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Thanks for the hint!
Admitted, that looks a lot more sophisticated than mine. ;-)

Need for a glue dab depends on how loose end of the bridle strap sits on the hook. I decided to adjust, make note of those adjusted and check back after a month or so to see which of the adjusted had changed position. Then add glue dabs accordingly.
I assume you don't see glue an the Mk II damper springs because Mk II overall where no longer adjusted as precisely as Mk I. After all, they had redesigned the Rhodes to Mk II to make expensive individual adjustment superfluous. Haha...
Please report on your achievements. ;-)

I am not an expert either but I cannot imagine that the fact that the tine sticks out a mm or so has an influence on the sound.
I also had one tine ("middle C") in my Rhodes which did not sound "right".
It actually sounded a bit "dull" but mainly the tone decayed faster than on surrounding keys.
To determine the cause, I first replaced the grommets, then swapped the tone bar assembly to the "B" position below middle C. That did not change the decay issue. Then I mounted the C-tine to the B-tonebar and screwed it to C location. No improvement.
I was then pretty sure it was a tine issue. Even with a x20 magnifying glass I could not see any issue with the tine. The spring was sitting firm and the tine end was angular.
I bought a new tine and the issue was gone.
Be sure to check whether the screw from the tone bar to the tine is tight and the tine an tone bar are parallel.
(Btw, you don't see the pictures if you are not logged in).

I don't know whether this has been addressed elsewhere...
I assume this is what Rhodes had in mind for the recess in the harp cover.

Btw, the first picture might have been taken from an odd angle but to me, the hammers seem to sit very low.
On my Mk II, the hammer tips are approx. 6.5 - 7 cm above the  key. Maybe there is a difference between Mk1 and II (Did I read somewhere that the hammer swing on the MK II was reduced compared to the Mk I?).
Did you (or someone else) ever replace the key pedestal felt (where the hammer rests on the key)? Most replacement felt available is thinner than the original, which means the hammer heads rests in a lower position. 0.2 mm sum up due to the long lever of the  hammer.
I had installed VV pedestal felt in 2015 and it felt "immediate" and "tight" at first but then I noticed that the hammers sit deeper, the bridle straps had slack and there was an unpleasant "plonk" as the hammer fell back on its rest. I changed this to a felt that is very very close to the original felt (but is not red).

I am just looking for reasons why all of your bridal straps have so much slack...

Very interesting. 

I don't think the steel wool thingy caused a short (there is no electricity there), I guess it is either disturbing the magnetic field or touching the tine's tip and disturbing its vibration.

As no one with years of experience has answered, I hope the experience with my MkII is helpful:

I agree, there seems to be a lot of slack in most of the bridle straps.
But what really counts is not what it looks like but how it works.
All that slack could also be caused by misadjusted dampers.
I would only look at the bridle straps with the harp in the lowered position, i.e. the dampers pushing against the tines. THEN the straps should have a little slack.
But more important: The damper felt should start to move after a millimeter or so of key travel. You want as much damper travel as possible and I think it is not desirable to "feel" the damper disengaging in the middle of the travel.

When revising my Rhodes, I was also worried about the "look" of various things, e.g. slack of straps. I had even bought a new bridle strap because I thought mine were worn. Comparing questionable straps against the new showed it was just the setup, not the straps.

Slack can be adjusted to a certain extend by changing the position of the strap on the hook of the metal strip. Use thin tweezers. Once you are happy with the position, secure the strap end to the metal damper strip with a dab of glue.
In this way you can adjust damper activation w.r.t. key travel and match the keys to each other.

If you figure out straps are worn I would exchange them with new straps. Twisting them (as in the picture) will make them work like a spring. When you hit the key, they will not immediately transfer the motion to the damper strip but instead absorb part of the movement. The damper will not be pulled down linearly.

Re. hammer resting position: A Rhodes is far from being a precision instrument ;-). Someone figured it is sufficient if it works to a certain extent, it doesn't have to look like the innards of a Steinway.
I also tried to align hammer tip heights in resting position and spend a lot of effort but then I realized that this has little to do with how even the hammers funtion.
If the center 50% of the hammer tip hits the tine at the strike line position when depressing the key and swings back roughly to the correct escapement distance, everything is fine. Of course there is also key dip to consider (Mk I).

Btw, I would invest some time in setting up the dampers more evenly. This might improve damper release when pressing the damper release pedal.

I own an MK II.
The repair manual says nothing about the setup of the Damper Release Bar w.r.t. the individual dampers (i.e. the metal strips).
This is how I assume the damper system should be set up. Can anyone confirm/correct my view?

1. The front edge felt of the Release Bar should slightly press on the damper strips when the Release Bar is in its resting position. But not so much that the bar causes any lifting of the damper felts.
2. The wooden dowel's resting position should be high enough so that there is no gap between the dowel's top felt and the back of the release bar. To achieve this, the pivot point of the dowel should be "shimmed" (e.g. with additional felt) or the top end could be shimmed. Goal is: When the dowel is sitting in its resting position, the Release Bar position is as described in (1).
3. The adjustable push rod between the pedal and the dowel should be adjusted in such a way that the push rod just touches the dowel and there is no free play between the push rod and the dowel.
4. The resting position of the pedal should be at its upper stop.

Is this correct?

I noticed that when setting up the system in this way, I need to shim the gap between the Release Bar and the dowel by about 5 mm. Also, full pedal travel (until the floor is hit) makes the dampers move a lot further compared to damper movement caused by key depression only (being ca. 12-10 mm then).
Do people actually put something under the pedal to limit travel? Or is my setup completely off?

Thank you.
Gebhard

EDIT: I have to revise some information.
I found two pictures on the VV website of their own Rhodes design. Those pictures show a gap of 2-3 mm between the Damper release bar (felt) and the damper metal strips. So I copied this setup to my own Mk II.
I guess the intention is that one should be slightly pressing the pedal just so that the release bar touches the damper strips. You can actually feel this with your toes. This eliminates any free play in the mechanism and the clunk noises when going from damping active to damping released. In my previous setup, I always had to let the pedal and release bar move to their upper positions which involved clunks.
Also I noticed that some of the noise (at least in the Mk II) is caused by play in the pivotal point of the release bar. when not depressed, the rods in the plastic bearings lie on the lower part of the bearing. when you push the pedal, the rods are pushed to the upper part of the bearings. This causes mechanical noise.
I will try some petroleum jelly (which is quite stiff) and see if that can dampen movement of the release bar pivot rods in the plastic bearings.

"Just wondering if anyone has considered or does leave their damper arm engaged when the piano is not being played?"
That is an interesting thought.
But I am not sure what you mean by "damper arm". Can you please refer the part numer/name in https://www.fenderrhodes.com/org/manual/ch2.html?
I am not aware that there is the possibility to dis-/engage anything in the damper mechanism without dismantling the Rhodes.

Apart from that, damper felts in conventional pianos and grand pianos have been pressing on the strings for centuries and no one felt the need to fix this. But that doesn't mean there is no room for improvement.

One word of caution:
When looking at your pictures, you seem to be using some sort of metal tray with two magnets of considerable size. I would not want to have strong magnets near my pickups or tine assemblies. Those magnets might magnetize the tine assemblies (not desirable) or change orientiation of the pickups' magnetic field (also not desirable).
I have seen a VV blog posting that they had to deal with demagnetized PU magnets. It is assumed that having a keyboard with built-in loudspeakers sitting on top of the Rhodes might have caused this. Your tray might have the same effect.

Apart from that:
When closely looking at my Rhodes Mk II, I noticed that some yellow springs are used in the treble section (above the right bracket), 2 tine assemblies just below the right bracket even had two springs used together on one screw (like in the bass section). I assume the factory used these odd setups when a certain tine assembly needed a non-standard firmness. This is what I think:
The "backward" screw (nearer to the pickup) is sort of a pivot point for the tine assembly movement right after the tine got hit by the hammer. The tine assembly will be able to "swing" slightly upwards, the stiffer the rear spring the less. Tight clamping might be desirable. I assume the factory used the three spring stiffnesses on the front screw to fine-tune individual tine assembly behaviour. Softer springs means less dampening causing longer sustain. So maybe if a tine assembly shows more sustain than its neigbours, a tighter front spring will help to shorten sustain a bit. And vice versa.

I have noticed that damping properties of the grommets (even new ones) also have a big effect. I now have VV grommets and screws from 2015 and grommets from Avion. Not all grommets work in all positions.

I cannot comment on whether the Damper Release Bar is the correct one for a Mark I.
But I guess the reason for the damper release not working is that the distance between the Release Bar and the individual dampers of the Damper Module is too large. Therefore, when you press the pedal, most of the pedal's travel does nothing w.r.t. damping, it only moves the Release Bar nearer to the damper strips. On the last few mm of the pedal travel the Release Bar seems to push on a few damper strips, according to your description.
IMO, there are two ways to fix this:
1. Either "lift" the wooden dowel ("Pushrod Assembly") which is located below the middle of the back end of the Release Bar by adding some "shimming" under the small metal peg that runs through the wooden dowel, so the dowel sits higher.
2. Add some shimming to the point where the Release Bar touches the Pushrod Assembly.
Aim is to reduce the free travel of the Release Bar where nothing happens.

Refitting the correct Damper Release Bar might also help. ;-)

Gebhard

Great find, thank you!

@Noah Peterson: You state your model is a "1980 MK2 Suitcase 88", does that have the five knobs or the sliders?
@Jenzz: It is not quite clear what the "2nd version" is supposed to mean. Do you refer to the "late mark II preamp" w 5 knobs? (https://www.fenderrhodes.com/pdf/late-mark2-suitcase.pdf)
Or are you referring to the Janus I with sliders?
(https://www.fenderrhodes.com/pdf/late-mark1-suitcase-janus1.pdf)

If "2nd version" means the 5 knob Janus, then I would like to add my findings:
Indeed, the double pole push button switch turns off the LED and grounds the signal (from the oscillator) at the non-inverting input of U1B. This definitely shuts off any signal at U1B's output and therefore at the input of the comparators/LED drivers U4A and U4B and therefore the LED current is not modulated. I simulated the circuit in ltspice and also did measurements on my implementation of the "late Mark II preamp".

I assume you meant the "late mark 1 janus 1"? Here, the one pole Vibrato on/off switch does a bad job and does not fully suppress the signal from reaching the two LEDs in the Vactrols.

HappyTinkerer

[1.) R14 and R26 are connected to voltage. But it's not mentioned, if it's + or -.]

1.) R14 and R26 are connected to voltage. But it's not mentioned, if it's + or -.
R14 is connected to V+ (forward bias of the BE junction in Q1, and forward current in the LED are hints).
R26 is connected to V-.

I would like to add another correction to  the schematic:
The schematic shows R28 ( on the non-inverting input of U4B) to be connected to the +V rail. This is not correct. R28 needs to be connected to -V in order for U4B to work as a non-inverting voltage comparator. I had found out about this because my implementation of the schematic would not work and I had to dig into the details of schematic and also simulated the circuit per ltspice.
U4A and U4B are setup as symmetrical comparators, U4A powering its LED during the negative half of the input signal from the VIBRATO INTENSITY pot center tap and U4B doing so during the positive half of the input signal. With R28 at +V this does not work.

I have thought about where to make the corrections gathered in this thread immediately available to others. Ideal would be to have a corrected schematic included at the fenderrhodes website, but I assume the original schematic is copyright protected so one cannot "reissue" it with corrections added.
On the other hand I think the schematic re-drawn in ltspice or Kicad could be "published", because only the document is protected but not the circuit design as such (this is made up of well-known sub-circuits).
Does anyone have profound knowledge about copyrights, circuit design protection and such?

HappyTinkerer

Hello Forum,
After reading for a while I had decided to join this forum and asked for admittance and here I am.

Thank you to the forum hosts and members for all the valuable information that has been gathered here over the years.

I am from Europe and a proud owner of a Rhodes Mark II 73 Stage Piano built in 1981.
I aquired this piano in 2015 and had started restoring it immediately.
The Tolex had been badly torn, the lid was missing, and because of that, the piano was very dirty inside.

I had
- taken it apart,
- cleaned it,
- renewed the Tolex cover with black Fender Tolex,
- renewed all damper felts (VV set)
- renewed the hammer tips (VV graded set)
- renewed part of the grommets and screws (I did not like the fact that the VV screws were thicker than the originals and therefore stopped this)
- renewed the pedestal felt (felt from a Portugese seller who is no longer in business)
- pickups were all working but some had been replaced/rewound.
At that time I did not have the tools and facilities to make a lid so I postponed that "to later".

Sadly, the Tolex detached again after a few weeks at the overlapping areas which really frustrated me and because "new adventures" lay ahead, I added the Rhodes to my stock of "uncompleted projects".

In February, I "restarted" the project.

Since then, I built a lid, renewed the Tolex, upgraded the hammer tips to VV's new graded set (which is very nice) and other things. I am not finished yet!

I will try to add new information for some of the topics I had been working on. This will include product reviews.

While working on my Rhodes and learning about intonation, I figured the best way to listen to the Rhodes for this task was through my Harman Kardon HiFi amplifier and a pair of headphones.

As the output level of the Rhodes Stage Piano is too low to really drive the line-in input of the HK well, I decided to upgrade to a built-in preamp (with tremolo/vibrato as a very desirable option).

I will also report about my search for a preamp, my pick and the disappointment with the purchased preamp.

Spoiler: I am currently implementing my own preamp which is basically a copy of the late Janus with knobs.