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Have you tried re-soldering the Molex connector sockets on the boards? They often develop cracks in the solder joints.

I'd be reluctant to sanding the pedestals. If they aren't flat it could have a negative side effect on the pins of the hammers and on the way the hammer rolls on the pedestal.

As you have a 1976 I would suggest instead removing the felt from the cams and instead installing it on the pedestal as the friction between felt and the Teflon infused hammer will be much less than compared to felt rubbing against wood.

The difference in hammer height when at rest is down to a combination of pedestal height differences and wear in the felt. The former plays more of a part.

Take a few keys out which seemingly have the hammers at varying heights and you'll notice a difference in the measurements. I can only guess this is down to manufacturing tolerances when the keys were made. Vintage Vibe showed a video recently where they used a mini hand plane on the bottom of the key to match the heights. If I were to do it I would probably remove the felt and make a jig and use a router to remove the excess from the pedestal (though you have to ensure it is perfectly even)

For London I would probably go with Ryan Margolis at FenderRhodes.co.uk

https://www.fenderrhodes.co.uk/

Might be worth seeing if you have a metal plater near you, it costs very little to get the original zinc plating with a yellow passivate finish. Platers will usually dip it in an acid bath beforehand so saves you a lot of time in cleaning.

This is a set I had done recently:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/MEnsu1rfyGUSjMKu9

Also, I see that not all of the hammers are sitting square on the pedestals - some are off to one side such that they hang a bit over the edge. This is not something I can imagine is easy to adjust since it would likely mean adjusting the position of the action rail and since the adjustment would be quite small it would cause problems with the existing screw holes.

In fact this is actually quite easy to adjust.

First you need to remove the harp and remove the damper bar.

Next using a long screwdriver inbetween the damper comb arms  loosen the big machine screws which hold the aluminium action rail down to the keybed.

Next loosen the 2 big black nuts on each harp support.

Move the action rail and harp supports left or right and line  up the action rail with the majority of the pedestals until you are happy with each key then re-tighten.

Oh dear

I'm not sure but I think the balance felts, or rather lack of them, might be contributing.

So underneath the keys on the balance rail pins there are no white felts with those paper punchings?

With an aluminium action rail you can still shim it. Just need find a suitable shim made of something like wood from a modellers shop which won't easily compress or some thick gauge card.

Looking to increase the dip a little bit. Did you re-shim the harp supports to set the key dip or was that more for escapement? I think I've read that quite a few people remove the factory particle board ones - something about them being generic and not really the right thickness for each individual instrument.

Changing the thickness of the particle board on the top of the harp supports changes escapement. That is also known as the distance between the top of the hammertip to the underside of the tine with the key pressed down. Too small a distance between them and they will choke and break quicker. Too far between them and the action will feel spongy and more difficult to play.

Chi can you post some photos of the mod?

The best stuff to remove glue from the hammer cams is methylated spirits. Over here in the U.K. it's purple and has an absolutely terrible smell but is perfectly safe for the plastic hammers, in Norway you will know it as rødsprit. With the hammer combs out or the entire action rail off you can easily get to them in one go. They need to be completely free of residue before re-installing.

Is there a special tool needed to adjust the balance rail key pins for squaring the keys?

Thanks again!

A word of warning don't use pliers. I typically use one of those screw drivers which has an empty shaft for using removable bits. Put the key pin in the shaft of the screwdriver and gently lever the key pin (only if required) and in as few steps as possible as you don't want to damage the hole.

Chi,

Just in case if you need to know how to go through it here's the standard method. During a service changing the grommets, screws and damper felts is a good start and will definitely help with the alignment, you can also adjust the pickup as well.

Set key dip:

Standard is 3/8", this measurement comes from measuring the top of the key cap from its resting position to the top of the key cap when it is fully depressed (but not going in to aftertouch.) If it's already at 3/8" then you're good to go on the next step.

Square key tops:

Over time the keys can become angled (when looking at them from the front) you can make adjust their position by very gently adjusting the balance rail key pin with the key removed.

Set key height:

Now that each individual key cap is level and not at an angle you can now level the entire keybed with paper shims. Once you've got them all at the right height place the felt washer above the shims to prevent wear to them. The factory used to leave the paper shims on top to save time during manufacturing, you wouldn't see this on an acoustic piano.

Remove action from case:

For the next step you need to remove the entire action from the case and take the harp off.

Install miracle mod:

See Ben Bove's amazing post which goes in to all the detail you'll ever need on it: Here

Install damper felts:

Depending on how much a customer can spend and the condition of the dampers sometimes new dampers are required as the old ones become quite tired. If purchasing a new set is completely out of the question you can always remove the originals and level them out. When out of the action I often use acetone to clean the remaining glue for a fresh install of felts. EP-Service or Electric-Keys do full sets for a small amount. The felts when installed should have the grain running horizontally to prevent chirping (I think the treble is the exception.) Vintage Vibe do a good video on this.

Set escapement:

My prefered method to adjust the escapement is by keeping all the tonebars at the standard 3/8" height measured from the wooden harp to the underside of the tonebar. You can then adjust the overall escapement of the piano by using the two fibre shims on each harp support. Ideally you want the measurement between the hammer tip and the tine when depressed to be 1/4" to 3/8" in the bass and 1/32" to 3/32" on the highest note.

Set strikeline:

Remove the harp pivots on both sides and remove the 2 screws which hold the bass side down and the bottom screw from the treble side. Carefully adjust the position of the harp on the supports until you feel the notes ring out and sound pleasant. See here for more details.


Tune / Voice

Fender Rhodes technotes are your friend: http://www.fenderrhodes.com/service/technotes.html

I would suggest going through each of these steps and see what you might want to do depending on the situation.

All the best

Thanks Jenzz!

One thing I forgot to mention is that it's UV printed on anodised aluminium. It allows the design to be printed on the metal surface and then it's sealed with a protective layer. Much better than silkscreening and it's resistant to scratching and peeling unlike the originals.

Over the past few months I've had to restore a few Dyno preamps with damaged faceplates. As a result I've decided to remake the range of them for future repair work. I still need to make a few revisions but if anyone is interested please feel free to PM me for more details. Pricing for the Pro Piano and Pro EQ faceplates are £25, Tri-Stereo £30 and the Chorus £15.

MK1 Pro-Piano (looks black but is actually dark blue)


MK2 Pro-Piano


Tri-Stereo Tremolo


Pro-EQ


Chorus


More Images

Hi Craig,

I'm rebuilding a customers power amp which needed one.

E-T-A's 106-M2-P10-2A is a perfect fit, pricey but it's not worth putting a cheap one in which could fail.

https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/e-t-a-circuit-breakers/106-m2-p10-2a/?qs=FESYatJ8odKpH1Uz7mw6GQ==&countrycode=GB&currencycode=GBP

That's right, if it's a Pro-Piano for a MK2 they used an aluminium foil sticker. This is due to the width of the MK2 faceplate.

The Pro-EQ and Pro-Piano MK1 are aluminium faceplates.

Funnily enough I've been doing a fair bit of work around re-making Dyno Faceplates and the power circuit for a couple of restorations.

In the next few days I should have my new PCBs come in to replace the toasted one I had come in.

Will update the thread later on with some pictures.

The satin chrome finish was from later pianos, a similar thing occurred with the legs.

How much damper tape do you already have on it?

I usually set the height of the damper bar by using two fingers inbetween the reed bar and the damper bar. If it's hitting the lid then you can raise those 2 larger lid machine screws at the front to give you a bit more height. It's about finding the right combination.

Alex, have you tried Marcel at EP-Service.nl

He may be able to source you a few parts, he has done that for me a few times.

My bet is that this clavinet is 1978, based on the use of that IC.

First time I've seen one without it. Would love to know more about the Clavinet and if you have anymore pictures / serials that would be amazing. There might be a date stamp on the volume pot which would help date it massively.

The printing on the tolex is really impressive. Good work!

Fingers crossed for the re-tolexing, have to admit I've found it tricky on the D6.

Can you take a photo of the underside of your board?

So the main power supply caps are fine (those 3 large Mallory's)

Are you talking about the axial electrolytics on the left hand side? Are the negative leads going to ground? I have some photos of a later 1974 board but not all are clear.

Those plates should be under the lip of the damper rail. Insert them first then screw the other side in.

Unfortunately we can't see the image (it appears to be set to private)

There should be a plate held in by 2 screws either side of the damper bar which prevent the pins from moving. Are these missing?

This is perfectly normal. It's not about whether the harp sits parallel with the support.

The way the harp has been setup is to ensure that the bottom, middle and top hammers all hit the tine sweet spot so it rings out perfectly.

The angle at which the harp is sitting on the support doesn't matter as long as it sounds good.

Try the bottom part of this page:

http://soundcitysite.com/history_2.htm

DMI Most likely represents Dallas Musical Instruments (formerly Dallas Arbiter) in the UK. They also made Sound City guitar amps and these photos do look very simillar to guitar amps around that time.

If they were really bad and you needed them fixing I've seen repairs where they've taken a notch out of the bottom of the key and glued / pinned a new section of wood and re-drilled the hole. It's a lot of effort but I'm sure you might find a piano workshop which could do the work.

Here's the schematic. http://www.fenderrhodes.com/org/ch11/fig11-8.jpg

So even with the vibrato off both bulbs are not on?

Using your multimeter you should chase the 25v supply and see at what point does it stop in the vibrato circuit. Seems strange that both of them are gone so it points to an area upstream. I'd check from the 4 pin din then work your way from there.

Sounds like the tar has gotten hot at somepoint during it's life and leaked from the transformer. Possibly due to a bad tube or electrolytics drawing too much voltage, doesn't mean that the transformer is toast (as you have confirmed you're still getting voltages) it's probably best to get it checked over by a tech anyway.

I've had a few problems with 200 / 200a transformers not due to tar leaking but them developing an audible hum. This is down to delamination of the steel plates where the resin used to keep the plates together within the transformer winding becomes brittle and starts to oscillate. I've found 2 out of 3 N.O.S. replacements I bought had given me this issue.

I've heard about this before, tricky one but we can vouch for Tom as I'm sure it's related to the eighty eight key range of his suitcase.

Bought some parts a while back and the seller threw in an old scanned paper copy of the parts list.

I've scanned it, cropped what I can and rotated it if anyone is interested.

It contains a list of parts for 200 series pianos, schematic and board layouts for 200a (including wiring) and a guide showing the tuning of reeds over the keyboard by cents which I haven't seen in the existing guides.

Wurlitzer Service Parts List

Please don't rip it apart.

I'm with Dan. There are plenty of MK2's around, not many EK-10's and whilst they might not be the most desirable of Rhodes they are rarer than some.

If you're not keen on getting it fixed perhaps someone will trade you or alternatively you can sell it and try and get a different model.

It might be worth it to re-flow the solder on the 6 and 8 pin connectors mounted to each of the two amplifier boards of the power amp. These are notorious for causing issues like you are experiencing. This would also be in line with OZDOC's suggestion of possible loose components. You might want a tech to do it, bad soldering jobs can cause more damage if you are not familiar with soldering circuits.

Agreed, also some hot glue applied to the base of the connector and the PCB can give it some rigidity to reduce the risk of it happening again.

Speaking from experience in my early days I made a terrible mess of some of my gear by lifting tracks using a cheap soldering iron and lack of knowledge. A temperature controlled soldering iron is definitely the best investment and some 60/40 solder. Draper's 61478 40W soldering station is a very good model if you need one.

Do you get sound from the aux or headphone jack?

I would remove the name rail with the pre-amp first (there will be 2 screws for each cheekblock) the preamp should have a detachable connector to the left power supply cheekblock if you undo that then you can remove the rail and look at the preamp with a bit more space.



The foil you can bend back to check the electronics, it's a very simple preamp so there's not really much to go wrong. Check the 9V leads to make sure there's no breaks and if you can't see any immediate problems I'd then look to the power supply and battery switch within the cheek block.

That is very kind of you vcf4012, well I have little experience compared to Jon Furland but let's take a crack.

Do you have photos of the version you have? Dyno made a few different revisions from what I've seen (Pro Piano, Pro EQ) and a few variations within that.

The pro-eq runs off 2 9v batteries in series and alternately has a half bridge rectifier on board so you can use a 18v AC adaptor (definitely not DC)

No worries Jack, glad to hear you got it fixed.

If you want Jack I have a spare original stage preamp you can have for £25 inc postage.

If you do I'll give it a once over and clean the pots and re-solder it to be safe.

Is that orange lead spanning the end and middle terminal on the bass boost? (It's hidden by the cap)

Not too far at all!

Can you upload a photo on imgur showing it directly from the back? Slightly difficult to tell.

This thread is particularily useful, look at the first two images created by Sean.

https://ep-forum.com/smf/index.php?topic=9793.0

Completely agree with Sean, do it yourself.

D#23 needs the tine aligning but there's nothing there which looks particularily horrendous. Sean has already mentioned all the main things which would need doing and I would add to it replacing the damper felts.

Where are you in the UK Jack?

Thinner enameling on the wire makes them more sensitive to corrosion. Late 1979 is when they switched over, you can identify these pianos with the pickup rail number:

017249-TBJ

There is also another longer screw which goes through the middle of the bar and goes into the wood. It has another metal rod it goes through to apply pressure on the sustain bar. Worth checking to see if you have that.

Looks like you have a late 1974 piano if you're interested.

Couple of things I've noticed:

It's easily saveable, looks like he's only removed the keys and the sustain bar mechanism. As the preamp looks to be missing a pot you can connect a 1/4" jack to RCA adaptor to the harp on the top left hand corner and you can test the pickups and make sure each note is working.


Here's the list of things I'd start with:

Clean out the piano case
Using paper shims from a piano shop re-level the keys
Replace the screws and the rubber grommets (you can see many of them are squashed) purchase them from either Vintage Vibe or Retrolinear.
Re-wire or replace the preamp on the name rail

Looking at the sustain bar it looks like you might be missing the damper pins which connect the bar to the supports See here, it says out of stock so you may need to contact them directly.

Hang on a sec- theres is no mention that this particular piano the OP has posted about is the Valente! Seems to me like it might be something completely new?

It's real for sure. I had to vet the whole thing before I allowed them post.

You can see the piano in action here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh9qXy8mRoQ