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Walter Ostanek - Accordion

Part - #1 “A long way to restoration” (By Wouter Vinckers)

Walter Ostanek

(Canada’s Polka King)

Since I switched from keyboard (electronic garbage) to accordion (real acoustic instrument) I also got enthusiastic about real music in general. As a result of this I started playing the old type music as recorded long time ago, played on real instruments like bass, guitar, drums and, of course, accordion/harmonica. However, the remix, as sold on CD was not my favorite. I started to search the Internet for old vinyl records: the real sound on the real medium!!! One day, looking for Ostanek records (Canada’s Polka King). I did a master-search for ‘Ostanek’ that resulted in a hit for an old Ostanek accordion. It was offered by a man, who once visited Walter Ostanek, from whom he bought the instrument. He only used it as a decoration-piece and decided that he’d been looking at it long enough by now. That very same day we agreed, that I would come to have a look at it, but, okay, I was already in the mood of buying the accordion, never mind the state it would be in. After all, Harte Meijer, me accordion-retailer, could have a look at it, right? After a ride of about 2 hours and another 2 hours back home I was the proud owner of an accordion that had the name ‘Ostanek’ on it. Although it still made some sort of sound, it turned out to be the beginning of a long way to restoration......

Few days later I showed the accordion to Harte. He immediately opened it up, looked at me and asked me: ‘What do you want me to do with this crap?’. I told him about my intentions to play it. Harte said that it would take a lot of work; actually it was hardly worth trying because of the amount of work involved. We decided that my dad could maybe take care of the left-hand side. This had to be ripped apart, cleaned, polished, greased and put back together again. Seemed to be a nice job for my dad. We convinced him, that we were impressed by the work he’d done on my first accordion and we’d be sure he could manage to take care of this job as well. After first instructions from Harte we decided to split the instrument into right- and left-hand side and they would both do their part of the restoration.

Dad and Harte

Wondering what to do with my ‘new’ instrument

Wouter Vinckers

(Wouter The Polkaman)

Ooops