1967 Silvertop - Full Restoration

[Ben Bove]

Before I get to the restoration of this piano, I have to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation for Nir Benjaminy, Rhodes tech here in LA.  He has helped me greatly finding parts and servicing the amp on this piano, and sharing his knowledge to help me bring this Silvertop back to life.  Obviously I've tried every tech under the sun in the Southern California area, yes I have had dealings with almost all.  But by far I've had the best experience with Nir.  Besides knowing just about everything there is to know about them, he has to be the nicest guy to get along with and is very helpful with every part of the process.  Quick turnaround.  Quality repairs.  Explanations of repairs.  Correctly priced service.

He will be the only tech I deal with in the future, and those of us in the greater LA area, I would recommend the same thing.

Also, this piano was purchased from Tom Nardozza on the forum here, want to say thanks to Tom for making it a great transaction - effectively shipping a suitcase from NJ to CA with no issues.  Piano was exactly as described, and anyone buying a Rhodes from Tom, you're all good.

Now onto the piano!  Will try not to make this an epic post...I've taken 225 pictures but obviously won't load them all, I'll put a link at the end to the full slideshow.  Unfortunately there are no date codes anywhere to be found on it.  In looking at the internals, I have to say its from 1967, possibly 1968.  Jordan Amp, Plastic hammer shafts on teardrop heads, and old-style wood dampers.  2x12" Jensen speakers to audience, 2x10" noname to player.  

It arrived this February '09 in 2 well-built crates via UPS.  





After setting up the piano at home, noticed that this piano was rather rough around the edges.  I was hoping to put a little armor-all and clean the grill cloths... but it was obvious it was in need of a full restore:





















The Deteriorated red felt lining on the Case Lid has layered the piano with felt dust



Does have original raymacs, except for 2 or 3 shiny Torringtons - Lowest E of course not original







So, It was decided to do a ground up restore.  Besides the ordering of Parts, tolex/Grill, these are the products I used:



1)  Grill Cloth
I started with the Grill cloths on the speaker cabinet, due to the smell and being the biggest detraction first off.  They were obviously stained from years of tobacco-browning.





Here is just how dirty they were, one pass at cleaning a section of the grill with a white towel:



You can also see what the grill used to look like behind the Fender Badge (haha):



The original cloth was Fender with the teal stripe in it.  Because these were being covered the same as the Fender Twin Amps of the same era, they went well with the Silver face twins with the blue outlining.  However, It just doesn't look all that great against a grayscale Silvertop and Black Rhodes.  So, in ordering new grill Cloth I purchased straight Black/white/silver from http://www.tubesandmore.com/ - S-G303 Grill Cloth under Guitar Amps.  It's a very nice cloth for a great price.  Here's what it looks like against the original:



Panels Stripped of cloth and speakers:



It was very tedious to remove all the old staples from the baffles.  When installing the grill cloth, I started from the center of the long side, and worked my way out to the edges.  Stretching just a little bit, but not making it too tight where the cloth would be uneven in the pattern.  Stapled new cloth all the way around, cut off excess, took some time but finally had wonderful new grill panels.  Used the same old Logo, as it is the solid metal version and not reproduced:





2) Cleaning
Next was to start getting into the piano top, so I removed all the keys and cleaned with a simple windex/rag.  Takes a bit, but especially these earlier full skirt keycaps, they clean right up and are super bright.  A couple cigarette burns in keys.



Removed the knobs from the preamp, and used a medium bristle brush and windex to clean the dirt between the grooves on the knobs.





3)  Repainting Cheekblocks and Key Rail

The earlier pianos had wood cheekblocks and namerail support.  The paint, being 40 years old, was terribly checked, cracking, and generally worn.





Big difference in the paint under the namerail, and the finish on the paint exposed to front:






Having to remove the cheekblocks from under the piano's frame, I had to remove the action bed from the case.  As an interesting note, the piano bed is secured from the sides by 4 #14 screws, 2 on each side under the handles (visible from the exterior):





After the bed was removed, the case was cleaned, and cheekblocks/rail removed.  



I then removed the felt from bottom of rail, and stripped the paint from all the wood.









The Wood was sanded in preparation for primer.



After priming, the pieces were sprayed with about 3-4 coats of Black Gloss Paint, to which the paint was let to dry for 2 days.  





I then sanded the finish of the paint starting with 1000 Grit moving to 2000 Grit, then polishing compounds to get a great paint surface.  Parts were then heavily coated with matching Clear Coat (enamel paint requires enamel clear), and put parts away to dry for a very long time.  As a note, clear coat takes FOREVER to dry completely.  It actually sets up over a few weeks, but after about a good 5-7 days it's able to be touched.  Seriously.

4a)  New Tolex

By far, the most labor-intensive, time-consuming, exact, and thought-out job was the full retolexing of top and bottom cabinets with lid.  It took me 5-6 yards to completely do the Rhodes, factoring in that I would goof something up somewhere.

Old Hardware was removed from all cabinets


Strange, both the piano top and bottom were marked as "33" which I can only assume was a cabinet shop designation.



I think I was rather lucky in that the old tolex was basically coming off already, so removal wasn't that bad.  It literally peeled right off the boxes without a lot of effort.  It might be more difficult for a better-shape Rhodes, but here's the result of the removal.  Notice all the old glue holding fabric remnants on cabinet.







The Amp Panel - This will be an interesting cut.





An interesting note: originally, pieces of tolex were applied to the corners, so when the tolex was cut around the edges, no wood was exposed in the cut.



4b)  Cabinet Prep for New Tolex

Every dent and uneven surface would show through in my mind on the new tolex (certainly from botched jobs I've seen on ebay), so I set out to make the cabinets perfectly smooth.  Sanding with about 100 Grit in straight and circular motions, I was able to remove all the old glue and fabric.  Sanded again with a slightly higher 300 Grit paper, just because.  To do the Piano case, the lid, and the suitcase bottom, had taken just about a whole day to sand down (no power sander).











After it was sanded completely, I got out the bondo to fill the nicks and bumps.  It's very important to make the rounded edges smooth - Especially on the suitcase bottom, there were many indentations along the edges that would have made for a sloppy looking contour line.  Make sure to round out the bondo in these parts to match the roundness of the cabinet's lines.  NOTE:  Don't bondo over the screw holes!!




4c)  New Tolex
I highly recommend watching the VintageVibe tolex corners video on youtube.  This will absolutely prepare you for doing these.  

The original tolex had shrunk.  After I removed it, I even layed it back ontop of the cabinet, and the holes didn't match up anymore.  So, I set my old pieces on my new tolex roll, and cut out around them - adding about 2 inches around the pattern.



With my new pieces, I applied my tolex glue (tubesandmore.com S-F316) Which is a great glue, allows you to lay the tolex down and reposition if it's bad.  Contact Cement, no good.  One-shot.

I started with the Suitcase bottom.  After laying the first piece down, I made the careful cut for the amp - diagonal from each corner, then a center joining cut.  Wrap under and set.





The top piece was then fitted across the top, so it could fold into the cabinet.  Exacto-ed to fit.  As a note, the tolex glue is only good for Wood-to-tolex contact (Thanks Nir.)  So contact cement was used for the tolex-tolex overlap.





After a long time of measuring, cutting, not cutting too close so I can re-cut to fit, corner cutting, and gluing, finally had tolexed the Suitcase top and Bottom, with the Lid saved for later.





5)  New Hardware

Old vs. New:



Installing the new hardware, to find the screw holes I pushed my finger down and moved across the new tolex until I felt the depression of the screw hole.  When putting in the new corners, as known they do not fit 100% initially.  I had to hammer in the center, while on the cabinet,  to split the wings out a little farther so the screws would go in.  Installed new corners, handles, hinges, and screws throughout the entire Rhodes.





5)  The Lid
The dreaded lid... Tolex cutting on this is much more difficult, especially the corners that are not covered by Hardware Corners.  Ontop of that, the 60s has the red felt lining in the center, a totally different fabric (that was very difficult to cut nicely).



Again following the Youtube VV corner cut guide, tolex covered on lid, with the appropriate overhang for the Red lining.





Used tolex glue for Red Fabric (supplied by Nir from Garment district downtown, thanks Nir!)







Layed in, with edges pulled back - so I can contact cement edges of tolex and edges of red felt fabric.



Edges fully glued down



Now the problem I ran into was that the fabric was difficult to cut.  I thought by installing the fabric first, I'd have a more exact-fitting piece.  But honestly it was very difficult to get through with exacto, and I didn't want to slice through the tolex underneath it.  But, in the end, was able to cut through.  Came out nice.



6)  Silvertop Lid buffing

The paint on the Silvertop lid is much like car paint, with the actual paint and then clearcoat ontop.  The clearcoat was dulled, and had a few brown cigarette marks.  Starting with 2000 Grit then going backwards to 1000 Grit, I was able to lightly take out some of the browning, but I didn't dare go too deep in fear of hitting the paint.  Then used rubbing compound on whole lid, then cleaned then used Car Wax.  Shines like new!

With Burns:


Lightly Sanded Burns - reduced appearance:


7)  Amp and Speaker Repair
While all this was going on, I sent the amp out to Nir Benjaminy.  He noticed the original Capacitors were of poor design, and the mounts were cracked.  Being so long, being mounted horizontally, they shattered their mounts and were deemed unsafe.









According to Nir, Capacitor technology has come quite a long ways in 40 years.  Here is a photo of the new capacitors next to old.  The new are about 1/4 the size, and are DOUBLE the capacity.  Impressive.



Perfectly installed, thanks Nir!





Also, from the hole that was already in the amp faceplate, we decided to install a line out jack, which was a shame to have never existed from the factory anyway.  Now you can record the Rhodes in Pro Tools, while hearing the speakers (normally external speaker jack cuts output, like headphone jack).





Installed in cabinet:



Also, when the amp returned, I polished the faceplate of the amp with Meguiar's Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner.  It came out incredibly well.



SPEAKER REPAIR:
The suitcase cabinets from the 60s  - The speakers are hard wired, no clips on the speaker wire.  This means that if someone unscrews and pulls one off one of the baffles, there's a high chance that something will rip apart if a baffle falls.  I'm assuming that's what happened to one of my 12" Jensens, the terminal was completely ripped from the speaker (leads in the cone and all) and the pieces were found in the cabinet / stuck on the wire.  So, took it to a repair place here (GSS Speaker repair) and they were able to rewire the speaker and glue it back up without reconing.  Was a fantastic job.  



A side note, an interesting thing about this model is the 10" speakers facing the player.  They have a crossover capacitor to step down the difference in speakers.





8 )  Not pictured – Legs refinish
According to Steve Woodyard, the Suitcase "U" legs were originally anodized – like car parts.  I didn't think it would be cost effective to have a metal shop anodize just 2 small parts, so to get the scratches out I sanded to bare metal, primed, painted (Artic Silver M Duplicolor paint was the closest match, I think it's for foreign Honda) and clear coated.



Final


















































This has only been a cosmetic restore at this point.  I'm still looking for a better condition namerail or rechrome this one, and looking for an original silver flat kickplate for the sustain pedal.  Haven't decided on the hinges yet, I don't want to do the massive ones.

Still have to file the hammers and set up the harp!  It plays ok but needs actual internal work.  Will post audio clips when that's completed!

[Mark II]

bjammerz, I am speachless.
great restoration job.
thanks for sharing the pics.

enjoy you new paino
kind regards

Mark II

[Dote]

Absolutely fantastic job!!!

I had the same problems with the new corners on my Stage piano. I use wood glue for the tolex btw (Titebond). This works quite nicely and the glue is non-toxic. The wood glue also lets you stick tolex to tolex.

I see that you have omitted the glides on the piano back side. Is that intended? Did the early Fender Rhodes not have these?

Great job and I really enjoyed your photos!

Thanks,

Dote

[tomnardozza]

beautiful job, ben....now i'm jealous and want it back!!

tom

[Fred]

She's a real beauty Ben!!! I have to say though, I like the turquoise striped grillcloth ;^) Definitely don't use the large hinges. The originals where a small blade type that are nearly impossible to find.
 Once again, exellent job! Welcome to the Silvertop Club!

[Ben Bove]

Thanks for the comments!

I haven't put the glides on the back yet... they are originally there but I'm not going to be transporting it much, not sure if the cleaner look is better.  Depends on the hinges maybe.

Fred - yes you know if they made the original grill cloth, I might do the turquoise  stripe just to stick to original specs.  But I've seen the remakes on restored Rhodes, and they don't look that great in my opinion - it's a massive thick turquoise stripe.  Too pronounced for me, the thin original stripe was really more of a hint anyway rather than all you see.  I've seen it on restored Rhodes and it's just not my cup of tea I guess.

[pianodano]

bjammerz ,

Wonderful job with superb attention to details. Thanks for sharing you work. Another one brough back from the grave.

:idea:  I discovered that super glue does a great job of sticking down the little trouble spots that don't want to stay down in the corner cuts. A little super glue under the tolex, let it set for about 15 seconds and then push/massage it down with a spoon bottom, not fingers (they might  get stuck).

Danny

[Rob A]

I'll just add my thumbs up, great work!

[Clavier]

Fantastic!

[suitcase'81]

what a beauty!


nice job
enjoy.

[polyvoks]

Ben , what a perfect job !!
:shock:

thanks for sharing and to save this piano from the trash ,
it' a real pleasure to know that there's another preserved sparkle rhodes on the planet

[jus]

Looks awesome, great job!

[MikeMalone]

Amazing job! I think there should be a section in the forum or the site itself dedicated to full documented restorations such as these.

[The Real MC]

Impressive restoration job!

When I started college back in 1985, I stumbled on one of these silvertop Rhodes in a music store.  The DX-7 "electric piano" reigned supreme at the time and rendered Rhodes pianos obsolete.  No one wanted these at the time.

I used to own a Rhodes stage piano but had never seen a silvertop or knew what it was.

Being a poor college kid, I had to pass up the $150 price for the thing.

That's my fish story "the one that got away".

[Fred]

Ben, you are most certainly correct in regards to the stripe thickness. It's too bad the remakes are so different. I went for the turquoise stripe on mine, but it was a bummer that the stripes are so pronounced rather than the subtle effect of the original...

[nirsound]

Thanks  for the refs Ben. We have a CTO position (Chief Tolexing Officer) opening here, if you ever quit your day job...

[Spookyman]

I'm also speechless.

Absolutely marvelous restauration of on of the most fabulous E-Piano available.

Thanks for sharing the pictures.  :wink:

[Miguel Tuna]

WOW, great work there, congratulations

[MuMajor]

Hat off

[pcola_rhodes]

Now THAT, my friend, is one sharp looking piano!  Excellent job!

[MikeMalone]

NOTE: Don't bondo over the screw holes!!

URGH!!!!!! WHY DON'T I LISTEN!! I MADE THIS MISTAKE TWICE TODAY! You made this job look easy Ben  

[martin]

amazing!!!!!! just needs a logo on the back!!!!!!

[Ben Bove]

Well actually... The double rear logo on top and bottom didn't appear until 1975 when the "fender" name was dropped and just the "Rhodes" logo was there.  It's an interesting thing.







It's always challenging to find pictures of a Rhodes from behind because usually they're up against a wall for pictures

You can usually only see the rear on stage when it faces audience.

1965-1968ish Rhodes only had 1 logo in lower right hand corner.  Impossible to find, I finally found a pic of beatles' rooftop concert with Billy Preston, this shows no logo on piano top, or in upper left hand corner - you can just make out the beginning of logo at the bottom right (at Paul's leg):




Then, probably because you couldn't see the logo on stage, they moved it to top of speaker cabinet.  Here is late 1969 logo moved to upper left at 2:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH9ON_EgoL8


1972 Chick corea, 1:23 again - only on cabinet not on piano top:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMHwBoHaH2Q


Herbie 2:41 in this clip - you can see 1974 no logo on the piano top of suitcase cabinet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcjkA5ZAWQo


Then in 75 they used the dual logos - I have some literature stuff from 75 that shows both logos, this ad I think is from 78 regardless

[andi85]

You're crazy, man. That's hell of a job - the piano looks great!

[billulsund]

I read your post about the different logo placement and actually went out and checked my 2 suitcase pianos. The one from Early 1974 only has a logo on the amp, but the late 1975 model has the logo on the piano and amp. Between the logo design, logo placement, hammers, harp supports, dampers, pedestal felts, case hardware, and case design there is actually quite a big difference between the 2 pianos despite being so close in age.

[Chris Carroll]

Hey Ben, Very nice Job, if you need hinges for it, I think I may have a set.  Have you seen the aged black white silver grill?, that's nice too. The new turquoise is obnoxious i think as well.  We did a couple of serious restorations on the Sparkle tops with the big time help of Fred this year and they can definately be an adventure to work on. By the way, it looks like your using a kitchen sponge to apply tolex glue ? Use a  4 inch sponge roller, it's like lightening. I am not sure what tolex glue you used but in the future our tolex glue you can use on the tolex to tolex adhesion no problem, you can re-ajust up till the next day without reapplying new glue.  If you need hammers we have a set as well as some various 1960's parts , tines  and pick ups etc... Good luck with your new toy ! Chris Carroll