Converting upright piano to electric????

[Rhodes617]

Just had a interesting idea. I frequently see small spinet acoustic upright pianos for dirt cheap on craigslist and had an idea of installing some kind of rhodes system inside to turn it into an electric piano. Has anyone ever attempted anything like this and would it be possible?? What would be required to do it??? Sadly i have no electric engineering experience so is there some simplified way of doing this??? What do you guys think.

[Ben Bove]

You might want to look into how the Yamaha CP-70 does it, and think of a way to adapt rhodes pickups to it?

[pianotuner steveo]

The very first electric piano was done this way in the 30's or 40's

It was a 'minipano' by Hardman & peck ( First piano I ever tuned)

I believe Meisner designed the pickups later to go on and design the Wurlitzer  pickups.

To be honest, a barcus berry pickup for pianos is going to be your easiest way to do this, but I am unsure if they are meant for uprights. It just may take some clever installation to make it work vertically.

[Rob A]

I have one of those Barcus Berry PUs in my Yamaha Grand. Plus I've played grands on gigs through them on many occasions. I have nothing good to say about that product. A ten dollar mic placed randomly sounds better.

[coolest1]

take a look at this :


http://www.helpinstill.com/

[pianotuner steveo]

Rob, I am so glad to hear you say that. I have a client ( a bar) that has one in their piano and it has been a headache for me for a few reasons. In their case, however, the mics were picking up too much bar noise which is why they switched to the pickup. They care more about crowd noise being amplified than the quality of the pickup sound.