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Dear forumers,

first of all, please excuse my probably uncorrect english, since I'm French!

I am new to this forum and I came here because I'm trying to occupy myself with a global restoration of my Rhodes during my (confined) spare time... This is the first time I do that (I've only be dealing with tuning and voicing the piano when I bought it 15 years ago), so I would appreciate very much to benefit from the advices of pros and other experimented persons. I've read a lot of threads in this forum (dozens, for sure) but I couldn't find an answer to some of my questions.

To begin with, my piano is a '76 Rhodes Stage 73. I've planned to restore quite a lot of things inside the piano. I've already installed new front rail felts + balance rail felts and set key height and key dip. Now I would like to proceed with:

• new tone bar grommets + screws + springs
• new hammer tips
• new damper felts
• the bump mod, even if I'm not quite sure yet (see my questions on this other topic https://ep-forum.com/smf/index.php?topic=10244). Note : my Rhodes have plastic hammers with white felts on the cam (hence bare pedestals)

As you can see, most of these changes will affect mainly the escapement. I've thought a lot about how to do the right things at the right moment and for now, I have in mind the following order :

• change tone bar grommets and screws, set the tone bars in a 'neutral' position (3/8'' height) and the tines just above the center of the pickups ; the precise settings will be made at the end
• disassemble hammers, change the tips
• do the bump mod : remove the felts on hammer cams before putting them back on the rail and add bumps+felt on the pedestals 
• set the harp height and the strikeline : there will be certainly some adjustments to do since I'm changing the old square hammer tips for new ones which are graduated and having not the same height, e.g. -3mm for the lowest keys, equal for the highestand in between in the middle part.
  
  Also, according to someone who did the bump mod with a similar model, it seems that it was necessary to lower the harp after that, unlike for pianos that came with felts on the pedestal :
  https://ep-forum.com/smf/index.php?topic=9953.0
  Can anybody else (having worked on the same model) confirm that observation ?
  
  Moreover I think that presently the escapement was set too high by 2mm all along the piano (when comparing to settings in the Rhodes manual)...
  
  To sum up it's quite sure I'll have to lower the harp by removing the MDF shims glued on the top of the aluminium supports: there are 1 at the right side (~3,5mm) and 2 at the left (hence ~7mm). And adjust with other harp shims. 
• change the damper felts (hoping that the new ones will fit not too badly) 
• come back to the tonebars to set voicing (timbre, module)

My main questions are :
- do you think that my order of the operations is correct ?
- did I miss something ? I mean, between some of the steps there could be something else to do I haven't thought of ?
- do you have any particular advice concerning this global restoration ?
Actually my main fear is to create too many important changes without being able to control them (by lack of experience). For instance, after lowering the harp in 4) probably the (old) dampers will be pressing against the tines and will not let them resonate, so how to know if the escapement has been properly set ? Should I adjust harp height without dampers ? Or only after changing the felts (the new ones are smaller, luckily).

I would be very glad if some of you could help me in organizing this big restoration. Many thanks in advance.