Caught Me A Buz (Watson)

[Willis]

I recently picked up a beat up 1972 Stage at a garage sale. The pickups, tines, and tone bars are quite corroded, the tuning and voicing are a mess, but even so it still sounds pretty great. I have a 1979 Stage that I fixed up, so I was planing to do the same to this when I noticed a name stenciled in red: 'Buz Watson'. The name sounded funny enough to google it, and now I'm feeling a bit like a lottery winner.

I'm wondering now though if I should just keep my amateur hands off of it and take it down to Chicago for a professional refurbishment. I don't really plan on selling it right away, and would like to enjoy playing it in the meantime. Will I mess up Buz's work by installing new screws and grommets? How would I best preserve the resale value, while still fixing it up enough to enjoy playing it?

[Alan Lenhoff]

The whole Buz deal is a pleasant myth that refuses to die. Buz didn't build your piano. He was one of the QC guys at the end of the line who gave each piano a quick final check before it went to the shipping department. He might have made a minor adjustment or two on some of the pianos he checked. That's it. Buz-era pianos tend to be nicely built, but not because Buz did anything special. It was simply because Rhodes built good pianos in the early'70s, before CBS Fender went on a cost-cutting spree and pushed its assemblers to work faster.

There is no reason to worry that you will diminish its value by doing the maintenance it surely needs 50+ years into its lifetime. Nor is there any reason to believe that your piano is any better than those of the same year that other final inspectors peeked at before they released them.

Alan

[Willis]

Thanks for the reply Alan. So you mean my piano did not spring forth from Buz's brow like Athena from the head of Zeus?  People love a good myth!

To be serious though this does feel like the culmination of a great personal odyssey: buying my first rhodes a number of years ago('79 Stage) and dealing with the disappointment of it not making the sound I was hoping for. After much research I discovered that an older model would be a better bet and I've had my eyes out for one since then. I never ran across the Buz story, but understood that a number of factors led to the early 70s models being the most sought after.

I decided to do the refurb work myself: all the tweaking I did to my '79 gave me enough experience I think. I can't imagine there is anything I could do to it that is so bad a real tech couldn't fix it in the future anyway.

I've got my old one up for sale already, but if it is still unsold by the time I get the '72 in fighting shape I'll do some A/B side by side recordings: the difference is stark!

[Alan Lenhoff]

So you mean my piano did not spring forth from Buz's brow like Athena from the head of Zeus? 

haha!

I had a '79 Stage for a long time. I loved the action, with the "factory bump," but it never had the warm, creamy tone I wanted. I'm now quite happily playing a '74 Stage. Good for you for using your experience on the '79 to work on the '72. Harold Rhodes always encouraged players to do their own work on these pianos.  They are pretty simple instruments!  I just figure that anything I do to mine takes me about 5 times as long as it would for an experienced tech. But with patience, you can achieve excellent results.

Alan