Vintage Instrument Safety Guide
We’ve all heard that vintage amplifiers contain high voltages. However, there are other hazards that a collector should be aware of, particularly if your piece is sourced straight from a barn, shed, or other quasi-outdoor place. These risks can be managed by thorough cleaning and/or servicing. If you’re a DIYer, you should be aware of them so you can take adequate precautions, such as wearing gloves or using a respirator.
On Electronics Safety
At Tropical Fish, we are pro-electronics safety. We don’t want anyone to get hurt working inside a tube amplifier. At the same time, we hate to see people writing online who overstate the dangers of working on a tube amplifier. It really seems like certain factions want to discourage people from opening their amps up at all. This is a bad thing.
How to Remove Your Wurlitzer's Lid
Wurlitzers have a lot of moving parts under the hood, many of which can be adjusted to the player’s taste. Regulating your own Wurlitzer means that you can dial in the feel and touch-responsiveness that you prefer, making your keyboard truly your own. Of course, the first step to regulation is taking off the Wurlitzer’s lid.
What Not to Clean, or How to Avoid Destroying Your Wurlitzer
Wurlitzers are pretty forgiving. If you damage something, you can usually fix or replace it and get your keyboard up and running again quickly. But certain parts of your Wurlitzer are harder to source. Here's a rundown of all the things in your Wurlitzer that you should avoid breaking if at all possible.
How to Clean an Electronic Piano, Part II
If you’ve read Part I of our guide on how to clean an electronic piano, you’re familiar with the general technique. (Spoiler alert: Take everything out and then start cleaning.) In Part II, we’ll discuss how to tackle some more specific and serious messes.
How to Clean an Electronic Piano, Part I
Of all the repairs and restorations we do on vintage keyboards, cleaning them is by far the most important step. As much as we prefer recapping amps to scraping mouse poo out of them, cleaning is what transforms a gross piece of junk into a beautiful, functional instrument that will neither give you a disease nor make your studio smell like a thrift store. After all, excessive hum and out-of-tune reeds might be annoying, but they never gave anyone hantavirus.
What is a hand-wired amplifier?
In a hand-wired amplifier, each component is soldered to the next manually. The opposite is an amp where all of the components are mounted on a printed circuit board.
So which one sounds better? That’s a trick question. Hand-wiring and PCBs are simply styles of assembly. The ultimately quality of the amplifier depends on other factors, including layout, component quality, and of course the design of the circuit itself.
We chose to hand-wire the Vesper amplifier because we felt our amplifier demanded it. Here’s why.
About the 1981-1984 Late-Model Rhodes Mk II
The last iteration of the Rhodes Mk II, released between 1981 and 1984, is one of our favorites. Despite having more plastic parts than previous models of Rhodes, we find that keyboards of this period tend to have a dynamic, modern feel and excellent timbre. Plastic has a bad reputation these days - which it deserves - but this model of Rhodes is a rare case of plastic manufacture improving a product’s consistency and longevity.
Here’s a list of the details that are unique for the last years of the Mk II.
What Do Filter Caps Do?
Replacing a vintage amplifier’s filter caps is a very routine service. For some people, replacing the filter caps is the first order of business when they acquire a new piece of old gear. As components in the power supply, filter caps are subject to the most stress and the highest voltages. For these reasons, filter caps have a reputation as the most likely suspect when anything in the amplifier goes wrong.
In Restoration: Four 206 model Wurlitzers
We are extra-excited about this group of four Wurlitzer 200 student pianos because they are clearly of an early manufacture. Three of them had original music racks with the closely-spaced metal bars, which are incredibly rare. Even aside from that great detail, however, all of the keyboards were in great shape. They had clearly been used only lightly and had been stored in a clean, low-humidity area.
About the Vesper's Bent Wood Cabinet
When we decided to make our own original guitar amplifier, we knew that the cabinet had to be original as well. The first idea we had was to eliminate the corners, which are always a weak point where sound quality is concerned. We also dreamed of a cabinet with a minimalist appearance that showcased the natural materials that it was made with.
In Restoration: August 2018
We drove through the eastern U.S. on a pickup/delivery run last week. (Little-known fact! We do deliver long-distance. More info here.) We dropped off our gorgeous Wurlitzer 720a, and then picked up a handful of new pieces: a teacher/student 206a/207a pair, a 203w wheeled console Wurlitzer, an extremely rare Wurlitzer 140a, and a Fender Rhodes Mk I.
Wurlitzer 140b
The 140b is at the midpoint of Wurlitzer's electronic piano production: a stepping stone from the vintage tone of the 100-series to the more reliable modern electronics of the 200-series. The mechanical parts are easier to work with. It has updated, 200-style reeds. It has a transistor amplifier like the 200, but an early one, with germanium power transistors and neon bulb vibrato.
Enabling the Vibrato in a Wurlitzer 726
We removed these switches from a Wurlitzer 726 electronic piano. This model was the student version of the 720 (itself the console version of the 140b). One switch was for toggling between "self" and "ensemble" modes, while the other switched between the built-in speaker and the hardwired headphones.
Sears Silvertone Hi Fi to Guitar Amp Conversion
When we received this Sears Silvertone amplifier, it had no knobs, tubes, input jacks, or power cord. It had started its life as a hi fi amplifier to complement a record player. We looked at the all-tube circuit and saw the potential for a unique, one-of-a-kind guitar amp.
Wurlitzer 700 (Mahogany): Details & Closeups
Is a piano more an instrument or a piece of furniture? If you're reading this blog, you'd probably find the question offensive. Of course a piano is an instrument! But if you just live with a pianist - as a spouse or a parent - you'd might have a different perspective. Specifically, that the piano is neither instrument nor furniture but some big wooden behemoth that takes over the living room and clashes with everything.
Wurlitzer 200 Circuit Board
We have a few Wurlitzer 200 circuit boards that we use for parts. Most of repairing vintage equipment is maintaining a large hoard. Just because a component is obsolete doesn't mean it's useless: a lot of old transistors and diodes are both absolutely necessary and hard to source. We do our best to keep a surplus when possible.
The Lap Steel Craze and the Gibson BR-9
Before the electric guitar, lap steel was the coolest instrument a kid could play. Introduced to the United States by Hawaiian emigres in wake of the 1898 annexation of Hawaii, the lap steel became hugely popular in the first half of the 20th century. It was on the cutting edge of technology not once, but twice: first, on its invention in the 1880s, and later as one of the first amplified instruments. Played with a high action and a metal slide bar, it allows a musician to unlock all of those interesting microtonal pitches that hide behind the frets of a guitar. Manufacturers instantly capitalized on the craze by releasing lap steels bundled with instructional booklets, sheet music, and eventually amplifiers.
Seeing Double: Wurlitzer 700
It's always a pleasure to have two examples of the same vintage model in stock, but these Wurlitzer 700s are extra exciting. The 700 is not as well-documented as the later plastic-top Wurlitzer 200, and are often overlooked by collectors because of their traditional spinet-style cabinets. Acquiring two 700s gave us the rare opportunity to compare two rare electronic pianos.
Wurlitzer 112: Details & Closeups
Our latest Wurlitzer 112 is one of our cleanest yet. Although it's over 60 years old, it sounds fantastic. It still has all of its original parts, including a bench and music rack: two things that usually disappear over the years. We've put together a gallery of all the small details on this beautiful instrument that still impress us.