Pianet N Sticky Pads - replacement experiences?

[velo-hobo]

Has anyone tried the new sticky pads from Ken Rich yet?  I've just acquired a Pianet N that I think will need to have all the pads replaced.  I've seen the clavinet.com pads and they look like a new take on the construction & chemical composition, vs. the Ken Rich pads which seem at first glance to be faithful  recreations of the original design.

My understanding is that the original design is flawed since the foam in the middle of the "sandwich" will degrade over time, so it seems the Ken Rich pads are at risk of eventual failure in the same manner.  But I have also read that the clavinet.com pads are tricky to dial in, with some folks having to do a lot of keyshaft adjusting, or even adding a different kind of grease to get them to work right and sound good.

Anyone got any experience with both, or a well-informed opinion they'd like to share?

[OZDOC]

Moulded silicone produces an electric charge when it is peeled from stainless steel (look up tribocharging).
It also allows the reed to bounce off the surface when it returns producing a buzz.
These are the reasons for most of the posts regarding the solid silicone replacement pads.
The Pianet N has a capacitive pickup system that directly amplifies this harsh spark - the Pianet T does not.
The original Hohner pads used the undressed side of fine leather as a sponge to hold pure (non-drying) silicone oil.
The thick silicone oil provided the sticky pluck of the reed.
The saturated fibrous leather and the urethane foam layer deadened the return of the reed.
Don't worry about the urethane decomposing with time - it takes many years.
The pads were always considered a disposable service item in Pianets - the manual says this.
The Ken Rich pads only seem to lack the oil migration barrier behind the leather but otherwise are a close match to the originals.
Make your own - it is not hard to do, and there is no 'dialling in' to do.

[Endhoven2020]

I see first the instructions at:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-rebuild-the-sticky-pads-for-a-Hohner-Pianet/
He makes it hard, it is much easier.
It worked for my Pianet L. I used 50,000 cSt silicone oil from the patent he lists.
Beautiful pure sound.
This is what Pianets sound like!
He tests my correction to silicone oil and tells it works.
Ken Rich will be best. Solid silicone is very bad very noisy.

[OZDOC]

I can send you a comparison recording that illustrates the difference. Contact me off forum.

[kenrichsoundservices]

Hi,

Yes its actually me, Ken Rich. I thought it was about time I tried to get involved on this blogasphere thing.

Apart from a few people who have been involved in beta testing nobody has our pianet sticky pads. We haven't released them for sale yet.

We will have them available soon and are taking names of anyone interested, as we already have a lot of people lining up.

As velo-hobo observed, ours are very faithful reproductions of the originals. We've spent a lot of time working on making these right. It's not been easy and a lot has to be done by hand. I'm very finnicky about these things as I remember how these pianets sounded when they first came out and I want them to be perfect. This is what I pride my product development on - doing things right. I can finally say that we've done it.

We do have an oil migration barrier. As has been pointed out the barrier is needed to protect against deterioration of the sponge and keep the oil on the pad surface.

We had a client try these out the other week and took some video. We just posted it on youtube. http://youtu.be/sZ74Urzdrn8

If any of you are interested, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

Ken

[OZDOC]

Welcome Ken. Where were you when I needed you two years ago!
A Pianet Combo question. Recently I noticed that the oscillator section of the Combo Pianet produces a 17kHz noise spike in the output. My aging ears can't hear this and it doesn't seem to be an issue when played through a guitar amp.
Have any of your customers reported this as being an issue when played through modern venue PAs?

[kenrichsoundservices]

I don't know of any reports of this specific issue in combo pianets. Buzz and noise is a very complicated thing, with a lot of possible factors. Once our pads get into our clients pianets we may start to get more in for services, and then something may show up. I'll post about it if I find out anything. Ken

[Pianet Martin]

Hi, this is my first post here.  I have a pianet N and struggled with the clavinet.com pads for a couple of years.  Even when the static noise has been reduced by grounding the keyshafts and they have been adjusted for minimum clunkiness, they're still nearly impossible to get a perfect action with, and something about the attack doesn't sound right.  The Pianet T pads are a different story and do improve the instrument in my experience, but the N pads are just frustrating! 
I have been experimenting with home built neoprene foam and leather pads with dielectric grease on the leather.  I suspect I should have used a less viscous silicon oil, and softer foam, but they're a big improvement on the rubber pads.  The original pads had been discarded by the previous owner, so I had to attach the foam pads to 5mm cable clips to mount them on the keyshafts!  Because of this, I'd be keen to try the Ken Rich pads if they're affordable to me. 

[OZDOC]

The 50,000cST silicone oil mentioned by Endhoven2020 is a good place to start. If you need it to be stickier then move up to 100,000cST.
Silicone oil in various viscosities is available from most radio controlled model car racing suppliers.
Dielectric grease has thickeners in it that affect the reliability of the pads so not a good substitute for pure silicone oil.
If you've bent your shafts you'll need to straighten them all again.

[Pianet Martin]

What type of foam did you use to make the pads?  I used squares of closed-cell neoprene tape for my first set, but the Ken Rich pads look like they use a lighter open celled foam, which I presume is closer to the originals.  I think I will make a second set, using the 50,000cst oil and experimenting with different foam materials.  Its a shame the last owner of my pianet discarded the old pads though, as it would be much easier with the correct collars to mount to the keyshafts.  Maybe I should put up a wanted ad to see if anyone has a trashed set of original pads I could salvage the collars from...

[OZDOC]

I used Raven RP14 self adhesive urethane window stripping 6mm thick & 9mm wide.
This is a UV stable, quality product that should last as well as the original.
I used its adhesive to stick to the dressed side of the leather.
The adhesive carrier serves as an oil migration barrier.
I then used Scotch 3M external grade double sided, urethane foam centred tape, 1mm thick to adhere the RP14 to the rubber mounting moulding.
This made the 6mm foam up to the required depth and meant I didn't need to use liquid adhesive.
For a few reeds where I needed more contact pressure I used two layers of the 1mm 3M tape.

http://www.raven.com.au/domino/raven/RPCEN.nsf/$defaultview/3D6D90C5716A037469256F2B00273807
http://www.raven.com.au
Scotch® 4011 Heavy Duty Exterior Mounting 3M Order Code : 70-0708-8165-4

In the comparison photo the messy white layer is someone's attempt to repair a pad where it has separated from the urethane.
You can see that the original leather was very thin and backed up by a layer of what I believe is silicone. This would have also been used to bond the urethane foam.

[Pianet Martin]

Thanks, this is really useful info. 

[velo-hobo]

Got my new Ken Rich sticky pads in the mail recently.  I haven't have any time to install them yet but they look great.  I'm gonna be out of town for a while but when I get back this is on my list of things to do.  Will report my findings when I get around to it!

[velo-hobo]

Finally got some time to install my new Ken Rich sticky pads for my Pianet N.  The old ones in my Pianet were totally trashed and disintegrated so I have nothing to compare them to, but they work great!  I did get a service message from KRS saying some of the pads may have excess silicone grease on them, which could accumulate on the reeds and flatten their pitch.  All that need be done in that case is wiping off the excess grease from the reeds and pads.

I can't compare the old tuning of this pianet with the way it is now, but some reeds seem to have gone slightly flat during initial use, as expected.

One thing that I think is interesting is that this piano now sounds different from many of the Pianet N examples that can be found on Youtube.  I attribute that to the difference in pad material - the KR pads vs. the Clavinet.com pads which I see on almost all refurbished Pianets out there (except for the ones with the DIY rebuilt pads).

There's a rubbery-squeaky-skronky kind of click to the attack and damping that you hear a lot and I think it has to do with the properties of the Clavinet.com all-silicone rubber pads (triboelectric charging) .  Not an entirely unpleasant variation on the pianet sound - actually it can be a cool timbral quality - but I understand it can be problematic, sometimes requiring a lot of fussing over the pad placement and the keyshaft alignment.

The N that I have now is somewhere between a Wurlitzer 140B and a 200A sound, maybe a bit brighter and more present/focused, with a slightly different attack quality due to the nature of the pads vs. hammers.

It sounds pretty good for now but I am going to replace all the electrolytics and the vibrato caps since they are past due.  It's also relatively quiet considering it's still got the 2-prong cord and original caps, but I think I will also do the keyshaft grounding procedure that Clavinet.com has demonstrated on Youtube.

I would also like to mention that since I am missing the footpedal with my Pianet, I had to put a jumper on pins 1 and 3 on the footpedal jack in order to get any sound out of it.  I think I read about this issue elsewhere but I wanted to state this here for the sake of others who get into these pianos.

The schematic reveals that the footpedal is basically a 250k volume pot where pin 1 is the wiper, pin 2 is ground, and pin 3 is the return path to the amp.  The 3-pin DIN jack on my piano is not a switching jack, so without the pedal there is no sound.  As a result, this makes it a very convenient place to wire in an external volume control.

Once I get further along with the electronics, I may put together an external control box with volume and tremolo rate and intensity controls (relocated from the internal trimmer pots).

[Pianet Martin]

I added a tremolo rate control to my Pianet, as the previous owner had already drilled a hole for a superfluous volume control, which I removed.  It's worth noting that just replacing the trim pot with a standard pot doesn't give much useful adjustment, as the tremolo is quite fast even at the slowest setting.  I found it useful to increase the three 0.68uF capacitors in the oscillator circuit to slow down the rate.  I used 1uF, though it might be possible to go higher still.  If you're replacing them anyway, it might be worth experimenting with the values of these. 
I found that the keyshaft grounding is still worth doing with sandwich pads, as while there are no static clicks to prevent, it reduces the amount of 50/60Hz hum in the signal. 

[velo-hobo]

That's good info - I have experimented with modifying tremolo circuits in other amps, like Wurlitzers, guitar tube amps, etc.  First I plan to replace the trem caps with stock values, just to see how it performs, then I can set into messing about with it if needed.

What I'd really like to improve is the intensity of the trem.  When the oscillator first fires up the bulb pulses on and off quite intensely, a very distinct tremolo effect, but then it settles down into something more subtle.  I'd like to have that really choppy sound on hand since it can be quite musical when called for, but maybe it will return when I replace the caps and check the resistors for drift.  I notice a definite improvement in Wurlitzers that I perform this maintenance on, and it is essentially the same kind of circuit.

Also good to know the keyshaft grounding helps with any type of sticky pad - I suspected since they are a whole array of ungrounded aluminum rods that they would increase hum somehow, being aligned over the pickups.  My pianet is already pretty noise-free, though I should be able to get the thing dead quiet with a cap job and the extra grounding.

[Pianet Martin]

I've just finished making and installing a new set of home-made pads using an original set of black rubber mounts (thanks, Velo-Hobo!).  I used 6mm Urethane window foam, a layer of 1mm double sided mounting tape and some fine textured kid leather.  I used several applications of 50,000cst silicone oil on the leather.  Compared to my previous makeshift pads using dielectric grease, the lighter silicone oil leaves much less residue on the reeds and seems to stick a bit better in the bass range.   I still have a little key-shaft adjustment to do to even things out, but the new pads are sounding great. 
It is striking how different foam and leather pads sound compared to clavinet.com silicone pads, and to my mind that is worth the potentially shorter life of the sandwich pads.  I do still have the clavinet.com pads as a standby though, if any pads should come apart at a critical moment. 

[pacealot]

Sorry to bump such an old thread, but I just joined the forum, and am currently working on restoring a Combo Pianet for my daughter, and had quite a bit of experience on several Ns in the past (one of which I also intend to overhaul for myself soon - it's been in storage for far too long and needs some TLC).

I must say straight off, I cannot stand the Clav.com sticky pads.  I bought them as soon as I could afford to, and was terribly disappointed.  The "squelch" sound of the pad returning to the reed is just horrible, and I couldn't get rid of it no matter how I set up the action of the key.  So I just got some weather-stripping foam,  scraped off all the dead foam, reused the original leather sticky pads, and re-glued them to the new foam, and they worked wonderfully.  But I was very fortunate in having all of the original leather bits still in the instrument, and I was able to source some NOS pads as well for backups.  I did try swapping in some of the Clav.com sticky pads on troublesome notes, but I don't think they stayed in there for long, as I was eventually able to swap things around and get them more consistent.

For my daughter's Combo, I've ordered the Ken Rich pads, so I will report back once I get them installed.  I'm just really glad someone (who isn't Aaron Kipness, sorry) is making pads, and making them the way they were originally designed - they were designed that way for a reason.  I'm also recapping the preamp and having to redo the power supply (this particular Pianet was toured heavily in the '70s and had many mods done to it, including replacing the power supply jack with an Amphenol screw-in microphone jack - eek!).  The pads that were on there when I got it were another homebrew attempt using black rubber with adhesive on it, so I may need to clean up the reeds a little to get them working well.  But it ought to be a fun (!?!?!) project....

[pacealot]

I'm happy to report that Ken's pads are every bit as good and authentic as I'd hoped.  The really exciting thing is that this Combo Pianet has never been functional since I've had it, and already it's a long way down the road to being a really excellent instrument.  All the usual Pianet fun is still ahead of me - setting it up so the notes are relatively even, getting rid of stray buzzes, tuning issues, etc.; but just installing the pads and powering it up with a 9v battery for now has gotten it actually working again.

If the foam replacements I did to my old trusty N's pads aren't holding up once I get it out of storage, I know where I'm getting new ones from....

[OZDOC]

Let us know how you think your home made pads compare with the Ken Rich ones when you pull it out of storage.

[Max Brink]

The Ken Rich pads are a must-have for all Pianets. They are guaranteed to bring the Pianet back to life sounding just the way that they were intended to sound. They are well worth the investment in an N or Combo Pianet.

The other option for cheap sticky pads by Clavinet.com sounds absolutely horrendous and should be removed from the instrument if you come across them. They don't even come close to the attack of the originals and the dampening noise that they make is awful. Instruments with these pads in them are unusable in any professional setting.

[Pianet Martin]

My home built foam and leather pads from 2012 are still holding up well.  I applied a little extra silicone oil late last year but otherwise they've had no issues.  There's no sign of foam or adhesive deterioration, so I presume they will go for longer still.  If that's typical, I think that's a level of maintenance I  can live with. 

[pacealot]

Yes, it's really an issue of whether the foam is still holding up.  If the old original sticky pads themselves haven't been badly mistreated, they seem to last just fine.

I got the Combo working for my daughter and she loves it!  Ken's pads worked flawlessly.  (I admit that Aaron K.'s shielding-the-keys video also came in handy, although I should've got the kind of copper tape with conductive adhesive....)

[Alan Lenhoff]

>>I admit that Aaron K.'s shielding-the-keys video also came in handy>>

My Pianet N plays fine with Ken's pads -- and no added grounding.  It seems to me that Aaron's method of eliminating popping static discharges addresses a problem created by the replacement silicon pads he sells -- not something inherent in the original design of the instrument. (And Ken's pads are like the originals.)

Am I missing/overlooking something?

Alan

[pacealot]

I think you're absolutely right; however, anything with that much electrostatic sensitivity can benefit from as much shielding as is practical, and Aaron's pads (as much as I want to blame global warming, terrorist activity, the economic downturn and every other woe in the world on them) aren't the only cause of electrostatic discharge in a Pianet pickup circuit.  I did notice that the shielding in fact helped reduce some of the random noise in the instrument (and would probably do so more effectively if I had used a conductive adhesive).  But yes, the primary cause of the problem he's had to address is his own product.  It just happens that it's not such a useless mod to make after all, even when using the correct pads.

[Pianet Martin]

Yes, it's the same for me as while I haven't done a true A/B test with and without the shielding, I'm fairly sure the background noise level is slightly lower with it in place.  The keyshaft grounding is not an absolute necessity with foam/leather pads in the way that it is with the clavinet.com pads, as the popping noises on the attack are specific to the latter.  Regardless of that, it seems prudent to ground metal parts wherever possible in an electrostatic instrument like the pianet. 
It's a shame, as I have to credit Aaron with putting in the effort to provide parts for pianets at a time when no-one else did, but it seems a rather fundamental flaw to have overlooked.  I'm surprised he hasn't come out with an improved version to address this issue, and I can only speculate that he must be sitting on a substantial inventory of the silicone pads to still be selling them. 

[pacealot]

Well, since he censored me off of the Clav.com forum by deleting several posts I made there during the time he was evidently developing the pads, and since those posts were simply correcting several of Aaron's incorrect assumptions about the way the original pads were designed to work, based on my then-somewhat limited experience (and yet factually correct, not barbed or aimed unfairly at him, nor disparaging a product I didn't even know that he was developing), my guess is that Aaron completely misunderstood the actual original design at that time (maybe he finally understands it now, but I can't speak to that, and his posts at the time made it abundantly clear that he certainly didn't then), came up with his "improved" design, had them made in (as you extrapolate) a, shall we say, disproportionately large amount, and wasn't about to take any lip from anyone who (inadvertently or otherwise) challenged his world-view of the way the pre-T Pianet worked.  I blundered into all that, got censored, got angry, and still bought his grotty pads because, as you pointed out, they were the only things at all available for those Pianet models.  And then was very unsurprised to find that they didn't work exactly as advertised, and immediately reverted back to my repaired/NOS pads, and all was right again with the world.  Except that my original observations on the original pads were still permanently gone from cyberspace, and I was stuck with a bunch of useless silicone and out a bunch of money I could've used for something else.  (No, I admit I never bothered to ask for a refund/return.)

I do give him credit for continuing to sincerely promote the continued use and maintenance on these beloved Hohner keyboards, and second your observation that he was doing this at a time where we didn't have the kinds of resources we do now.  And he obviously really cares about these instruments, as do I.  To say any more would be mean-spirited and head towards ad hominem territory, and I don't want to go farther down that road than I already may have.  I'm just glad to finally be able to tell my story and maybe this time not have it deleted.

[sookwinder]

Resurrection of an old thread yet again...
I have had a Pianet N for about 2 years. [imported from the States to Oz]
The sound never quite achieved the "Beatles NIGHT BEFORE" sound I was hoping.
It came with the Clavinet.com white silicone pads.

Did all the shielding fix ups, replaced caps and resistors that had strayed from their nominal values, grounded the keys and yes the noise floor did drop considerably.  But the sound, the electrostatic click as the end of many notes, just annoyed me no end.  (would spend hours on my DAW editing out the clicks in the WAV files).  Plus as already noted in this thread sometimes there appeared to be a bounce back of the key and a ghost note would occur.

Purchase a set of the Ken Rich Pianet N pads last week and fitted them today.  Wow .. I say Wow...  what a difference they have made.  No static click at the end of any notes, no bounce back, the note is more rounded and articulate and when playing 8ths or 16ths every note works  ... none of this empty silence after the 2nd or 3rd note.

Money well spent.  Ken Rich Pianet N pads are highly recommended.

[Rumi]

This thread has a tremendous amount of valuable info! Thanks to everyone! This should be a sticky in the "Pianet" sub-forum.