In Memoriam - Harold Rhodes

[Kent Swafford]

on 1/4/01 10:22 PM, Thomas Sheehan at t.sheehan@worldnet.att.net wrote:

> I cut my tuning / piano technician teeth on the Rhodes in the piano labs at
> Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1973. I will always revere the person
> who invented the instrument, and the many techs among us who truly grokked
> what it was all about!

I guess you could say I wouldn't be a piano technician if not for Harold
Rhodes and his Rhodes electric piano. After college, my Rhodes was my only
piano for about 4 years. I tried to maintain the instrument myself; after
all, Harold used to claim that you could do anything a Rhodes piano needed
with just a Phillips head screw driver and a pair of pliers.  :)   Because
of my being under the hood of a Rhodes, I got interested in actions and
tuning in general, and the rest is history.

Maybe there aren't too many Rhodes pianos still being played, but the
sampled sound of a Rhodes piano is present in many, many sample-playback
synths and digital pianos. The Rhodes sound will be around for a long, long
time.

Kent Swafford