Hey! So I literally just bought a dead Rhodes a month and a half ago and spent a month restoring it. I was getting a real percussive sound, but the note weren't ringing. Upon taking the harp off, I found that all of the bridle straps had rotted out. $10 for new bridle straps from vintage vibe. 5 hours of work replacing them. I also replaced all of the hammer tips, damper pads and the tone bar screws and grommets. I updated the passive electronics on it, as the original pots were scratchy and grimy. There were about 10 broken tines, I would say those are going to be the most expensive to replace if you need to do that. To me your issue sounds like bridle straps that are broken, OR perhaps the screw in the center for the damper pin may be too tight. The harp has shims that keep it raised a bit, they are on either side and look like cardboard strips. They might be compressed and flattened out. Vintage vibe sells replacements as well. Send me a DM for my contact info, super happy to help, as I just went thru the whole process. -Ruby Heart Drips
Once you get it all together and fixed up, the real fun starts when you go to tune it. You spend hours adjusting the height of the tines/tonebars, the distance of the pickups to the tines, and the most fun, moving the tiny springs on the tines ever so slightly back and fourth trying to get it in tune. Everything multiplied by 73, or 88.
I am a rhodes technician operating in Sydney Australia. You need to get a auto ranging multimeter and measure across the RCA connector. Measure between the ground of the RCA and the Tip on the harp. If it is open circuit you will have multiple pickups that are open circuit. the pickups are wired series parallel. You can purchase pickups from vintage vibe or you can get re wound pickups from certain technicians. If you are not comfortable using a soldering iron. I suggest you get a technician to do the job. This takes a lot of skill to get right. I would usually change all the pickups on a Mk2 with white pickups because they are very old now. This job is not for the novice. If you get multiple pickups fitted ,over time the other white pickups will go open circuit.
It might be the pre amp. Troubleshoot it with something that also uses simular impedance pickups, like a guitar. Get some scematics and troubleshoot the circuit methodically down the line section by section. And reflow all the solder connections. It could be something simple like a loose/lost connection. Sounds like a fun project, good luck!
Don't know anything about the Rhodes, but it looks like the pickups may all be wired in parallel, which means if one is shorted, it could take the whole bunch down. To test, you would need to isolate them and test each one individually. Or you can see where the resistance across is lowest to find the shorted one. But you need a decent DMM to use that technique, as the difference in resistance between the shorted one and the one next to it will be very small, since it's just the wire resistance.
Hi, the sound you are hearing don't comes from the pick ups, it is the rhodes itself. U can play it without any cable and still hear that hammers hitting the bars :).
I don't know if you are going to repair a Rhodes or a zombie invasion will start! The Video cutting and it coloring really suggests something bad will happen :D
Can you share what the resolution was? I just picked up one with the same issue. Random resistances across the groups of pickups but little to no output. I'd rather not drop over a grand for new pickups if I don't need to...
Funny, you ask for help and when someone asks if you were able to fix it after so much time you say YES. If the person then asks how you were able to solve it because he has the same problem, you not answer!👎 Sorry mate.
Hey! So I literally just bought a dead Rhodes a month and a half ago and spent a month restoring it. I was getting a real percussive sound, but the note weren't ringing. Upon taking the harp off, I found that all of the bridle straps had rotted out. $10 for new bridle straps from vintage vibe. 5 hours of work replacing them. I also replaced all of the hammer tips, damper pads and the tone bar screws and grommets. I updated the passive electronics on it, as the original pots were scratchy and grimy. There were about 10 broken tines, I would say those are going to be the most expensive to replace if you need to do that. To me your issue sounds like bridle straps that are broken, OR perhaps the screw in the center for the damper pin may be too tight. The harp has shims that keep it raised a bit, they are on either side and look like cardboard strips. They might be compressed and flattened out. Vintage vibe sells replacements as well. Send me a DM for my contact info, super happy to help, as I just went thru the whole process. -Ruby Heart Drips
Once you get it all together and fixed up, the real fun starts when you go to tune it. You spend hours adjusting the height of the tines/tonebars, the distance of the pickups to the tines, and the most fun, moving the tiny springs on the tines ever so slightly back and fourth trying to get it in tune. Everything multiplied by 73, or 88.
I am a rhodes technician operating in Sydney Australia. You need to get a auto ranging multimeter and measure across the RCA connector. Measure between the ground of the RCA and the Tip on the harp. If it is open circuit you will have multiple pickups that are open circuit. the pickups are wired series parallel. You can purchase pickups from vintage vibe or you can get re wound pickups from certain technicians. If you are not comfortable using a soldering iron. I suggest you get a technician to do the job. This takes a lot of skill to get right. I would usually change all the pickups on a Mk2 with white pickups because they are very old now. This job is not for the novice. If you get multiple pickups fitted ,over time the other white pickups will go open circuit.
It might be the pre amp. Troubleshoot it with something that also uses simular impedance pickups, like a guitar. Get some scematics and troubleshoot the circuit methodically down the line section by section. And reflow all the solder connections. It could be something simple like a loose/lost connection. Sounds like a fun project, good luck!
Don't know anything about the Rhodes, but it looks like the pickups may all be wired in parallel, which means if one is shorted, it could take the whole bunch down. To test, you would need to isolate them and test each one individually. Or you can see where the resistance across is lowest to find the shorted one. But you need a decent DMM to use that technique, as the difference in resistance between the shorted one and the one next to it will be very small, since it's just the wire resistance.
Hi, the sound you are hearing don't comes from the pick ups, it is the rhodes itself. U can play it without any cable and still hear that hammers hitting the bars :).
so no updates on this?
I don't know if you are going to repair a Rhodes or a zombie invasion will start! The Video cutting and it coloring really suggests something bad will happen :D
Does it have a reset button you can press? 😀
I wish!
Did you ever get it up and running?
I did!
Can you share what the resolution was? I just picked up one with the same issue. Random resistances across the groups of pickups but little to no output. I'd rather not drop over a grand for new pickups if I don't need to...
Can I have it?
What happened with this project?
I found a local tech that was able to get it up and running. Quite a few of the pickups were bad, which led to no sound at all.
I literally just started looking for a Rhode’s lmao
i was about to buy that one off of FB marketplace :,,,,,,
Funny, you ask for help and when someone asks if you were able to fix it after so much time you say YES. If the person then asks how you were able to solve it because he has the same problem, you not answer!👎 Sorry mate.
I paid someone to fix it. Replaced pickups.
@@JonMeyerHi! Can you share the contact of the technician? I just bought a dead Rhodes but I don’t have the skills to fix it.