Messages

Yikes. Nope - I take good care of my equipment. It was kept carefully in a climate controlled basement for the last ~20 years, gifted to me, driven in a car lying flat, and has been in my 45% humidity climate controlled basement since. No bumps or bruises, or being stored on its end.

It indeed has an aluminum action and aluminum vertical harp supports. I've found that the screws that hold the action rail to the keybed have some play if loosened, so I did roughly what you suggested - shifted the action rail supports slightly to the left, fixed the action rail to the harp supports using the bolts, and then tightened down the action rail to the keybed.

In other words, order of reassembly mattered - I had to align the action rail to the key pedestals using the harp support attachments first, then tighten the screws from the action rail to the keybed. This fixed it and everything feels solid and is measuring square.

FWIW: I considered trying to shift the hammer combs like you suggested, but am too nervous to tweak the brittle plastic given its age. Anything like that I would probably leave to an expert

Hi folks, excited to be part of the community. After many years as a strictly acoustic pianist I was recently gifted a '76 Rhodes Stage, and it was a prime contender for being refreshed/refurbished.

This model was from the period where the felts were glued to the hammer cams rather than the key pedestals, so I removed the felts, cleaned the hammer cams fully, and installed the Miracle Mod and new felts onto the key pedestals. When reassembling, I noticed that the key pedestals and the hammer cams are significantly misaligned horizontally (pics below). This misalignment occurs across the entire length of the keyboard but is most severe on the bass end. It's bad enough that some keys hit both their own hammer and the one to the left, but this wasn't a problem before I installed the mod. Maybe something about the felts on the hammer cams rather than the key pedestals granted just enough clearance that they didn't contact eachother - whatever it is, I can't be sure.

You cannot view this attachment.

Now I need to figure out how to make it so the keys don't contact multiple hammer cams, but info for people with similar issues is a bit unsatisfying:

- Some folks suggest putting a shim on one side or the other to push the whole action rail left or right, but I don't see how this is possible since the action assembly screws right into existing holes on the keybed.
- I'd try shifting the hammers themselves left or right, but they seem to be in perfect alignment with the tone bars and dampers already, so I'm reluctant to screw that up.
- Given its age, the hammers seem brittle enough that I don't want to mess with heating/bending/reshaping them in any way.

What would you do? My thoughts are to plane down the sides of the key pedestals that are contacting the adjacent hammers, leaving the ones that don't contact alone. Would love to hear folks' thoughts and if they have experience with this or similar issues.