Karel Boehlee plays his newly refurbished 1971 Fender Rhodes

This piano used to belong to one of Holland's greatest keyboard players, Rob Franken. He imported it himself, so this may be the first ever Rhodes piano in The Netherlands...

I changed its setup quite a bit, raising the wooden action rail a couple of millimeters, adding a key pedestal bump for lighter action and aiming the entire pickup board closer to the tines. I guess it's become something like a 'vintage Mark V' :-)

The sound is further modified by a Boss SE-70 multi-effect, using a static AutoWah (like Chick on RTF), maximum gain on the (flat) EQ, the ´Built In´ Guitar Amplifier Simulation (Twin Reverb style) and square-wave stereo panning like on a Suitcase piano. The speakers are powered Teisco PS-620's.

Check out:
Karel Boehlee: myspace.com/karelboehlee
my (Dutch) site: j.mp/rhodestechniek
Rob Franken radio documentary: robfranken.radio6.nl

Cheers, Steven Kruyswijk

Category:

Music

Tags:

• rhodes
• piano
• jazz
• boehlee
• franken
• kruyswijk

[alphabeets]

Sounds fantastic. And great performance!

[marillo18]

prachtig!

[SFConifer]

nice showing us what's under the hood at the beginning

[crosswick]

@barth1977 yes it has a later name rail. You can see it's a pre-CBS piano from the wooden harp supports.

[barth1977]

@orangefunk My guess is that the front rail has been replaced somewhere between 1971 and now.

[fredturd]

For those wondering...the first song is Al Jarreau's - I Will Be Here For You (Nitakungodea Milele)

[orangefunk]

Nice piano... I love Rob Franken but I doubt this piano was the first in Netherlands... this is a post 1975 CBS Rhodes and he was playing a "Fender Rhodes" earlier on recordings with Herb Geller, Scope and so on...

[Krazie316]

very nice