Fender Rhodes Mark 1 Stage Piano
This very nice Fender Rhodes 73 Stage-Piano was built in July 1971. With it's 45 years it is the "methusalem" among the study room instruments. It was in a fantastic condition as i found it, and ... it was located in the near of my hometown. Regarding to it's overall weight from nearly 80kg this is an very interresting point because a proper delivery service is quite difficult to find and mostly very expensive.
I transported it on a sunny but cold day in October, the Rhodes sitting upright on the second seat of my Ford StreetKa Cabrio with opened roof over a distance from 25km. That looks really funny :o) Thanks to Jörg for this wonderful instrument ... it's still in good hands !
It was more than playable at this time, but if you read some articles here about my instruments you will guess that this was only the beginning ...
Key-Easing
The first step was to overwork the keys and cleaning the key-felts. This instrument has pretty wonderful wooden keys. They need only a little bit of woodworking, so that the overall function will be as smooth as possible.
Notice the stamped production date on the first key ... it's from July 7 in 1971 :o)
Key-Weight
Adding additional key-weights will bring a liitle bit more piano feel in this keyboard. At my opinion this is a very useful modification, even if you are not familiar with a typical Rhodes keyboard.
It gives me a much easier control over the playing dynamics is easy to install and not very expensive.
The Backcheck try ...
A Backcheck is a very common mechanism that avoid, or reduces, the back-bouncing of the hammers after a normal key-hit. Proessional solutions are mounted on the end of each key and must be exactly positioned. If they are too close the keyboard action is ruined. On the opposite a too loose mounting don't do the job. Unfortunately professional solutions are only available in USA.
Regarding to this circumstances I tried to implement my own, quite simple backcheck mechanism with parts from a local DIY warehouse. It misses the individual justification on every single key ... but it is really cost-efficient :o)
After playing a while with this modification I realized that the impact to the Rhodes action is too significant for my playing style and that it was not really acceptible for me. Maybe some day ...
The 'Rhodes' Tone
At my opinion this is a really interesting topic, that will keep you busy your whole life-time long.
It starts with mechanical topics like correct action for your playing style or the exact position of each pickup, then reaching the electric topics like pre-amplifying, EQ-ing, useful effects and last but not least the amplification.
If you start to dig into this 'Mystery Rhodes World' it brings you a lot of interesting, sometimes very surprising results. But this is ... pure fun :o)