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Yes you are.
The voltage regulators don't care if they don't have a load as well as the power amps audio inputs.

And here is finally a video that covers that topic in very detail.

https://youtu.be/eQ0pxgEqUnA?si=R-pQKGT51cqHDNZp

Thanks for the shout out! :-)

I'm just waiting for the enclosures to be manufactured and printed. Made in Germany.... :-)

This is easy...

You have to ground the damper arms. This will make the noise vanish...

Since the dual capstan modification is patented by VintageVibe I doubt that anyone offers such a modification.

actually I just plugged the Rhodes and it gets quite loud past 1.5 / 2 on the volume knob. At 3 all kind of objects start buzzing/vibrating in the room, and I'm playing as soft as possible!

Thats correct. The gain inside the janus preamp is ridiculous.... really over the top. Anyway for best noise ratio I'd personally recommend to lower the gain in the power amp since this will also lower the noise introduced by the CMRR.

I think there is a sketch up model of a key frame somewhere on the internet. Google for it and you might find it...

Hammer combs didn't change over time. At least to my knowledge...

Go and get it :-)

What's the voltage reading on the PCB for the pickup voltage without the RCA connected to the reed bar?

Hey,

I have one for sale. It has a custom preamp and midi, just like the 3 midi Mark V that were built in the 80s.

I'd like to add:

Those transformers in these suitcase Pianos can be rewired to be used with 110V or with 230V. So a step down / step up converter is not necessary.

You can't see it from the outside. You'd have to open it and look at how the transformer is wired at the power switch.

Why don't you just remove the old fuse and look at it. You'll find the voltage rating on the fuse itself.

Here is a video covering the procedure. It's in German only. But you'll see it step by step

https://youtu.be/BhISj6Zc9oE

May I throw in these as well :-)

https://shop.tinesandreeds.com/en/product/tone-bar-grommet-kit/

Gosh. It sure is nice to have so many options when it comes to replacement parts.
You're preamp looks and sound fabulous BTW!

Thanks! Really appreciated :-)

May I throw in these as well :-)

https://shop.tinesandreeds.com/en/product/tone-bar-grommet-kit/

To me it looks just right.

You always can move the action rail a bit to the back. This will move the hammers to the back as well and it gives room for adjustments.

Wrapping the felt like that it legit :-)

I have a D6 which is for sale but it needs work. It misses a hand full of strings and the damper assembly. It already has new hammertips and was serviced by EP Service once upon a time.
The preamp needs work as well...

I'm selling it for a customer. He wants 1.800€. I can ship worldwide.

Let me know if this is of interest for you.

Shimming the action rail increases the keydip. Use a thicker back rail felt to reduce key dip.

Works fine here.

And yes. You have to remove the dampers since these are also attached to the sustain mechanism on the back.

There are two screws holding the sustain mechanism on the back of the action.

Oh, no ;-)

Jenzz is running "Taste und Technik" in Germany.

I'm running Tines & Reeds in Germany :-)

We have our Preamp available also with a mirror name rail. Check this site:
https://shop.tinesandreeds.com/produkt/ferro-vorverstaerker/


Best,
Chris

My pleasure. :-)

Here is the solution:

On a '73 Rhodes you have the single damper arms. These are not connected to ground by factory and though act as antenna. Get some copper foil wot conductive adhesive and properly ground the damper arms.
It should be dead quiet after this modification.

Disassembly of the whole action is done in 5min....

So if you want to improve your instrument, take your time. I'd not glue a felt over another. This would lead to inconsistent key dip.

Here are some pictures.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/an40o8bp5ef8ymu/P1070236.jpeg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dc88x8uv4x3qctv/P1070237.jpeg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fnlf0klqpld158a/P1070238.jpeg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/laxawu7gyoqzhkf/P1070239.jpeg?dl=0

I've manufactured mirror namerails here in Germany. Unfortunately the manufacturer used the wrong material on the first batch. So now I have 10 rails here which are made from brushed stainless steel. If this is of interest for you, I could take some pictures.

Did you check the manual from Tropical Fish? I use this because it's the one with the best quality out there and you can search through it which is awesome as well!

Shifting the action rail might give you enough room for this modification. Loosen the five machine screws in the aluminum rail und shift the rail to the back, tighten it again and check if there is enough room for it now. If not you can remove the action rail completely and widen the holes of the nuts bigger with a file to be able to shift it to the back even more.

Please note, that you need to reset your strikeline after doing so.

I personally would not glue something to the pedestal at least if it's an aluminium rail. On a wooden action rail it's a different case because shifting the action rail is not that easy due to the countersunk screws used to tighten it to the keyboard frame.

What a great post, Tim! Thanks for sharing!

Although I have never seen a (Fender) Rhodes, that matches the hardness mentioned by Steve Woodyard on fenderrhodes.com. I'm not sure if these informations are even valid. This leads to my consumption that there must be something in the hammertips that will dissolve over time.

Anyway I totally support the approach: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. :-)

I'd guess so. These parts were made from a special type of rubber. Neoprene iirc. Every rubber is a mix of various minerals / materials. Some of those will dissipate into the air after years / decades. This you can also see on the grommets. They are hard after 50 years.

Then you should move the action rail to the back. :-) this will give you more room for this modification.

I don't think they provide any specs because it drastically depends on the volume of the instrument itself which can be again drastically different from piano to piano because of different voicing.

I think Marcel from EP service in Netherlands has some stock.

Yes. The lines represent the EQ settings in 10% steps. The violet line is with EQ flat.

The Peterson is quite different and has a built in fixed LPF, which kills a lot of noise. See attachment for a simulation of the Peterson (only treble boost is shown).

As you can see it has a smaller boost than the Janus of only 12-13db with the peak being at 5kHz. At 10kHz you only have +5db while the Janus has +22db. This is due to the LPF which is implemented in the Peterson preamp.

Sounds normal to me.

The Janus preamp has a gain of 22 in it's first stage which is huge. Since the preamp doesn't have any LPF at the output stage (like the Peterson Preamp), you amplify a lot of noise..
I've attached the frequency response of the Janus preamp for reference as you see it has its peak frequency at 11kHz with about 22db boost. The Rhodes doesn't have much to amplify in that range. So you are amplifying just noise....that's what you hear!

But what is interesting to me is I've seen such modified instrument a few times already. And the funny part is, that the capacitors on all models looked the same which would be uncommon if this was only a DIY-solution and not a professional. There are tons of such caps on the market and they all look different. So it seems there were a guy (or a company) who did this modification as a professional I guess...

In my opinion such a recording doesn't make sense without a comparison since overtone has a lot to do with voicing as well. For a convincing comparison you'd need an (almost) perfectly serviced Rhodes piano which you record without the caps and then with.

Finally! Here it is! :-)

https://youtu.be/m8gTKupUHBU

And on it goes.

Disassembly of the harp. Cleaning of the pickups, tines and tonebars:



Removing all tone bar screws and grommets and replacing them with new hardware. The rubber part in the treble is not original. This part was utilized in the late Mark II pianos. So someone installed this maybe in the 80s. Apart from that all parts look to be original.



Someone had installed these Mark II rubber part in the treble area. It works great though so we left it:





Removing old harp support brackets and replacing them with our new hardware Made in Germany. They are made from stainless steel.



Voicing. This took quite a while. We decided to not replace the hammertips from mid to bottom. The yellow and a few white hammertips have been changed to new square hammertips for an even tone throughout the keybed.



Adjusting the key bushings (again). After a while the felts may widen. So rework is necessary.



Finally we've installed our preamp FERRO and it's mirror namerail into the very first customer instrument. We are very proud of it! And it just sounds like heaven. We will post some stuff later on.



Mounted to our mirror namerail Made in Germany of course:

Stunning work Christian! Will you be selling those wood cheeks in your webshop?

Cheers
Dan

Absolutely. I'm not sure if we offer them already finished / oiled or if that is the task of the customer. Also mounting might not be easy for the customer to do. These are solid. So you have to remove the wooden block where the cheeks are normally screwed in.

Hey guys & ladies,

I'd like to share this my progress on this restoration with you which is not yet completed. But since this is an overhaul from ground up I thought this could be of interest (or just for fun) for some of you.
This is a Buz Watson Fender Rhodes Mark 1A manufactured in 1972. It will be overhauled completely from the out- and from the inside. It will also get our preamp which we just finished. So, let's start:



The first step is to remove the old key bushings:



and the old pedestal felts:





Let's take a closer look to the case:









Time to remove this felt as well:







And add a new high-quality one from the local piano builders supply here in Germany:





The old damper felts will be removed as well:







and we replaced them with damper felts Made in Germany after our requirements as well:



Next are the keypins that need some cleaning & polishing:



Before adding new key bushing felts we measure the key pins as well as the slots in the hole. We have different types of cauls and different thicknesses of felt to achieve a very good match from the start:



We always do one or two test-keys to check if we measured right before applying the combination of caul & felt to the whole keybed. Since the slots inside the keys were not manufactured with close tolerances reworking the felt after applying it is always necessary.



And the rest:







So, we now allow the glue to dry. Let's take care of the case.

Removing the hardware:





Removing the tolex:



Sanding, sanding, sanding:



Repair the case where necessary:



Paint it black from the inside:



Next step: Cutting the tolex to size and glue it to the case. Now it looks like this:



We have some nice wooden cheek blocks available. At the moment we have cherry or walnut. So what would you prefer?





The customer decided on walnut. A beautiful decision. So we go on and oiled the wood instead of painting it with clear coat. This gives it a natural touch. Another upside is that you can remove any scratches quite easily. Just sand it and apply oil again: Voila! The scratch is gone. It's not that simple with lacquer.



Next is cleaning and polishing of the keys:



And grounding the damper arms:



Let's move on to the keys. Leveling:





Adding the pedestal modification:





And here is the god-shot:




So... next week we will do the voicing and installation of our preamp FERRO. We will give you some details about it soon! But this Rhodes will be the first one where it will be installed. It's so exciting! :-)


I'll keep you posted about it.

Let me know if you have any questions or what you think about it!

Best,
Chris

I haven't removed any pianet keys yet but I'm quite sure that there is some kind of grommet guiding the key. It's like this on a DUO. It helps lubricate those grommets so the keys can move without much resistance.

Great! :-)
Keep us posted.

That's normal. We had that kind of issue in one of the facebook-groups recently. If you reinstall the harp, the issue is gone. The hammer will be stopped by the tine and will never move that far.

[and NOT by felts on the frontrail pins.]

Please make sure you do not get confused by all those technical terms. You are talking about keydip, but what you actually mean is escapement ;-)

Keydip is the travel of a key downwards. The key stops via the stop lock mechanism which is formed by the pedestalfelt and the hammer and NOT by felts on the frontrail pins. I've seen this often but it's wrong.The frontrail felt should only prevent the key to not go too much into aftertouch.

So there are several things that affect keydip.
The first thing is the key rest felt which should be changed in any case cause it's worn out / hardened over the time. If you take thicker felt than the original, you'll reduce keydip.
If keydip is already low and you want to increase it, you can shim the action rail. You already adjusted the action rail. By shimming the rail you'll raise the hammers thus inceasing distance between key and hammer => more keydip.
The last thing is the pedestalfelt itself. Thicker felt gives less keydip.

My very personal opinion is you should take at least a 2mm key rest felt (some pianos require 3mm). I use pedestalfelt which is 2mm thick. The VV felt is great, because it's very flexible. Good if you have the bump mod. But it's only 1.6 / 1.7mm thick.
I'm even thinking of trying 2.5mm... but haven't tried that yet.

I found some of those parts in the sailing section of my DIY store.

It depends what you are looking for.

AFAIK the retroflyer has a sine-wave LFO while the original Peterson is more or less a square-wave with smooth ramps. So it's a different sound...
The VV preamp should go more into the Peterson-direction.

Let me give you a hint:

You'll need 3/8" a lot... key dip, escapement, etc.

Did you know that the tine-body is 3/8" thick? You can take a tine for reference in many many cases! :-)

Seans very last point

3.  Raise the hammer cam stop-lock position by raising the whole action rail.  Shims under the action rail are not illegal.

is the way to go if you want more key dip in general. If you want to fine tune key dip on a single key, you have to shim or shave off the pedestals.