1975 Rhodes Loose Bridle Strap / Lost Motion

[geohdude]

Howdy folks - long time listener first time caller.

Working on a 1975 transitional mark 1 with wood harp supports. The damper arms mostly work effectively although they do have slack in the bridle straps. A select few notes have excessive slack and the damper felt would seemingly impede the full swing of the tine resulting in a muted resonance because of too much lost motion / the damper arm no being pulled out of the way enough.

Is it acceptable to pull the strap off, give it a few twists to shorten its length and actuate the damper arm earlier? Should I pull the whole hammer out and replace the bridle strap? What is the most appropriate fix for this?

Additionally - at rest some hammers are sitting uneven in spots. Is this something to try and fix? See photos below.

Thanks in advance!

[HappyTinkerer]

As no one with years of experience has answered, I hope the experience with my MkII is helpful:

I agree, there seems to be a lot of slack in most of the bridle straps.
But what really counts is not what it looks like but how it works.
All that slack could also be caused by misadjusted dampers.
I would only look at the bridle straps with the harp in the lowered position, i.e. the dampers pushing against the tines. THEN the straps should have a little slack.
But more important: The damper felt should start to move after a millimeter or so of key travel. You want as much damper travel as possible and I think it is not desirable to "feel" the damper disengaging in the middle of the travel.

When revising my Rhodes, I was also worried about the "look" of various things, e.g. slack of straps. I had even bought a new bridle strap because I thought mine were worn. Comparing questionable straps against the new showed it was just the setup, not the straps.

Slack can be adjusted to a certain extend by changing the position of the strap on the hook of the metal strip. Use thin tweezers. Once you are happy with the position, secure the strap end to the metal damper strip with a dab of glue.
In this way you can adjust damper activation w.r.t. key travel and match the keys to each other.

If you figure out straps are worn I would exchange them with new straps. Twisting them (as in the picture) will make them work like a spring. When you hit the key, they will not immediately transfer the motion to the damper strip but instead absorb part of the movement. The damper will not be pulled down linearly.

Re. hammer resting position: A Rhodes is far from being a precision instrument ;-). Someone figured it is sufficient if it works to a certain extent, it doesn't have to look like the innards of a Steinway.
I also tried to align hammer tip heights in resting position and spend a lot of effort but then I realized that this has little to do with how even the hammers funtion.
If the center 50% of the hammer tip hits the tine at the strike line position when depressing the key and swings back roughly to the correct escapement distance, everything is fine. Of course there is also key dip to consider (Mk I).

Btw, I would invest some time in setting up the dampers more evenly. This might improve damper release when pressing the damper release pedal.

[HappyTinkerer]

Btw, the first picture might have been taken from an odd angle but to me, the hammers seem to sit very low.
On my Mk II, the hammer tips are approx. 6.5 - 7 cm above the  key. Maybe there is a difference between Mk1 and II (Did I read somewhere that the hammer swing on the MK II was reduced compared to the Mk I?).
Did you (or someone else) ever replace the key pedestal felt (where the hammer rests on the key)? Most replacement felt available is thinner than the original, which means the hammer heads rests in a lower position. 0.2 mm sum up due to the long lever of the  hammer.
I had installed VV pedestal felt in 2015 and it felt "immediate" and "tight" at first but then I noticed that the hammers sit deeper, the bridle straps had slack and there was an unpleasant "plonk" as the hammer fell back on its rest. I changed this to a felt that is very very close to the original felt (but is not red).

I am just looking for reasons why all of your bridal straps have so much slack...

[geohdude]

@HappyTinkerer, thanks for your input 

The damper felt should start to move after a millimeter or so of key travel. You want as much damper travel as possible and I think it is not desirable to "feel" the damper disengaging in the middle of the travel.

Globally that is not happening with proper tinkering. This board was rescued from the grave and had some wildly bent dampers and existing twisted bridle straps. In the lull of the forum and holiday sale at VV, I decided to go ahead and completely gut and rebuild the damper action with new arms and bridle straps (wish me luck as the parts just came in). Is it neccesary to add a dab of glue to where the bridle strap attaches to the damper arm? I know the MK1s are like that from factory but I haven't seen any MK2s with glue at that point.

Did you (or someone else) ever replace the key pedestal felt (where the hammer rests on the key)? Most replacement felt available is thinner than the original, which means the hammer heads rests in a lower position. 0.2 mm sum up due to the long lever of the  hammer.

When I first opened it up the action had sufficient grime and rust on some pins, key bed was properly seized in sections and the bridle straps looked saggy pre service. I couldn't properly test any action functions and decided rebuilding it in entirety was this boards only hope. As such I have rebuilt the entire key bed (back rail felt, balance rail felt and punchings, leveled key bed and front rail felt) as well as pedestal felts and miracle modding the action.

Thinner pedestal felt could potentially explain the lower resting position of hammers and seems plausible. Not sure about differences of travel in hammer swing between a MK1 and MK2 but that could theoretically make sense.

Coincidentally I am restoring this '75 MK1 next to a 80' MK2 88 and could measure where they sit currently.... but the MK1 action feels really nice after the miracle mod, just gotta get this damper service done and then enjoy them!

[HappyTinkerer]

Need for a glue dab depends on how loose end of the bridle strap sits on the hook. I decided to adjust, make note of those adjusted and check back after a month or so to see which of the adjusted had changed position. Then add glue dabs accordingly.
I assume you don't see glue an the Mk II damper springs because Mk II overall where no longer adjusted as precisely as Mk I. After all, they had redesigned the Rhodes to Mk II to make expensive individual adjustment superfluous. Haha...
Please report on your achievements. ;-)

[geohdude]

@HappyTinkerer - for the time being I haven't touched the bridle straps with glue because the straps feel pretty secure. Everything worked out super well. With new bridle straps and damper arms, the Rhodes performs like new with minimal additional regulation. And replacing the bridle straps is really not bad, certainly far less time than other steps in restoration and gives a vast improvement immediately.

A note on the vintage vibe damper arms for any future restoration frontiersmen: the damper arms from VV are a little bit longer than the stock dampers from the 70s and its such a vast improvement because the damper felt is further away from the full swing of the tine, or said another way, closer to the block of the tine vs the tuning spring. Great job VV.

----

One other note on the different levels of resting hammers. The difference in resting levels turned out to be due to wear (rather heavy wear) on the bottom of the hammer cam. That's what is thinner than it's neighbors. Additional clues are heavy thumb marks from A below to E above middle C. Someone must have played the hell out of those notes. I didn't take pics of the problem but went realized what the issue was when I was installing the new bridle straps.