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Thanks for all the input. Yesterday morning I glued all the bumps in place. I set the lowest note and the highest note then used a strait edge to mark the rest. Mine actually turned out so the bumps are just about at the edge of the pedestal with very little variance across the piano. I left the felts on while I set the bump in place

After having all of the hammers off, the felts were actually in good shape. They were all even and showed little wear. I ended up leaving the felts on the hammers. I do have the felt that came with the mod kit, so I may end up switching it over down the road but for now it works great.

The action is very light and fast. It's actually a little too light for my taste, but I'll get used to it. I like it fast and light over heavy and sluggish..

Im in the process of readjusting everything from the escapement, strike line, etc.

Thanks again

Hey all, just a quick question regarding installation of the miracle bump mod on my 1977 mark1 73. My model has the felts on the hammers rather than the pedestals. My plan is to relocate the felts to the pedestals.

Should I position the bump and glue it in place while the felts are on the hammers? Or should I remove the felts, position the bump, then glue the bump and felts? Or does it even matter?

My first thought is that I should leave the hammer felts while I set the bump mod. If there are no felts at all while positioning the bump, something may change after the felt is reinstalled. Is that a correct thought?

Thanks
Joel

VV came through and sent me the correct size for my piano. Thanks for all the help. I'll be working to hopefully button everything up over the next couple weeks so I'm sure I'll have more posts/questions.

Joel

Well that sounds like it solves that mystery. Thanks for the help. To avoid any confusion in the future, the VV website should provide this info when ordering the damper felt kits for this year (and other years that may use that shorter comb). I'm actually surpised I'm the first to run into this.

Thanks again

Joel

Thanks Fred. I've been banging my head against this piano for the past couple days...

You mentioned the difference in the damper combs, mine are different or "wrong"? I wasn't really able to tell definitively if my damper arms were correct or not. I found a couple pics online that appeared to be the same as mine.
Should I source the correct damper comb before going forward? They seem easy to come by in eBay and such..

seems all the posts that were made today have been erased somehow. thanks for all the info. to get back to speed this is where i left off

this is the picture i sent to VV when i first suspected a problem. i asked them if i have them oriented correctly or if they are supposed to sit tall side up. they ensured me i had it correct and its likely just an adjustment issue after they are complete, i trusted the opinion and carried on with installing them.

its pretty clear from the picture that there is a large step down in size from the bass to PreMid damper felts

to put it short, i just have a hard time believing that my particular piano had larger felts to compensate for the shims, escapement, damper arm length, etc. i still feel the easier answer is that the damper felts are simply the wrong size but i haven't heard anyone say they've had any issues, including from VV.

[Hey Joel, thank you for all the great pics. When I reference escapement, what I really mean is harp height. I see you have a thick fiberboard shim on the bass end. What is the measurement from the first hammer tip to the bottom of the first tine. Tine should be voiced about 1/16th to an 1/8th over pickup roughly depending on the tone you are looking for. The escapement you are looking for is about 1/4 inch-3/8th Max.I suspect you have much more and this is why you are having to bend the dampers so high with the pre mids. 1977 pianos are known for having s mile of escapement. Setting up the strike line and escapement is how you will really improve on the existing tone and feel. Replacing parts is only the beginning.I noticed your bridle straps are all over the place in regards to how tight and loose they should be. 1. Get a good escapement.2. Change strike line if needed3. Adjust dampers according to new escapement.4. Level all dampers5. You want to see about an 1/8th of an inch movement when you lift the harp off dampers.Good luck!!]

Hello again
Im having some issues with new damper felts i recently purchased from Vintage Vibe. Long story short, i feel they are overall too small. VV has been great with giving my advice so far, but now im officially stuck..

after replacing all the felts, my PreMid dampers were way off the mark. the rest of them were also out of whack, but the pre mids are the worse offenders. in order for the felt to even make contact to the tine, i had to bend the damper arm up so far that just the front corner is making contact. this cant be right..?

I sent VV a message via their facebook page asking if this is a known issue. i know that they are much more knowledgeable than me with these and they see many, many, many more Rhodes' than i do. This is the response:

"Hey, send some pics- I have never ever seen anything like you are describing. Remember we restore hundreds of pianos and have never heard of or encountered this. There has got to be a reason on your end for this. What is your escapement like?  What year is your piano?  Thanks
Ok, I see it's a 77- you should not be having any issues at all.
"








I thought maybe i had the wrong size damper module on that section, but from pics i found online, they seem to be correct.


The next day they got back to me with this:

"Hey Joel, thank you for all the great pics.  When I reference escapement, what I really mean is harp height. I see you have a thick fiberboard shim on the bass end. What is the measurement from the first hammer tip to the bottom of the first tine. Tine should be voiced about 1/16th to an 1/8th over pickup roughly depending on the tone you are looking for. The escapement you are looking for is about 1/4 inch-3/8th Max.

I suspect you have much more and this is why you are having to bend the dampers so high with the pre mids.

1977 pianos are known for having s mile of escapement. Setting up the strike line and escapement is how you will really improve on the existing tone and feel. Replacing parts is only the beginning.

I noticed your bridle straps are all over the place in regards to how tight and loose they should be. 

1. Get a good escapement.
2. Change strike line if needed
3. Adjust dampers according to new escapement.
4. Level all dampers
5. You want to see about an 1/8th of an inch movement when you lift the harp off dampers.

Good luck!!


so when i got home from work i began looking into this info. my first response is "are the fiber board shims not a factory thing? is the harp supposed to rest metal to metal?" I sent a message to a friend of mine who has a similar generation mark 1 (a 76 i belive) asking if he can take a quick picture of his harp supports and send it to me as a reference. i was curious if his was shimmed differently from mine. its not. its the same.

i measured the escapment and found its right around 3/8ths, maybe a little shy. its hard to get a picture holding the ruler, key, and camera but it is right around 3/8ths


So whats my next step? Im stuck.

Just for reference, these are the felts that came off. they are clearly larger all across the board.


thanks for any input!

Joel


PS, i cant stress enough that this isnt a negative post regarding VV. they have been great so far. im just looking for opinions from people who have been doing this longer than me (which is just about everyone on this forum.)

Thanks for all the advice. I decided I'm not going to do the hammer tips right now. They really don't look too bad. I'll save all that glue scraping for another time. I am doing to the screws/grommets and the damper felts. I found a couple feltsthats were kind of falling apart at the low end. Seeing as I already have a new set, I decided to do them all. I'm in the process of replacing the screws and grommets right now. Got 3/4 the way done when the drill died. I'll continue tomorrow night.

4kinga, im surprised it was still available when I called about it after a couple days. They said they had someone who was supposed to come look at it the next day but they wanted to get rid of it so I snagged it before..

I used a wd40 brand Teflon based dry lube spray for the pins. After I vacuumed out all the debris and lubed everything, I just worked the keys momentarily and the seemed fine. I remember watching a VV video where he mentioned that you should be able to lift all the hammers by hand and the key should drop by itself. They all do after my cleaning procedure. I'll take a look at the play in the keys when I get home. I did look into this already but not in detail as I asssumed there was other issues as stake. The tips look pretty consistent all across. Very minimal grooves overall. Are those original tips for that year? A non-credible source said that that year would have had different tips, but didn't go into detail.

Joel

Great thanks. I'll have more miscellaneous questions over the next week or so, I appreciate all the help

I have a quick question, I started to level the keys last night with success so far. I'm assuming the key shims are supposed to be under the felts, correct? For both the front rail and balance(?) rail?

Joel

Also thanks for the other replies I had while I was writing that I'll start with the screws and grommets and go from there. I did find a handful of bent ones while I was reseting the escapment. Unfortunately I haven't found anyone who knows what they are doing with these in my area. I have a couple good leads in the Boston area if i get desperate. I had really hoped to do everything I could on my own, not so much for money reasons, but just learning how to.

Joel

Thanks the advice, Alan. I completely understand the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" concept. I guess my question is more; How do I tell when these parts need to be replaced? And from the pictures, so you see any reason to replace them. I'm not sure what they should look like or feel like as this is my first rhodes. To me, the piano doesn't sound of play great. There's some notes that are better than others, for sure, but not a lot of consistency. I've already done my best at voicing. All tunes are set just above the crest of the pickup, pickups are set all around 1/16th from the tine. When adjusting certain timbers, I just can't get it to the tone I want in many keys. The worst offenders are from E just above middle C and up about an octave. There's a lot of variables that can effect the tone, which in certainly learning, but I wanted to eliminate some of the variables with new parts.

As far as the bridle straps, I have 3 that are ripped. I also seem to have a little more slack than what it should have. Given the year of my piano, I have to take the hammers off in groups of 12. So to do the 3 broken straps, i need to pull 2 sets of 12 out. I will also need to pull all the hammers to remove the felt. I figured it woulnt be too much extra work to simply replace all the straps while I have it all apart. Not to mention is cost effective just to buy a bulk bag of them.

Thanks again for any advice. I'm (obviously) new to all of this

Joel

Hello all. Im having questions regarding what should be replaced on my 77 mk1 73. i Mentioned this Rhodes briefly in another post but i figured id give some details as i have some time, tasty beer, and wife and kids are in bed.  ill start with some back story..




This showed up on  my local Craigslist about two weeks ago (the ad is still up). ive been in the market for an affordable rhodes for a while now and i thought this may be a good opportunity. Now this ad has red flags all over it. if you look at the pic, theres clearly at least on stuck key. the ad sounds like its written by an elementary school kid. also, as a side note, if you are familiar with New Hampshire towns you would know that Franklin is the armpit of the state. nothing good comes out of frankin. i went on  a whim and called the number that was listed. talked to the girlfriend of the owner who knew little about it but she did tell me its missing the sustain pedal but has the legs, which was my first question. i set up a time later that day to go look at it. I met with the owner who was in his late 20's. he wasnt really a musician though he did have a couple cheap acoustic guitars and a casitone. he told me he got it from his uncle in hopes of using it and he never did. he lost his job and was looking for some quick cash. Fortunately i did a bit of research on what a replacement sustain pedal would cost, so i had that figure in my head. being the lowballer that i am, i offered 250. we settled on $300. not too bad.

i got it home and begun cleaning it up as it was pretty gross. it smelled like cigarettes and who knows what. it was also dirty all over. i quickly noted some faults that were not mentioned or observed when we initally looked at it. one of the leg flanges was detatched and bent (still on one of the legs) and it did not have cross bars



i set it up on a couple of my old sansui speakers in the basement. this was to let it air out as it smelled pretty bad. i started to play in and just mess with it a bit. both knobs were real scratch but some good ol peavey funk out did the trick. it didnt play well and many notes were out of tune. i started taking it apart, cleaning and easing the keys with teflon lube. i vacuumed out all kinds of mouse poop and miscellaneous debris. i even came accross an old mud wasp nest






i took each tine and tonebar off and cleaned them. some surface rust was forming on the tines but it could have been worse



i re-installed all the tonebars and tines and set the escapement even across the board using the tone generator as a guide. next thing i did was tuned the whole piano. i wanted to be able to play it when it was in tune. i wanted to be able to test it while it was in tune, going forward. i did the stretch tuning across the board



So next i ordered parts from Vintage Vibe. i ordered their sustain pedal, crossbars, knob, some miscellaneous hardware. i was able to bend the leg flange back strait and got some new T-nuts and screws. i put everything together and finished cleaning up the tolex (which took alot of windex and elbow grease).

this is how it looks and is set up now






So thats where i am today. So now back to the question of "what should i be replacing?". now i will say that ive already ordered the "Full refurb kit", more key leveling shims, a sustain rod thingy that i didnt know i was missing, and a full set of bridle staps all from vintage vibe. I honestly knew nothing about the inner workings of these pianos until 2 weeks ago when i bought this so im not really sure what things "should" look like. i understand that hammer tips and damper felts should be replaced if theres grooves or a lot of noticable wear. my tips and damper felts dont look bad in comparison to examples found on the internet of "bad" felts or tips. Im at the point where i feel i should just replace everything to save having to do it not far down the road.
These are my Tips




Felts..



These felts on the hammers will be relocated to the pedestal when i do the bump mod


Missing sustain dowel ( i guess )


Date



If this was your piano, what would you do to it?

thanks for reading my story. this forum has been very helpful so far.

Joel

Thanks for the info. I'll shim it up when i put it back together. Got it all apart now while I do the bump mod and a couple other things.

Joel

Hello all. New member to the forums but I've been lurking for about a week. Last week I acquired a 77 stage mk1 73 for peanuts on my local Craig's list. Ive wanted a Rhodes for many years and couldn't pass the opportunity when I saw it. Until a week ago, I had zero knowledge of the inner workings on these things. Long story short the person I got it from inherited it from his uncle and knew NOTHING about it. In fact, it was even advertised as a 79. It turned out to need far more work than I anticipated, but because I got it so cheap I couldn't lose. Also I've been having fun working on it.

My question is this: Has anyone had their action affected by the name rail when installed? When tightened, mine puts a small but of pressure on the keys resulting is poor action. The felt is in tact though I'm not sure how to tell if it should be replaced. There are two screw holes on each side of the name rail, though I only have one screw in each side. The tonebar cover also puts a bit of pressure pushing on the name rail, making the affect worse. Any input on this? Is this as simple as adding a couple washers under the name rail screws to shim it up slightly? Also, on a proper rhodes, should you be able to lift the key at all with the name rail or is it supposed to be snug. Thanks in advance

Joel