 – and the Eolina.
I live near the Akkordeoncenter Brusch store near Munich, and they had one instrument for sale.
It was great, but it was not as great as I hoped due to several things:
1. The fact that you can blow AND suck requires special reeds that lead to quite an astonishingly high release of air. This is not a big problem when you play single notes, but when playing chords you have to blow extremely hard and even then you don’t get a real hard attack.
2. Due to the bi-directional reeds it’s nearly not possible to produce bendings.
3. The low reeds tend a little to sticking, not much but sometimes it sucks. (Maybe just a problem of that special instrument, but a few weeks later I tried another -used- Eolina with exactly the same problem)
4. The harder you blow, the deeper the tone gets, that’s a fact with melodicas, and there’s no difference with the Eolina. Strangely enough, the Vibrandoneon reeds nearly stay in tune from pp to ff.
There are advantages:
1. the Eolina has a better handling because it can be hanged around your neck with a strap.
2. It seemed to be worked a little exacter than the Vibrandoneon. Once I opened the Vibrandoneon and when turning the screws in again I nearly damaged the body because the body walls are VERY thin.
3. It has a warmer and richer tone than the Vibrandoneon because of the more closed grille (a fact which can be changed by using some foam to cover the Vibrandoneon grille – did you know that you can create a nice WahWah by moving some foam towards and away from the grille?)
4. Of course the larger keyboard.
As a résumé, I would always prefer the Vibrandoneon to the Eolina (there is no use to compare those two to any other melodica, it’s a completely different world). But if you need 45 keys and have 2500€ to spare, there’s nothing wrong with the Eolina.