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Hello all,
So over the past 3 - 4 months, I've sorta taught myself the basics at fixing up and maintaining both Wurlis and Rhodes. I feel very comfortable taking apart both instruments and doing basic, and even somewhat extensive repairs. On my wurli, I even removed the action assembly and treated each hammer joint with lubricant. (Which I guess I'm bringing up only as a way of demonstrating my relative level of comfort in doing repair work on vintage electric pianos.)

In any case, I'm considering buying another Rhodes Mk I that's in very bad disrepair. The owner says the base of the Rhodes was warped from leaving it on an amp stand for a couple of weeks. Is this a repairable problem? Has anyone heard of or encountered this kind of problem before?

There's also apparently a decent amount of rust in the undercarriage. I'm less daunted by that, assuming the rust hasn't eaten away at anything.

Any help / advice is appreciated, and thanks in advance!

Hi all,
I've had some distortion from the left speaker in my 200 for a long time, and the speaker fabric has also been ripped for a long time. When I hold or press down on the ripped part of the speaker, the distortion magically disappears

Anyway, pretty obvious what the problem is. Less obvious (to me, at least) is how to go about repairing it. Can just the fabric on an otherwise-functioning speaker be replaced? If so, with what? Would trying to apply a VERY small amount of glue or other adhesive to the tear be a bad idea? Do I need to completely replace this speaker? Hoping that's not the case since the 200 speakers are so much more expensive than the 200A's.

Happy to upload a picture if that would help.

As always, thanks for your help!

Hello all,
I've been talking to a guy who's selling his dad's Fender Rhodes KBS 7024, which is a student model and has been nicknamed as a "Jetson's" model for its distinct look (he's got the avocado green version as seen here: http://www.fenderrhodes.com/models/student.html). The guy knows nothing about playing piano, but does know that Rhodes in general are valued vintage instruments, and knows that his specific model is more rare. The Rhodes was puchased by his father, but has been sitting in this guy's garage for multiple years, which means that it's experienced quite a few cold winters in the garage.

I've checked out the Rhodes in person and would say it's in fair shape: it's missing one tone bar, has a couple keys which are out of tune (which I know is not a difficult fix) action is very inconsistent, and some of the keys have really bad voicing, with a couple that even sound more "dead" to me. The electronics seem fine to me: amp worked fine, sounded clean, etc. The sustain bar was not attached to the piano assembly, but he said he was able to jerry-rig that by screwing the sustain bar into a plate in the back of the piano assembly. FWIW, I own a Wurlitzer 200 and feel relatively comfortable taking on refurb projects of moderate difficulty, although at this point I know very, very little about refurbing a Rhodes, compared to my knowledge of the Wurli's inner workings & construction.

So a couple specific questions:
- Are replacement parts from regular Suitcase or Stage Rhodes compatible with the Rhodes student model? In particular for the missing tone bar that I'll have to replace (#35, if I remember correctly) and tines, if I have to replace them?
- If replacement parts are not compatible, would I be correct in thinking that upkeep of the Rhodes student model would be far more difficult and costly, and dependent on my ability to find hard-to-replace parts?
- Am I ridiculous in thinking / expecting that I can haggle this guy down to $300 for his Rhodes, considering the state of the piano?

Thanks for your help!

Hello all,
Just joined the forum this morning, and this is my first post here. But I've been reading the forum for a little bit now and have a huge amount of respect for this community, and its informed and helpful members. I've owned a Wurli 200 for over 10 years, and it's always been in decent shape, except for a couple broken tines and decent-at-best action. I live in the Twin Cities and was able to find an independent repair dude who fixed the broken tines, tuned it, and showed me the basics of disassembling the wurli. As such, I finally worked up the courage to try to do some refurb projects myself, and the first thing I tackled was cleaning out the piano, lubing the balance posts, and treating some action centers on the whip assemblies.

All went fine with disassembly and reassembly, but now I have two keys whose hammers won't fall (never experienced this problem before my refurb). I'm guessing this is a relatively easy fix, but any recommendations for why this might be happening would be greatly appreciated. Similarly, there are a couple other keys whose hammers now hit the tines at slightly different spots, and produce more harmonics than they used to. Any advice or help on treating these two issues is greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!

As an aside, if anyone is in the Twin Cities area, I highly recommend the dude who repaired my broken tines. He's a professional piano tuner with 30+ years experience, and as an electric piano enthusiast he's recently added Wurli and Rhodes repair to his services. He was super nice, very helpful, and his prices were, in my opinion, extremely reasonable. Would be happy to help get anyone in touch with him.