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Fender Rhodes Mk1 Stage 73 action work.


One thing that I would never part with has been my Mk1 Fender Rhodes. This has been in my posession for quite some time now and took a twelve hour round trip to pick up when I first aquired it. I played it over the years in many gigs at many great venues in London.
Here is some of the TLC it has seen by me, the action has been improved from the original factory fitting by doing these mods.

montage

Felt removal from hammer undersides (lighter fluid essential for this), and new wool felt placed directly on Key pedestals on top of the Key Bumps (fitted these years ago, commonly know as the 'Miracle mod')

The advantage of this is that wood does not rub against felt, but rather felt rubs against smooth plastic, a far nicer action is the result.
Also, I replaced all the Hammer tips with brand new Angled fixed height tips kit from 'VintageVibe' in the USA (bottom left pic').    If I had glued all the tips in place as they appear in the photograph then this would have been a bit of a screw up as all the densities would have been the wrong way round*.....luckily I spotted my  error of doing it the wrong way round before gluing them down!
 
*each colour is a different hardness with black being the hardest (highest notes) and red the softest (lowest notes).
 
After customs import tax I can safely say this became an eyebrow-raising expensive rubber purchase.......but totally worth it.

 

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