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Update: it is not the reed. With the reed removed, it still pings. The hammer tip seems not to hit the reed rail as said. Stopping the hammer short inhibits the ping.

So I could now swap the hammer with the ha,mer of the highest c note. But maybe I will just live with it, since I never really seem to hit that highest b note

Dote

i just had a similar issue with mine - 2 notes in the top octave had a metallic "dink" sound on hammer hits after rebuilding the action. I tracked it down to a loose action center on the hammer, which is weird because it sounded like the reed making the sound. If I put pressure on the side of the hammer flange, the sound disappeared. I treated the action centers with naptha and it did not help.

My short-term fix was to remove the pin and add a mcguyvered paper washer between the flange and the hammer. This does slow the hammer though. I don't have a long term solution yet. VV is out of treble hammers so either I re-bush the action centers, buy some thicker pins from a piano supply place or buy bass/treble hammers from vv and swap out the tips.
None of those options sound as fun as playing the piano though. 

I noticed this too - I was reading the circuit description on page 65 and hit a cliffhanger when I couldn't find page 66.
"The collector current of the driver transistor becomes..." and nothing. Becomes what?

I have a few different sets of scans from different places - vv, bustedgear, electrotanya, tropical fish, ep-service.nl etc.
None of them have page 66. I was tempted to try the $20 download from musicparts.com but it only has 11 pages so is probably not complete.

I was looking for that page while debugging an amp with multiple problems.
I decided it wasn't worth my time so I asked my wife to buy me a warneck amp for my birthday. Got it installed yesterday and it sounds great!

Another thing to try for the crackling - locate the headphone jack under the left hand side of the piano. The speakers are connected through this jack and the connection is broken when headphones are plugged in. The switched contacts can get dirty and/or corroded because that hole is open to the elements.

My 200A intermittently made a similar sound when I bought it. I could play a single note but chords were distorted. Cleaning the headphone jack fixed it. I didn't want to get switch cleaner in the piano (the pressure of the spray can be very unpredictable), so I desoldered the jack and soaked it in isopropyl then switch cleaner. I also used a strip of very fine abrasive paper to clean the switch contacts. If you don't feel comfortable disassembling and desoldering, you could just spray the jack in-place or apply switch cleaner with a q-tip then exercise it with a headphone connector.

Use something like this: https://www.stewmac.com/electronics/amps/components-and-parts/cleaners-and-lubricants/caig-deoxit-pot-and-switch-cleaner.html. Don't use wd-40 because it will leave an oily residue on the switch that will attract dirt and you'll end up having to clean it again soon.
Worse case scenario the jack needs replacing - that's a $5 part and 1 hour labor.

Not sure about the dead notes but it looks like either a dead/loose/dirty reed or an action adjustment is needed. I would (carefully) wedge a pencil or similar under the dampers in that area to move them out of the way and watch the hammer as you hit the key to get a feel for what's going on. Compare to the neighboring keys. I don't think that's a $1000 problem - even if you have to replace a couple of reeds that's $50 in parts plus an hour or two to install and tune them.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

I've spent a LOT of time with my mkII now, and I said I would report back, so here are my thoughts.

The diy peterson pre-amp is very nice. It has a great tremolo but it does not perform magic and doesn't change the core sound of your piano. I was looking for a magic bullet and I think I had my expectations set a little high. Definitely still glad I have it though.

I was able to get much closer to the sound I was looking for by moving all the pickups as close as possible to the tines. I started by making a spacer out of some stiff, thin plastic and I used that as a guide to get a consistent starting gap. My mkII had a huge gap between tine and pickup so there was a lot of room for improvement.

Some tines/pickups were louder than others so once all keys were in the ballpark I had to fine tune by ear to get everything sounding consistent.
I still have some adjustments to make so when I hear a key that's off, I put a little round sticker behind it on the name rail and tackle a few at a time when I have the lid off.

I had a few tines that were mounted slightly diagonally and offset due to incorrectly drilled holes. (After reading Mike Peterson's blog, I picture a rickety drill press in Ensenada every time I see them). This offset seemed to make an even larger difference when the pickup was moved up close so I got a 3/8 crescent wrench and twisted the tine block in relation to the tone bar to get the tines lined up.

As a side note, the close proximity of the pickup caused it to interfere with the damper on a couple of keys so I had to trim the felt in order for it to clear the pickup.

Another detail of note is that some pickup mounting screws are still located slightly too far to the rear to allow for full adjustment so my next move is to remove a couple of pickups and file the rear of the slot to extend it by a few mms.

Finally, since I only play at a moderate level in my living room, the sound of hammer-on-tine leaking through the lid always bugged me, especially on the higher notes. I had some leftover dynamat in the garage so I put a couple of layers inside the lid and now I barely hear it.

I can't claim that I made a mkII sound like an early mkI but I can definitely get that nice raunchy twang out of it even with moderate pressure on the keys. I understand that Rhodes changed the hammer geometry at some point to decrease the velocity so the only way I can get around that is to play harder!

I'm in a similar situation. I've been playing emulations in Logic Pro and iOS and wanted the real thing.
I bought a 1980 mkII stage because it was in great shape and available.
Did grommets and hammer tips already because many of them looked or felt like the rubber was starting to degrade.

I've also worked on voicing and I'm pretty happy with the sound now. I bought the 6 zone hammer tips from vv and I'm thinking about buying more zone 5 tips to replace the zone 6 tips. There's a little too much "tink" in those keys for my taste. Like you, I'm also looking for a darker sound.

If you wanted to see how much difference the hammer tips/felts make you could always buy a couple of singles. With some finesse I think you could get the existing tips off in good enough shape that they could be glued back on again if you wanted to revert. Most of mine snapped right off cleanly but some needed to be sliced off. Still have all my fingers but a couple have band-aids on them!

I have a DIY Peterson amp PCB on it's way from Finland and I'll report back once that's operational.