Different systems are popular in different countries or even continents! Here in Scandinavia e.g., about 90% of the accordions are chromatic accordions and about 10% are piano accordions. In the U.S. it's the other way around. There are other systems as well and they all have their advantages and disadvantages. The uniform keyboard, although extremely rare (I've never seen one myself), seems to be the overall best choice. Here's a comparison I've made covering different aspects of piano, chromatic, uniform and the new Kravtsov accordion, abbreviated PA, CA, UA and KA respectively. I've considered the following aspects:

| Keyboard layouts | | Intuitiveness | | Keyboard feeling | | Fingering | | Transposition | | Conclusion |


I've tried to display the layouts below with correct relative sizes.


Ordinary black and white piano keys. (Only lower part showed)

Five row CA:

Round or rectangular equally sized keys. The two top rows are copies of the two bottom rows. Alternate fingerings are possible. There are different chromatic systems and this is a C-system:

The layout above is from a Swedish system. In Norway and Russia this layout is also common:

The system is called the B-system or the Norwegian/Russian system. In this system, the diagonals flow down and to the right as opposed to up and to the right for the C-system. The C is in the 3rd (middle) row and has the A to it's left and the D# to it's right. The C# is in the 2nd row with the A# to it's left and the E to it's right. The D is in the 1st (outside) row with the B to it's left and the F to it's right etc. Row 4 repeats row 1 and row 5 repeats row 2.

The C-system and the B-system both have their advantages and disadvantages. It may be easier to form chords and play melodic music on the C-system. On the B-system, your wrist is better angled for fancy fingerwork, but chords are a tiny bit harder to finger.

Three row UA:

Round or rectangular equally sized keys. The relative size is probably wrong when compared to UA/PA.

Look at more pictures and read an article by the inventor John H. Reuter


This system is actually new, invented by professor Nikolay Kravtsov from Russia. It was displayed at Musikmesse 99  (Frankfurt). It's been developed to try to open up the chromatic accordion repertoire to piano accordion players. There are for rows (or maybe 3 1/2). The keys are hexagonal and as seen in the layout below, some keys are connected and forms double sized keys. According to the inventor, he has trained several students to use it and they have adapted to it quickly and have also won international accordion competitions using this accordion. Victoria Accordions in Castelfidardo, Italy,  has made  instruments with this system. Also the Belarus company Slava has made instruments. I recommend a visit to, where you can order instruments using this system as well as the Excellent book, "N.A. Kravtsov, ACCORDION of 21st century".

The Slava Concerto model.

Professor Nikolay Kravtsov with students with the Slava model.

Professor Nikolay Kravtsov with students with the Victoria model.






Back to Hans Palm's Accordion Page: main page

Hans Palm 2006, , snail address