musical thoughts

As noted previously, I just bought a Mark I suitcase. It came to me as a playable piano, not a project piano, but it still needed setup to perform its best. In this article I’ll walk through what I did to get this piano into better shape. You may find it useful for yours. No repairs will be shown, just adjustments. I’m not really a Rhodes tech, I’m a tech-enabled player. I’ll assume you know basic Rhodes mechanics and names of parts and assemblies. If not, have a look at the service manual first before you proceed.

There are four main adjustments, taken together, that comprise “voicing” the Rhodes. The term voicing is apt, because if it’s done well, your Rhodes will “speak” much more distinctly. The term “setup” is often used, but it may include adjustments to the action. I didn’t do that to mine, I just altered the dimensional relationships among hammer tips, tone generators, and pickups.

All the adjustments are detailed somewhat in the service manual. I don’t think they are presented in the logical order you’d perform them, which is disappointing. I’ll try to walk though how I did the work on mine. This plan may or may not work for you.

striking line

The first adjustment I’ll mention is striking line adjustment. I didn’t change this on my instrument, but the goal is to align the harp over the action so that the hammers strike tines in the “sweet spot.” This provides for the optimum transfer of energy from the hammer to the tine. Since this changes response pretty seriously, I’d do it first if I felt like it was a problem. Note that a major change here involved drilling new holes in the harp supports (aluminum extrusions that the harp screws to). The procedure in the manual is straightforward.

escapement

The next thing (first in my case) was the escapement. This is a bit hard to understand, so I’ll discuss why you may want to change this adjustment before I go into how. Escapement is the distance between the tine and a struck hammer that is at rest with the key pressed down. The trade off you’re working here is that you gain sensitivity to a soft strike by decreasing escapement, but you also move the hammer into range of being contacted by the tine when it vibrates. So a close escapement is ideal, but the factory settings provide for increased escapement in the low end of the range where tines whip around more and could contact a hammer.

I knew I wanted to decrease my escapement, but I didn’t have much idea about how much, so the approach I took was to take a few measurements of the distance between the harp and the bottom of the tone bar. then I made a setup block by machining a scrap of hardwood to a target dimension slightly smaller. My “nominal” distance was close to the factory default 3/8″ (.375) to begin with, and I made my setup block .340. the difference expressed as a fraction is close to 1/32″. Please note, this measurement is not the escapement distance, but changes to it will change the escapement correspondingly.

I used the setup block as a quick way to get consistent spacing. Essentially I “zeroed out” any previous adjustments by using the block as a gauge and tightening the closest screw on the tone generator until it contacted the top of the block. I assumed that I’d improve the dynamic range by closing the escapement, but I didn’t really have a feel for how much. So the 1/32 change was a sort of conservative first pass.

What I got was a tremendous improvement in the responsiveness to soft key strikes. Strikes before adjustment that did not “speak” would now sound a clear, soft note. I wasn’t really expecting this result, but I was immensely pleased. It allows me to play with less force, and with more expression as a result. I knew I was playing too hard, but I didn’t really sense that I was accommodating deficiencies in the sensitivity of my piano. After adjustment, that was immensely clear to me. If you’re happy with yours, you may not want to fool with escapement.

timbre

The next adjustment I did was to tighten the farther screw on the tone generator in order to set a consistent timbre across the range. The manual explains this adjustment quite clearly. The vertical offset between the pickup and end of the tine will determine the harmonic (overtone) content of your note. Adjustments here make a powerful change to the sound, at least for the bottom 2/3 of the range.

By tightening the closer screw, I had raised the end of the tines with respect to the pickup centerline. This caused a tone that was all fundamental, with little overtone content. To attain consistency, I tightened the rear screw until the “all overtone” point was reached (tine on center of pickup), then backed off to a point of maximum response (loudest). After doing this across the entire range (the bottom 2/3 is where it really mattered), I returned to the “heavy traffic area” and dialed in more overtones to suit my idea of a good Rhodes sound. In my case, I added overtones but kept significant fundamental in the sound. I removed the most fundamental in the area where I play chords the most, in order to attain a less muddy sound when I play complex voicings (which I always do–I rarely play triads)

volume

The final adjustment is the volume, which is tunable by setting the pickup-to-tine distance. The pickup brackets are slotted so you can move the pickup closer or farther to the tine along a line which is kept parallel to the tine by the harp. Closer = louder, and also more dynamic range.

I did not make much change here. I corrected a couple notes that stood out from neighbors, but didn’t try to do any wholesale shifting of the response curve. I changed the response so much with the escapement and timbre tweaks, I intend to play it for a while to get the feel of the new response, and adjust volume after that.

The out-of-whack note was set closer, and it was spitting fire. I have a sense that I want to move in my pickups in my “lead” range where I really want the most cutting sound. But I want something more subtle than the experience that one note gave me. So that adjustment is deferred for now, at least setting the curve across the entire range is. My main decision is whether or how much to back away the low end–I find this piano very heavy in the bass response.

next steps

From here I intend to play a while, then to close the escapement distance further in the range where I play with my left hand the most. I am still failing to trigger notes when I play at soft dynamics (but it has seriously improved). I may dial more fundamental out of the “comping” range, and I will most likely lower volume in the low end. I may possibly increase volume slightly in the right hand lead range.

Having a tech make these adjustments for you is great, but it can be hard to know what you want and what you can get out of the instrument. By doing it yourself, you get to know this instrument better, and you don’t need any tools you can’t buy easily. I used a #2 Phillips screwdriver and a 1/4″ nut driver, plus my wood block (which you could do without).

I have video of these adjustments (the ones I performed at least). Once I get it captured and edited to some sane format I’ll get that posted here. Let me know if this is article helpful to you. I’m not done with the voicing, but I see clearly now where I am headed. I also have a couple minor repairs to accomplish, and once I get the parts I’ll video those and do a writeup as well.