World first for self induced Rhodes malfunctions?

[kevinplaystheblues]

Thought the following might give some of you a laugh - I'd be pleased to hear if anyone else had created this situation before, but I suspect it might be a world first!

I've been servicing up my MK1, replacing grommets and springs, and looking at the other key variables.

Starting to put it back together tonight, I am hearing a strange buzz on (of all keys!) my middle C. It sounds more electrical than vibrational, but it's on the borderline - thing is, I haven't really touched the pickups - mostly just a reseating of tines and tonebars at this stage...then I take a closer look...



With the flashlight showing it up, it's pretty obvious, but this ultrafine piece of steel wool I used to buff up some corrosion on the tine obviously got caught in the tuning spring, with some of the fibre then sucked onto the pickup magnetically!

This was resulting in a short to ground (I think?) as the vibrated over the point where the two stands of steel wool touched.

What a ridiculous self induced issue to encounter - thankfully one that didn't take too long to diagnose at least.

[HappyTinkerer]

Very interesting. 

I don't think the steel wool thingy caused a short (there is no electricity there), I guess it is either disturbing the magnetic field or touching the tine's tip and disturbing its vibration.

[Tonewheel]

Great story with a happy ending.

We have a Yamaha C# grand, and recently when I played a middle D, the D# always sounds and vice versa. So I took the fallboard out and found more grandkid fun things: a ballpoint pen and a felt heart lying on the strings. Another happy ending.

It's another story of things being where they shouldn't. Retired endoscopist here. Story of my life...

[kevinplaystheblues]

Very interesting. 

I don't think the steel wool thingy caused a short (there is no electricity there), I guess it is either disturbing the magnetic field or touching the tine's tip and disturbing its vibration.

Well....my tines are grounded from the aluminium tape under the blocks....and the pickup circuit as a whole will eventually run up to the 'main ground' (sic) to make the audio circuit...

But, what I don't know,now you've got me thinking about it, is whether the magnet/nipply bit of the pickup is actually wired into the pickup circuit, or that the coil is wrapped around it with insulation between? I'm guessing you're suggesting the latter?