VV damper felt issue (or Beyond?)

[Worlddrum13]

Hello again
Im having some issues with new damper felts i recently purchased from Vintage Vibe. Long story short, i feel they are overall too small. VV has been great with giving my advice so far, but now im officially stuck..

after replacing all the felts, my PreMid dampers were way off the mark. the rest of them were also out of whack, but the pre mids are the worse offenders. in order for the felt to even make contact to the tine, i had to bend the damper arm up so far that just the front corner is making contact. this cant be right..?

I sent VV a message via their facebook page asking if this is a known issue. i know that they are much more knowledgeable than me with these and they see many, many, many more Rhodes' than i do. This is the response:

"Hey, send some pics- I have never ever seen anything like you are describing. Remember we restore hundreds of pianos and have never heard of or encountered this. There has got to be a reason on your end for this. What is your escapement like?  What year is your piano?  Thanks
Ok, I see it's a 77- you should not be having any issues at all.
"








I thought maybe i had the wrong size damper module on that section, but from pics i found online, they seem to be correct.


The next day they got back to me with this:

"Hey Joel, thank you for all the great pics.  When I reference escapement, what I really mean is harp height. I see you have a thick fiberboard shim on the bass end. What is the measurement from the first hammer tip to the bottom of the first tine. Tine should be voiced about 1/16th to an 1/8th over pickup roughly depending on the tone you are looking for. The escapement you are looking for is about 1/4 inch-3/8th Max.

I suspect you have much more and this is why you are having to bend the dampers so high with the pre mids.

1977 pianos are known for having s mile of escapement. Setting up the strike line and escapement is how you will really improve on the existing tone and feel. Replacing parts is only the beginning.

I noticed your bridle straps are all over the place in regards to how tight and loose they should be. 

1. Get a good escapement.
2. Change strike line if needed
3. Adjust dampers according to new escapement.
4. Level all dampers
5. You want to see about an 1/8th of an inch movement when you lift the harp off dampers.

Good luck!!


so when i got home from work i began looking into this info. my first response is "are the fiber board shims not a factory thing? is the harp supposed to rest metal to metal?" I sent a message to a friend of mine who has a similar generation mark 1 (a 76 i belive) asking if he can take a quick picture of his harp supports and send it to me as a reference. i was curious if his was shimmed differently from mine. its not. its the same.

i measured the escapment and found its right around 3/8ths, maybe a little shy. its hard to get a picture holding the ruler, key, and camera but it is right around 3/8ths


So whats my next step? Im stuck.

Just for reference, these are the felts that came off. they are clearly larger all across the board.


thanks for any input!

Joel


PS, i cant stress enough that this isnt a negative post regarding VV. they have been great so far. im just looking for opinions from people who have been doing this longer than me (which is just about everyone on this forum.)

[pianotuner steveo]

I agree that it sounds as if the dampers aren't reaching high enough, as if escapement is set too high. The dampers themselves don't look too small. As an experiment, remove those shims and test to see if the dampers work better. You may need to carefully bend the damper arms up towards the tines... I know your escapement is set at 3/8" which leads me to believe this about the arms.

[Worlddrum13]

seems all the posts that were made today have been erased somehow. thanks for all the info. to get back to speed this is where i left off

this is the picture i sent to VV when i first suspected a problem. i asked them if i have them oriented correctly or if they are supposed to sit tall side up. they ensured me i had it correct and its likely just an adjustment issue after they are complete, i trusted the opinion and carried on with installing them.

its pretty clear from the picture that there is a large step down in size from the bass to PreMid damper felts

to put it short, i just have a hard time believing that my particular piano had larger felts to compensate for the shims, escapement, damper arm length, etc. i still feel the easier answer is that the damper felts are simply the wrong size but i haven't heard anyone say they've had any issues, including from VV.

[David Aubke]

seems all the posts that were made today have been erased somehow.

My post disappeared.

[Fred]

Hello Worlddrum13

I just saw your pictures. Your '77 may have an excess of escapement, but you do need an additional 9 bass damper felts, as your piano has 2 short-length damper combs. Unfortunately it is Saturday, but I have contacted Chris and the bass damper felts will be sent out to you Monday AM.

Re: Escapement...
We shoot for about 1/16" in the treble and 1/4" in the bass. Using these dimensions as starting points, the goal here is to set up the piano to respond well under a light touch, but not choke under heavy blows.
The fiberboard shims are "factory", but Rhodes pianos often left the factory with too great an escapement (among other "out of spec" dimensions). They can be removed, and it is ok for the harp to rest on bare harp supports. As Chris mentioned, adjusting escapement will necessitate strike line and damper adjustments. Set up your harp for the tone you're looking for before attempting escapement adjustments. This would include setting your harp escapement screws (tone bar mounting screws closest to you as you sit at the piano) to provide 3/8" from top of the harp surface to underside of the tone bar. You can use a tine generator block as a feeler gauge to set this. Tip: use the same orientation of the generator block across the harp when setting harp escapement - These blocks are often not exactly 3/8" x 3/8".

[Worlddrum13]

Thanks Fred. I've been banging my head against this piano for the past couple days...

You mentioned the difference in the damper combs, mine are different or "wrong"? I wasn't really able to tell definitively if my damper arms were correct or not. I found a couple pics online that appeared to be the same as mine.
Should I source the correct damper comb before going forward? They seem easy to come by in eBay and such..

[Fred]

I believe your damper combs to be correct for your piano. We do sometimes mod this vintage with another midrange comb (so only 12 short damper arms in the extreme bass) to allow better clearance for the tines in the tenor section (this is where the "pre-mid" damper felts come in). Your piano appears consistent with the factory set up for that year.

[Worlddrum13]

Well that sounds like it solves that mystery. Thanks for the help. To avoid any confusion in the future, the VV website should provide this info when ordering the damper felt kits for this year (and other years that may use that shorter comb). I'm actually surpised I'm the first to run into this.

Thanks again

Joel

[Fred]

Tru-dat!!

[Cormac Long]

Hi folks,

   The webhost had an emergency service window take place between what they say was 2-3 EDT (6AM-7AM GMT) on Saturday. So somewhere in that time period they managed to goof and presumably lose posts by restoring a DB snapshot. So apologies to all concerned.. Normally if they give better notice, I can schedule the forum to go into maintenance mode prior to their activities. This case however was an unexpected occurrence.

seems all the posts that were made today have been erased somehow.

My post disappeared.

[Tim Hodges]

To throw a spanner in the works  looking at those photos at the top I'd say those mid-range damper felts have been installed the wrong way (i.e they're flat on their back when they should be upright) 

[David Aubke]

To throw a spanner in the works  looking at those photos at the top I'd say those mid-range damper felts have been installed the wrong way (i.e they're flat on their back when they should be upright)

I wondered that as well but

i asked them if i have them oriented correctly or if they are supposed to sit tall side up. they ensured me i had it correct and its likely just an adjustment issue after they are complete,

[rhodesjuzz]

I sent a pm to worlddrum the day before yesterday with that thought, because I wasn't sure enough and unable to verify it with my own piano as I am on holidays

[Worlddrum13]

VV came through and sent me the correct size for my piano. Thanks for all the help. I'll be working to hopefully button everything up over the next couple weeks so I'm sure I'll have more posts/questions.

Joel