New Year's Resolutions (01/21/08): So in case you were following this blog at one point and wondered what the hell happened to my progress, my daughter conveniently dropped our digital camera off of our second-story apartment porch onto the sidewalk, I ended up leaving my last job and going on California state disability last September, and more recently I spent a good part of the Holiday Season in the hospital with 42 electrodes glued to my head while watching Forrest Gump, Elf, Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer and the Discovery Channel's Mythbusters marathon. Working on my Rhodes is something I've fantasized about, but it hasn't exactly been, shall we say, a priority.
But now that I seem to be pulling my life together again, I seem to have the energy and focus to deal with the 3 big problems ahead: a) rewiring the pickup rail and verifying the connections, b) adjusting the positioning of the newly-installed damper arms and c) voicing each of the keys, 2 of which are still in need of replacement generators. What do you think...1 month? 2 months? 3? 6??? I'm trying to be patient, but looking over the past year I'm wondering if too much patience means this thing will never be playable again. 2008 is it. My Fender Rhodes will make music again this year.
It's Still 2008, Right? (05/26/08): Over the last few months my own piano has continued to be in hiding, but I've had a couple of visits with UCSC students to look at their pianos. This weekend I got to look inside another '75 Stage 73 and adjust it, which inspired me to get back to work on my own project (thanks Alec!). The pickup rail is now officially back to its normal low buzz level, with the melted low E core replaced and the wiring to the RCA jack redone. No more excuses. It's time to move on and deal with everything else I forgot about.
So the big thing is that I never really adjusted the new damper combs, and everything is still flopping around. That has to be next. And I also found at least one tine that is 25 mm too long and striking the pickup, so there is some examination and cutting to be done. Maybe even a couple more tine replacements, but I really hope not. I'm already noticing several that are obviously from different generations (very different in terms of the bell tone, no matter how you voice them), and it would be absolutely crazy to replace them all for the sake of a uniform tone. This is a used piano from 1975. New tines are going to sound new compared to their neighbors!
Alec & I were also talking about preamps that replace the standard Volume & Bass Boost on the Stage Piano, whether they were worth it, which ones were best, etc. I told him that my only experience was with the Major Key Harmonic Clarifier, but since that's not even available anymore, I felt like I needed to investigate the options myself. So now I'm talking to Vintage Vibe about the Stage Vibe, which just looks too sweet for words. Chris says they're selling really well, so asked if I can check it out myself. I plan to review it for the site once I get the dampers doing their job....
And as I'm starting to see my Rhodes become a playable instrument, I'm starting to imagine actually gigging with it. Not as a regular deal, but on those rare occasions where I might be called to be a guest performer. You can't be a guest Rhodes player and bring a laptop. And I'm still trying to come up with ways to play the 12-note Mark II in a musical context, which of course it was never meant for in the first place. Maybe running it through my laptop and processing the hell out of it with Reason will do something interesting. But I still just love the way it sounds with the Fender Mini Twin.
Help. Somebody. Please. (08/14/08): It's the end of the summer, and after a few chances to do some basic experimentation with adjustments and ultimately install the Stage Vibe (which I couldn't properly test due to the internals of the piano being shot to hell), I am now in the middle of tearing the piano apart once again for total reconstruction. Why God. Why.
After a discussion on the forum about the proper setup of tonebar mounting springs, I realized that I screwed up the configuration when I replaced the grommets way back when. Also in a discussion about damper adjustments, I decided to remove the generators and adjust both the damper action and escapement one key at a time. Psychotic, I know, but also necessary considering the kind of deconstruction this piano has undergone in its lifetime. I ended up unbolting the harp a couple of weeks ago in preparation, then put to use as a table until a couple of days ago. And of course, I was home alone at the time, so I had to tip the piano back to remove the legs and get it on the living room floor where I do my work. Crash. Not the piano. The unbolted harp dislodging the harp cover. I'm hoping the pickup rail and the Stage Vibe didn't feel it. I'm just too afraid to plug it in and find out right now.
Next was unscrewing all 73 tonebars and counting the springs. 86 natural, 28 yellow (which had turned a rusted red-orange over time) and 34 blue. According to the original factory spec, this is way too many blues and 22 less yellows than I need to get what is expected in order to get support for normal sustain across the harp. The cheapest solution I could see was to get the 22 yellows for $33 + shipping from Vintage Vibe. I ended up buying an entire 73 tonebar set (coincidentally from
'75) with mounting hardware for $50 off of Ebay instead. I'll have all the springs I need, but who knows what I'll do with all those tonebars.
So with all the tonebars unmounted, the springs bagged by color and the screws with their grommets in one big bag, I got a closer look at the generators themselves. I mentioned in the very beginning that this was Major Key's "work piano", and I'm finding painful evidence of that fact. I have already replaced tine #35 because it sounded like it was on its way to death, and it turned to be a Major Key tine that had a dull attack and poor sustain. One thing that makes it easy to identify old vs. new is that when they nickel-plated the tonebars, the original tines were labeled with numbers on the side for matching when they were put back together. I found 8 that did not have a number: #1, #2, #3 (longs, son of a bitch), #33, #38, #39, #45 & #49. Plus there are a few that don't have the brassy tarnish of the ones that are the obviously originals, indicating that they were either replaced with Major Key's NOS supply or maybe the Heavy Traffic Kit that sold with the piano. I could do a more thorough investigation by removing every tine and bolting each to the corresponding tonebar in the $50 set that should be arriving soon (the guy is in Oakland, so I'd hope it would be here tomorrow). Again, we're talking psychotic here.
But being the super genius, idiot savant, or sometimes just idiot that I am, it occurred to me that I have everything I need for working on keys #50 thru #73. No bad tines, no missing mounting springs, no shortage of grommets or screws. With the harp put aside, I started testing the dampers by pressing 12 keys at a time to activate entire damper modules and check the evenness of their response. And guess what. This was very interesting to the cat. My hitting the hammers scared the crap out of her at first, but then clawing at the felt seemed like a good idea. Ironically, what I did find out was that the bridle straps weren't pulled on tightly enough, which her clawing of felts #72 and #73 adjusted. I decided to catch her attacks on the dampers on video for both posterity and entertainment value....
And after I thought I had finished with the camera and sat here typing, I noticed that she was still on the attack. This time, though, it wasn't funny. She had clawed at the lowest felts, first catching #3 and nearly tearing it in half, then catching #2 and ripping it slightly enough to give it a permanent lean to the left, and finally beheading #1 at the end of her last swipe. The top of #1 was laid on side of the piano, as if she put it there purposely to show it off like some sort of trophy kill. Felt #2 is wounded, #3 is in critical condition, but #1 is most certainly dead. Rrrrrooowwwowowwwwwrrwwwrwrwwwwww!!!!!
Which leads me back to what's bugged me about the Speakeasy damper felts ever since I installed them: they're a little floppy. The concept is nice, where the tough red felt on the bottom is supposed to support the soft white block on top and theoretically keep the entire block from flopping over with wear. But that white block is too soft by itself, and you really notice when you start adjusting individual damper arms by hand, especially with the taller felts in the low register. Of course, this is something you need to do after you install a new set of damper felts. Now I'm wondering who else is selling damper felts. God help me if I have to replace those again too, but maybe I just need a clean start again here. 12 keys at a time. Oh, and there's #73 all lonely up there by itself with one good tine, one tonebar, one damper. That seems like the most sane thing I've thought of all summer.
Welcome to Tine Hell.
I've also been going through my collection of test tines that Major Key had sent me over the years and tested their integrity myself. I bent a few by hand for photo documentation, but then I found 3 that were staked in new Major Key-branded generator blocks but had a NOS look to them. I used a pair of pliers to bend one and it snapped, and I was unable to cut another one, leaving only a small dent. Then I saw a note about "Leo's secret stash", a drawer full of parts that they had apparently found in Leo's old office at the factory. Why he kept a supply of spare Torrington tines around, I don't know, but all I can say is that I feel like a complete shithead for snapping one of the 3 already. Of course, this is assuming they work in the first place. One theory about the Major Key tines having sustain problems was that the generator block didn't have the "coining" on the top that helps NOS tines grip the tonebar when bolted on. Another was that because their name was stamped on one side, it was causing asymmetry in the tine's vibration. Who knows. I guess I'll just have to try the remaining 2 and see if they really do the job.
At 5:43 PM (I realized it's been over 24 hours since I started writing this entry on 8/13), I got back from OSH where I finally found a P2 screwdriver that is the right size for the new tonebar mounting screws I've used, which weren't so happy about being removed. I'm guessing that the larger size will also help with other screws in the piano that have had the same problem, i.e. I never had the right size screwdriver in the first place. Afterwards I went to Kragen and found some weatherstripping glue, not the 3M kind everybody likes to use, but at least there's no acetone in it. Now I'm looking at all of these old Major Key felts I've got, and I'm thinking about, shall we say, installing them....
At 6:19 I finished my investigation of the mystery tines. I double-checked #16 (which was labeled but not colored like the others) and it had the coining, as well as a black spot where the hammer had been striking it. #3 has a NOS generator, but on comparing the tine to #16 it's not tapered correctly and has no signs of wear. Something tells me it was just an experiment to see if #3 behaved any different from #1 and #2 with an original coined block. When I look closely at how it is tapered, they look the same.
Going back to #16, I compared it to the originals and discovered that it has the newer swaged taper, something that's extremely interesting to my eyeballs and helpful in this investigation. It seems that Major Key was going for the Torrington design when attempting to have new tines manufactured, which is now making it more difficult to discern between new and NOS on their part. Since their business began entirely as a NOS warehouse, I'm guessing that they may have run out of generator blocks before they ran out of unstaked tines. I imagine it's all a mystery that will remain behind their closed doors.
So now that I've had dinner and spent hours working on stuff like adding pics and uploading YouTube videos for the blog, it's 12:08 AM on Friday 8/15. I'll be taking a break for the moment.
It's Spring Time (08/15/08): The tonebar box showed up today. All of the mounting springs I need and more are in there: the yellow ones are even yellow! What's strange about the piano sacrificed for these is that the blue springs aren't blue, so you need to look for them by size mixed in with the naturals. At least I already had too many blue blues to work with from my own batch.
The tine saga also continued this afternoon when the sun hit all of the generator blocks and showed the color of the ones that I thought were originals. Two more slivers: #34 and #58. Fortunately they checked out as NOS Torringtons, and they sang when I plucked them. For a second I thought I was going to be out another $50.
And speaking of sagas, I decided to see The Dark Knight again this afternoon. It was nice to have an agenda this time, i.e. ignoring the parts with Batman in them. I just can't get past Christian Bale's stupid Bat-Voice thing. It was bad enough in Batman Begins, and it didn't exactly mature in the sequel. The guy needs to start smoking cigars daily or something. I started thinking that he needed the mask to cover his entire face so he could get a voice double, like how Darth Vader had Edward James Olmos. Batman could have somebody like Mr. T.
Custom Harp Cover Meets Custom Namerail (08/17/08): Today I finally solved the problem that arose when the Stage Vibe's Black Namerail met the Speakeasy Mark II Flat Top: the gap in-between. You could see the Stage Vibe's electronics from above when you sat down to play, which doesn't seem like the greatest feature if you wanted the preamp to, say, keep working if something strange slipped in there. And something always seems to slip in there, somehow. I'm just trying to beat the odds.
So I found a solution at OSH that covers the slot nicely, by slipping over the edge of the harp cover. It's the Wiremold Cordmate C-10 5' Cord Channel, which is designed for running a single cord along a wall or wherever and has a peel-off sticky backing. In the case of my little project, I didn't need or want the backing, so I removed it, which wasn't hard (I'm glad I didn't use the stuff for what it's intended to do!). The plastic was strong enough that I needed to use a pull saw to cut it, and I chose to both angle the ends and match the width between the cheek blocks. I like the way it looks in plain white on my piano, but the package says it can also be stained. Please don't tempt me....
And of course, since I'm on the cosmetics track again today, I ended up taking the 5 unused small skirted Fender amp knobs that have been sitting in my parts box and putting them on the Stage Vibe. It took some squishing, but they seem to be on there tight, and those Vintage Vibe pots seem to be pretty indestructible. Now it's time to stop screwing around and get back to making the piano playable. I've decided to get 3 replacement felts from Speakeasy to cover the ones the cat destroyed, I have all the mounting springs I need and more to put the harp back together, and there's plenty to do before the replacement tines appear someday. The piano is going back up on legs tonight.
But as I was trying to decide where to plant the piano for the next 24 to 48 hours, I realized that I still hadn't dealt with the bag of key leveling punchings that, like the bag of tonebar mounting springs, I had no clue about how to reassemble. I'd been completely ignoring the whole thing until now, when I started thinking it was now or never if I was going to start working on the action. I dumped the bag and analyzed the contents again (I had done this months ago), picking out all of the dark greens as a starting point. It looked like every key could use one of those. After that I started experimenting with adding the other thicknesses to the pile, but as I read on one website talking about piano key leveling, this is a process that can drive you absolutely crazy. I ended up sticking with the one-green rule wherever I could, only adjusting a few keys that were obviously way off in the height department. And the most interesting thing is that when I put the Stage Vibe namerail back on, the gap between its bottom felt strip and the top of the keys was gone!!! I guess I'm still on the right track here....
Serendipity (08/18/08): Uh, yeah. Not exactly the kind I was looking for at the moment, but still the good kind. I decided that I'll use the one NOS tine I have left, a long one that I bought from Harold Jr. at the time I bought the Service Manual. It's the right style, but the tiny tuning spring provided isn't going to be big enough to tune a low note on the piano. So I went looking for my bag of bulk springs that I got from Major Key ages ago. It was in my shoebox full of all the parts I actively work with on this project. At least I thought it was. I went and looked in the crate all of the other stuff I'm not using. Not there. So where. Where. Where.
So it was time to start looking in the box. Piece by piece. Bag by bag. And then I found it. A tine in a Vintage Vibe bag that I had no idea was even there. Labeled #38. Which fits #39. One less tine to deal with. Thank you deities of the universe. Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram....
But where in the hell are the goddam springs. I don't plan to be playing in alternate tunings here.
As of 1:30 AM I have looked under the refrigerator and found the missing 6th skirted Fender amp knob from the pack I used to re-knob the Stage Vibe (which only has 5 pots, so it didn't hold me up). I bought the 6-pack last year and never figured out what happened to all of them. I guess one turned into a cat toy.
Still no springs. I'm starting to wonder if my daughter took them to school for arts & crafts without me knowing. I can't say I've seen any tuning spring art yet, which is a good sign.
And now, it's 1:48 AM. For some reason that defies my own logic, I put the springs in with a bag of unused hammer tips. In the crate of old parts. Of course. How obvious. AAAAAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHNAHHHHHAHAHAHHHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHA ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
i need a drink.
it's a shame my house is dry right now.
ganesha sharanam sharanam ganesha
ganesha sharanam sharanam ganesha
ganesha sharanam sharanam ganesha
ganesha sharanam sharanam ganesha
Sunlight (08/19/08): Not that Herbie Hancock piece of neo-disco bullshit. I'm talking about the natural force that seems to reveal everything that's really wrong with my piano. Today it's the late afternoon sunlight that showed me the decay of the wood stain on the rear of the cabinet. Everything else is fine. No problem. It's the side that sits on the carpet all the time, while I'm not working on things. Which has been a lot of the time over the last 2 years. Now it's starting to get faded and sticky? The side with no exposure to sunlight??? The one side that faces the audience??????
Which sends my mind in the dangerous cosmetological direction again. Is it enough to just...leave it alone for that "vintage look"? There's no way I'm tearing the entire assembly out of the cabinet to stain it again, so do I just risk it all and stain the rear with everything left inside? Or there are the shiny 9" x 12" sparkle sticker sheets that I used on the lid. I don't care about the lid. Its only function is to be functional. It could still have the tolex peeling off and the rusted hinges. It wouldn't matter. Nobody sees it but me and whoever I can convince to carry the thing around. But putting the stickers on the actual piano. Cheap glue on wood. Cheap plastic "paper". Destruction waiting to happen.
I tried wiping it down with a soft dry cloth. Nice idea. We seem to be stuck with this "vintage" look here. I think I'll be heading downstairs and getting the wood stain out of the closet before the sunlight is gone here....
Stained (08/20/08): I did it. One more coat of black stain, which I still had stashed for future use, thankfully. It seems to have darkened the color, but I can't exactly tell since I haven't looked in the sunlight again. I'd prefer not to. I know there's more black on there than before, and that's good enough for me....
My theory is that it's not the stain that faded so much as the spray sealant that I used becoming whitened over time, i.e. months on the carpet. None of the other surfaces have this problem, but who knows if it's because the sealant was doing its job or just because they were in the open air the whole time. I'm just going to keep the piano in table mode while not in use. Functional and breathable.
But now I'm thinking about sealing the whole thing with translucent glitter spray. Somebody stop me. Black wood stain is enough. Black wood stain is enough. Enough. Enough.
|
