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Hey Q,

Morgen with Avion here. I was a bit unclear about how you have everything configured here.
But I wanted to point out for anyone who was considering this that when things wired are in parallel you're still basically loading the output off the harp.
Thus defaulting to that lower fidelity sound of the passive controls. A classic sound for sure, but not one that's doing the RetroFlyer any favors.

The simplest way to address this is by adding a switch. In your case you may be able to add one on the cheek block.
If single pole, just run the RF full time and then run a signal wire from the RF input to a switch.
When the switch is off the RF is unloaded, when the switch is on just use the passive setup.

Or run direct signal and ground from RCA to a double throw and switch the whole thing back and forth.

I hope that helps. Any questions, just let us know. avioncontact@gmail.com

All the best,
Morgen

Heya hiya,

Morgen with Avion here. The Sean 2 Sean advice has proven true....
The RetroFlyer will indeed put out a line level signal on the high side of the volume rotation.
Likewise Christian also has a point - the Rhodes is an extremely dynamic instrument so setup and playing style will affect things.
In fact, during development we scaled back the gain a couple times in favor of more headroom, because at the extreme the harp signal can be like 2V.
Anyway, going direct to mixer/interface/converter should be no problem at all.
If you have any other questions we try to get back to all emails within 24 hours.
avioncontact@gmail.com

Cheers, Morgz

I can sympathize, I had what is probably the worlds most infamous tech go through my rhodes and it was a complete and total disaster, so bad in fact is sat in storage for about 15 years.

Haha, I know exactly who this is. Wassup maaaahhn!

So we've known Doug for years and in our experience he's a great guy and a quality seller. No idea what went down on his end but suffice to say sorry it didn't work out.
More importantly I wanted to let you know you can email us anytime. Just like with JWC there - happy to chat about your Rhodes.

Quick advice: I wouldn't pull the bump mod just yet, bring those keys up and level with some balance shims. Then maybe check the overall alignment of the harp to see about that double striking. You can gently bend some of the tines a bit, but also check the tonebar screws, sometimes if a screw is bent it will tilt the whole assembly.

There's a few things to remedy but also a nice clean original board. So a better starting point that JWC anyway.
Plus we can't very well have a board with a RetroFlyer not singing!    Shoot us an email anytime.

Best,
Morgen
Avion Studios

Ahh cool, thanks! Just looked it up. So curious to have that dimension be linear. I wonder what the curve of the solder blob weight looks like. Very cool.

Cheers!
M

I agree with Sean about leaving them a hair long, more room for tuning!

This math is pretty cool. Now do the Wurlitzer reeds! 

We've been looking into this recently so I thought I might add that another cross reference is the NTE121.
And yes these are Germanium.

I can't say that these power amps are truly worth the cost of repair as even these are somewhat expensive, but I understand some people wanting to match the other side or keep things very original. So I hope that helps. 

Cheers,
Morgen

Immediately thought your key dip was too shallow.
And I agree with some others that you should increase it a good bit either through the balance or front rail punchings.
But as you'll be getting to the final height remember to place your namerail on from time to time. You don't want to get too high.

The other issue I think, is that these key pedestals are not ideal for the mod. I think we may have done one or two of these mods before but generally skip them because they are already sort of "bumped". Fender was well aware of this mod and these late 70's early 80's pedestals are reflective of that. You 're basically placing a bump directly on top of a bump and more than anything raising the height of the key before being depressed and thus limiting its travel. It's an issue with any bump mod to some extent but perhaps moreso with this pedestal style.


Without actually fondling your board, that's my best guess. Hope you sort it out mate.

So...what most everyone is getting at is that you're running up against the limitations of the passive/loaded knobs.
1M is plenty high for an input impedance really, anything higher than 500k and I don't think anyone could tell the difference.
The countryman probably has something else going on that is helping the single.

My personal advice, why pull your hair out, go direct from the harp to a DI with a decent impedance and use an EQ.
Otherwise you're in a real squeezing blood from a stone scenario.
Particularly in the studio it's all about what works best and simple in-the-box eq with a good notch should take care of 95% of your sound.

Good luck mate!

The keyless wonder!

Lol. It has keys now, we're just literally THE WORST at documenting our projects.
This was basically a dumpster find with lots of water damage. ($80 - and a drive into a sketchy NYC neighborhood)
But after some going through the amp ended up working and the action only had a few really bad spots.
I mean....everything was pretty bad. And it had three coats of paint on it....

I'm just glad the transformer survived. If anyone has an amazing technique for safely cleaning up rusty transformers I'd love to hear it!
Also...sorry about the potato quality. Hmmm, not sure how to cleanly embed on here...so hopefully this works.

Morgz

EDIT: That did not work. Haha. So here's a link ----> https://imgur.com/a/5AdBH to an imgur.

Sean!

Been away so I missed this follow up.
What dedication. I wish more people really load tested their stuff....but this was wonderfully thorough!
It wasn't even flinching at expected load so, again, my initial memory was off, it's clearly a solid choice.

Kudos mate! It's one thing to make a power supply. It's another to really test it! Just awesome.

Cheers Sean!

Such awesome work. I don't know why I thought the Janus used more power than that.
Went back and looked at our notes and I think we had it a bit higher but yeah, totally fine.

I figured from your detailed post you load tested it, just wanted to make sure.

Super nice work.

This is awesome work! And such great detail in the description and drawings.
I looked up the power supply on mouser and it looks like it outputs about 133ma on each line. That might be a little underpowered.
Have you measured it under load?

We sell a pcb power supply in addition to the regular power supply / output box for the Janus and we moved up from 250ma to 500ma per leg. Mostly to ensure longevity.
Really it might not be an issue but you may want to check it with a thermal gun once it's been on for a bit.

Again, seriously amazing work. Do you have links for those other builds as well? 

Just a quick note: if the screws holding the action in the enclosure were bent it's likely it took quite a knock because that would require a good bit of force.

So I would inspect for additional damage. A standard #8 x 1 1/2" stainless sheet metal screw should match the thread nicely. The incumbent screws are a "raised countersink" head which are harder to find. But if you're alright with a flat countersink head they are widely available and quite inexpensive.

Those are beasts. I (this is Dave) have one and that's a LOT of tolex. What are you going to do about the hardware?
I know some of it is really hard to come by? Is the original hardware good enough to re-chrome maybe?

Just assuming you're going full restore on it, but either way would love to see pics.

Oh! And just to keep you excited here's a guy playing a lovely cover of an Elliot Smith tune using a CP-80.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLFz-uHWuaU
Such an interesting instrument. The piano action is pure yamaha quality. Congrats!

Cool gwike,

Thanks for the info. I wonder if you might be able to fix both issues with a quality stereo tremolo/chorus pedal. I haven't researched it lately but I think TC Electronics has one and EH does as well I think. Might be just the thing to give you both a usable chorus and a stereo output with actual active panning/sweeping. Just a thought. Overall tho, your sound is so good, why mess with it! 

So right on! That is such an iconic sound you have there.

Can you tell us which dyno that is, settings and what you're running through?

Some rude person submitted to us a form with a bogus email telling us that notched dampers were a "no no".
Since there is rightfully some skepticism about notched dampers I thought I would elaborate here....

There is definitely cause for dismay with the notched felts Fender used.....but that's because they had....lots of problems.
The Fender felt was too soft, unbacked, poorly cut/notched and sometimes had the wrong grain orientation.
It's wasn't a bad idea, just a terrible felt. (and occasionally foam!)

Obviously our dampers are substantially different. We've installed many many sets of our notched damper felts and they work exceptionally well.
The lift off is clean and the dampening is better, especially when the board does not have back-check as it compensates for the hammer bounce somewhat.

I think Fender was just being Fender, didn't have much keyboard/piano experience and used the cheapest felt (and foam) they could find.
Quality dampening felt is really expensive. We back ours in house because otherwise we'd have to sell sets for almost double the cost.
We could make the same thing everyone else does and sell it for $20 but we think these dampers are a worthy upgrade.

I guess we should make a demonstration video. I'll try to remember to add it to this thread when we do. (could be a couple months)

Rock on! 

I saw from your videos you have some pretty rough felt tine dampers on there. And they're notched!
Those dampers have a couple issues - they're too soft and unbacked which makes them even more prone to folding over.
And some (maybe not yours) even have the wrong orientation of the felt grain which makes the tine sink in and can even make a hole in the middle over time.

Sorry to self promote on here, but we spent a lot of time working on a notched felt damper and I highly recommend it for your board.
As far as I know we're the only shop that makes a notched damper replacement.
Here's a link: http://www.avionstudios.com/rhodes/premium-notched-damper-felts-fender-rhodes

Remember to adjust the height of your harp to maximize the hammer strike first (because it's something you can't change much at all) and then adjust your dampers for proper escapement. If you're really going through the whole thing, I'd recommend pulling off everything, getting new bridle straps on there and straightening your aluminum damper strips completely flat (or close to flat) You can pre-bend a bit at the end if you want. But that should get you back to square one and generally you'll be doing minor adjusting upwards towards the tines after that. Try to keep the damper springs in order as the length does change which is especially important at the treble end.

Have fun! All the work is 100% worth it! 

My best advice, if you have a little time to spare on it - try both thicknesses on a few keys and see how they feel to you. In my experience it will be VERY subtle. But that's the best way to answer your question - investigate! We probably have fifty keys around with different felts, bumps, weights etc on them just so we could evaluate all the subtle differences when either designing or deciding on materials. It's sort of tedious, but also fascinating to think about just how complex the interplay of pieces can be....and on such a simple action like the Rhodes these choices can have some substantial impacts. More complicated actions like on upright pianos are more regulated such that the action will be pretty uniform by design. Not so with the Rhodes. It's quick and dirty and little things can really alter it.

Then later on down the line you can better explain your decision to clients and feel confident in your understanding and that you're doing the best work you can.

So, ultimately, if you're looking for someone to weigh in with a definitive position on this somewhat soft detail - you can be that guy.
Experimenting with things like this is pretty easy and then you'll not only know what works, but what you prefer. 

M

Hey David,

Morgen here with Avion Studios. We use the 0.080...I think we have it as 0.075 in our inventory but probably the same. I don't think those values will make too much of a difference either way. The pedestal felt has a dual role of being slightly cushioning/force dampening (but not too much) and sliding across the hammer arm. So too thick could eventually be an issue if you keep getting fluffier. Overly thin and you might lose some smoothness or even eventually get some clacking. Especially around the bump.

I would be more concerned with the quality of the felt. I personally find the internally braided (with white) red felt holds up much better in general. But either thickness will be a solid improvement over worn out felts. And the difference between the two proposed thicknesses should be VERY minor in my experience.


M

I wonder if a small neodymium magnet positioned on the tonebar might do the trick.  I think it would hold securely enough not to move, but I haven't tried it.

Hmmm...I would be cautious of putting another magnet so close to the pickup. They have a small field but it would still be too close for me. Plus you could slightly magnetize the tonebar which is even closer. And I can't see the magnet staying still over long time periods.

Hey guys,

We make those things! And although we sometimes get materials from schaff we actually bond the two different felts in house and cut them in house. Let me know if you guys have any questions. 

Here's Part 1 of a video we did on grommets. Hope it helps. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWuxcATU-Mw