Knowledge base of early Rhodes '65-'66

[Seanfir]

I've been toiling with my 65 sparkletop for a few years, and after a few abortive attempts, have managed to keep it relatively in tact, but gave up on the early hammers in favor of getting a set of early wood/plastic ones.

The minuses. The 65 I have, was all original. And unplayable! While the tines survived, the hammers were all deeply grooved, and there was factory felt on both hammer butts and key pedestals. This made for an impotent key dip of a few millimeters, and often not even striking the time, or just as likely, the hammer getting stuck on the tine. Basically a muffled ad hoc 73 note clavé... *give or take ten non moving keys*
The preamp worked/works, but even with the jfet replaced with new old stock, is still a bit noisy.
The speakers were only one original. The bad news was one was still there! But it blew up under low volume tests early on.
In my piano there seemed to be originally four Oxford 12-in speakers. And originally they were all on the side of the player facing towards the opposite side if you were facing the audience they would be facing you. I think this was part of the original design as there was a diagonally cut rectangle in the baffle board of the front which would allow the sound to kind of ambiently leak out of the cabinet which I think they originally conceived would be more piano-like in experience. I don't know if that's true but it's an interesting idea! In latter years the speakers were converted to two on a side and that seems to work out okay. I did restore the entire amp section and the entire Electronics although I haven't replaced the smaller signal transistors in the original as of yet but I'm considering that to cut down on the actual noise levels. I've also considered using a specialty made jfet preamp that will run on the 24 volt original power supply and a aftermarket vibrato all connected to the original knobs and circuitry without permanently altering anything because this will offer a lot more versatility in the studio and live with a ton more of EQ possibilities.

I've gotten rid of the rubber tips and ordered all felt ones and I'm kind of curious what methods I should use, in order to get the most out of this as far as sound and strike line and what if any shims I should use on the actual hammers to achieve this. I was getting a lot of strange harmonic problems on the higher notes but adjusting and positioning seemed to cure all of them as they seemed to be perfectly good examples of raymack tines.

The miracle mod or speed bump was a kind of Hit or Miss thing at first and some of the tutorials in here helped me get a better idea of what I should do next first of which will be to get a jig made to equalize all of my key pedestals for length and level surface. This being after my first attempt at a speed bump LOL. I just like to maybe see if anybody out there has any information as to what you can actually do to make these things sound as good or better than they did originally. I'm hoping for much better. I'm hoping for something that's unique and special. But I would go for the Abbey Road sound! LOL

[Seanfir]

The cool reaction from a friend I was doing some work for. I knew he'd freak when he saw the pristine sparkletop in my KITCHEN. LOL. His reaction on the high notes is priceless. That took me a long-*** time to get. When I wrote "time" just now, my phone changed it to "tine" 3 times... when for YEARS it would do the opposite when I wrote "tine" lol.
https://youtu.be/Ql5iZpx3s3E?si=AEiqozXlKOI9Ki8t

[spave]

InsectoidControl has a few videos on their channel going over some mods to improve a 1964 sparkletop. Might be worth a watch to see if they help you at all. https://www.youtube.com/@InsectoidControl/videos