During the tour with my trio, last month, we had a gig in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Normally I ask for two Rhodes pianos, and there they were waiting for me in the beautiful Music Hall Theatre.
The first one was a regular mark II ’73, in OK shape. And next to it was this piano that straight away send a strange vibe... It looked from the outside as a refurbished Rhodes, with a different tolex, and strange cheeks( the black plastic parts at the extremities of the keyboard. And a obvious home made nameplate.
Man, you can imagine my surprise, when I opened it and discovered an entirely home made piano. I mean-check this out-every part (!!!) of the piano was home made copy....Everything-tone bars, tines, keys, keybed, harp, harpframe, harpcover, hammers, hammertips, feet, pedal, you name it...I wasn’t sure about the pickups, though.
I was so amazed that I wanted to take some photos of this curiosity, and of course, as it often happens, my camera stayed at the hotel, but my drummer Ari Hoenig, gave me his camera, where there was not much memory left, elsewhere I would have made a little movie...but at least I managed to take some of them-
Enjoy:
Russian home made Rhodes piano
Anyhow, soundwise-unfortunatelly, there was a small technical problem with pickup impedance, so first three notes starting from the bottom had a normal volume, while the rest had almost none, so I wasn’t able to solve the problem before the gig, so I didn’t use it. But I did hear the sound with a twin reverb gain put on 10, so there it was- a genuine rhodes sound...
After the gig the russian owner came, told me that he doesn’t know who and when made it (certainly some 20-25 years ago...) and as long as he knew, it is the only item like this in Russia, there was no massive production, which makes it even more crazy to imagine the amount of work and passion, that a guy put in making it...
Bojan Z
