Embrace my 79 Stage timbre, or start ripping things apart?

[Willis]

I was going to title this thread "Longtime Korg SV1 Owner Buys Rhodes, is Disappointed".

I recently picked up a 1979 mk1 Stage in good condition, it had been in long term storage. It had always been some kind of dream of mine to own a real rhodes, and while I thought the SV1 was an adequate stop-gap, I would never be truly satisfied until I had the real thing.

I had some awareness of the difference in timbre across the different model years, (my preferences are firmly on the older, darker, bark-ier side)though I didn't expect such a dramatic difference. In short I am not super keen on the clean, more bell like tone that the newer models produce, that my particular piano produces.

So far I have replaced all the grommets and screws, scraped off the factory shims and replaced them with slightly thinner pieces of solid wood, experimented with several voicing settings, and while I am able to get some of the nice dark, barking tones in the low and mid-range, the high end is still very chime-y.

I feel like the next step would be replacing the neoprene hammer tips with felt tips but I'm unsure if even this will give me the sound I am looking for. I read that even the tines from older models are different and contribute to that sound, though some argue not.
 
Any suggestions?

[pianotuner steveo]

The neoprene tips last much longer than the felt. Felt may give you more of the sound you want, but the felt does wear much faster.

[AndyP]

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.

[Willis]

Appreciate the replies guys.

Please do get back on the Peterson amp. I have a cheap mic pre that I'm using now, just for a clean boost. I was giving much consideration to some sort of amp modeling pedal, I find the amp modeling section on the SV1 goes some distance in getting a dirtier sound.