Electric Pianos
Rhodes Mark II
Wurlitzer Red 200
Rhodes
As a new decade was approaching, and at the height of the piano's popularity, CBS decided to put a new face on the Rhodes product line. The Rhodes Suitcase Piano was updated with a sleek black design, a removable music rack, and a flat harp cover for supporting an additional keyboard. Aside from these cosmetic enhancements, the "new" Suitcase pianos of 1979 were identical to the previous "Mark I" version. And after 10 years of being designated "Mark I", the Rhodes Mark II Stage Piano made its debut. Like the Suitcase models, it was a last-generation Mark I piano with the new all-black design. The Suitcase and Stage pianos continued to be available in 73- and 88-key configurations, but for some people, the Stage 73 was not portable enough. In 1980 the Rhodes 54 was introduced, a 54-key variation on the Stage model. This version covered the middle register of the piano, intended for players who were only interested in using the Rhodes for chords and melodic passages during live performance. During that year, plastic keys were introduced as an alternative to the wooden keys, which were found to be prone to warping after years on the road. As a result, the later Mark II-era pianos have an action that feels more like a digital piano. The plastic keys are most easily identified by looking inside the piano: the keybed is entirely black. Harold Rhodes was disappointed in this change, which was not his idea. He argued that it lowered the quality of the piano and had a negative impact on the feel of the keyboard. But this "improvement" was nothing compared to those found in the Rhodes Mark III EK-10, also released in 1980. This was a Stage 73 with an integrated synthesizer component, designed to create "futuristic" sounds by modulating, mutating and mutilating the Rhodes tone. The EK-10's front panel included the volume and EQ controls you would expect to find on a Stage 73, jumbled together with volume, filter and tuning controls for the synthesizer voices. Theoretically you could turn down the volume for the synthesizer, leaving only the pure Rhodes sound. Whether this worked in reality is unknown (and unlikely). Inside the piano, the pickup rail was wired to several circuit boards, which were configured as two separate keyboard zones (controlled by a switch on the namerail). This allowed the treble and bass ranges of the piano to be affected differently when fed to the synthesizer. All of these experiments on the part of CBS were in reaction to the evolution of polyphonic synthesizers, which were quickly eating up the keyboard market. As Major Key's John R. McLaren put it, you could "throw a synth in the back of your VW Beetle" a lot more easily than a Rhodes, and ultimately the Yamaha DX7 would put the nail in the electric piano's coffin. http://www.fenderrhodes.com/models/mark2.html
Wurlitzer Red 200
1969 "Red Top" Wurlitzer 200 Electric Piano. A rare bird and this one features our modified factory restoration or "resto-mod". We started with a comprehensive cleaning and regulation of the instrument. By now you are probably wondering what you mean by regulation? Your typical restoration starts with mechanical functions, felts, action associated parts, replacement of parts & rebuilding electronics. Regulation & proper configuration brings the instrument back and better than before. New felts, adjustments etc & a thorough cleaning yields a Leveled fast Keyboard with even feel. Wurlitzer 200 piano's are finicky! Fine adjustment is required to make each note sound even in attack, sustain and volume level. Great voicing makes or breaks it. We completely tune the reeds. It's a painstakingly long process but worth the time and results. We replaced the amp board with a Warneck Research 200 model Amp board. The original boards tend to be noisy and with age the components drift out of spec leading to more noise. The Warneck 200 Amp board is not just a reproduction! Warneck Research has redesigned this part so it retains all the great tonal characteristics without the problems. It's a simple task to replicate the original but why carry the old problems into the future? Through design Warneck Research has a greatly the reduced noise floor and improved the signal to noise ratio. In the end you have a Wurlitzer keyboard you can run at max volume with virtually no quiescent noise. We also flushed, cleaned and lubed the pots bringing them back to life. This being a Factory resto-mod project we kept as many of the original parts as possible. Our crew goes over the instrument, cleaning, polishing and bringing back the luster of the original cosmetic parts as possible. We had the legs stripped and re-chromed.The end result is a Original looking instrument with some new technology under the hood, plays great, sounds great & has that original look. http://www.retrolinear.com/new-stuff/1969-wurlitzer-200-red-top.aspx
Rhodes
As a new decade was approaching, and at the height of the piano's popularity, CBS decided to put a new face on the Rhodes product line. The Rhodes Suitcase Piano was updated with a sleek black design, a removable music rack, and a flat harp cover for supporting an additional keyboard. Aside from these cosmetic enhancements, the "new" Suitcase pianos of 1979 were identical to the previous "Mark I" version. And after 10 years of being designated "Mark I", the Rhodes Mark II Stage Piano made its debut. Like the Suitcase models, it was a last-generation Mark I piano with the new all-black design. The Suitcase and Stage pianos continued to be available in 73- and 88-key configurations, but for some people, the Stage 73 was not portable enough. In 1980 the Rhodes 54 was introduced, a 54-key variation on the Stage model. This version covered the middle register of the piano, intended for players who were only interested in using the Rhodes for chords and melodic passages during live performance. During that year, plastic keys were introduced as an alternative to the wooden keys, which were found to be prone to warping after years on the road. As a result, the later Mark II-era pianos have an action that feels more like a digital piano. The plastic keys are most easily identified by looking inside the piano: the keybed is entirely black. Harold Rhodes was disappointed in this change, which was not his idea. He argued that it lowered the quality of the piano and had a negative impact on the feel of the keyboard. But this "improvement" was nothing compared to those found in the Rhodes Mark III EK-10, also released in 1980. This was a Stage 73 with an integrated synthesizer component, designed to create "futuristic" sounds by modulating, mutating and mutilating the Rhodes tone. The EK-10's front panel included the volume and EQ controls you would expect to find on a Stage 73, jumbled together with volume, filter and tuning controls for the synthesizer voices. Theoretically you could turn down the volume for the synthesizer, leaving only the pure Rhodes sound. Whether this worked in reality is unknown (and unlikely). Inside the piano, the pickup rail was wired to several circuit boards, which were configured as two separate keyboard zones (controlled by a switch on the namerail). This allowed the treble and bass ranges of the piano to be affected differently when fed to the synthesizer. All of these experiments on the part of CBS were in reaction to the evolution of polyphonic synthesizers, which were quickly eating up the keyboard market. As Major Key's John R. McLaren put it, you could "throw a synth in the back of your VW Beetle" a lot more easily than a Rhodes, and ultimately the Yamaha DX7 would put the nail in the electric piano's coffin. http://www.fenderrhodes.com/models/mark2.html
Wurlitzer Red 200
1969 "Red Top" Wurlitzer 200 Electric Piano. A rare bird and this one features our modified factory restoration or "resto-mod". We started with a comprehensive cleaning and regulation of the instrument. By now you are probably wondering what you mean by regulation? Your typical restoration starts with mechanical functions, felts, action associated parts, replacement of parts & rebuilding electronics. Regulation & proper configuration brings the instrument back and better than before. New felts, adjustments etc & a thorough cleaning yields a Leveled fast Keyboard with even feel. Wurlitzer 200 piano's are finicky! Fine adjustment is required to make each note sound even in attack, sustain and volume level. Great voicing makes or breaks it. We completely tune the reeds. It's a painstakingly long process but worth the time and results. We replaced the amp board with a Warneck Research 200 model Amp board. The original boards tend to be noisy and with age the components drift out of spec leading to more noise. The Warneck 200 Amp board is not just a reproduction! Warneck Research has redesigned this part so it retains all the great tonal characteristics without the problems. It's a simple task to replicate the original but why carry the old problems into the future? Through design Warneck Research has a greatly the reduced noise floor and improved the signal to noise ratio. In the end you have a Wurlitzer keyboard you can run at max volume with virtually no quiescent noise. We also flushed, cleaned and lubed the pots bringing them back to life. This being a Factory resto-mod project we kept as many of the original parts as possible. Our crew goes over the instrument, cleaning, polishing and bringing back the luster of the original cosmetic parts as possible. We had the legs stripped and re-chromed.The end result is a Original looking instrument with some new technology under the hood, plays great, sounds great & has that original look. http://www.retrolinear.com/new-stuff/1969-wurlitzer-200-red-top.aspx