In The Meantime

[Alexbt]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

Clavinet makes the world go round. My band does 7 or 8 "dance" songs, which are sequenced. The clav is my secret weapon! Put this funky little clav line in, even if it's not part of the original song. I might even mix it low, but it just creates a groooove. Works every time!

Do you have any MP3s? I'd love to hear them!

EDIT: BTW, I'm 99% sure that Christine's clav stuff on ITM is fake, as is mine on my Kurzweil.
I think her Rhodes is probably sampled also. I doubt she kept hers.

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by Alexbt

Do you have any MP3s? I'd love to hear them!

EDIT: BTW, I'm 99% sure that Christine's clav stuff on ITM is fake, as is mine on my Kurzweil.
I think her Rhodes is probably sampled also. I doubt she kept hers.

I don't have any MP3's. I just always add this sorta minor 7th funky walk to the sequences. **** songs like Brickhouse, Funkytown, etc... Fills the dance floor everytime though.
I sold my Rhodes years ago. Too heavy to lug around, and back then, I had a small apartment, so I had no room for it either. They're not worth much more than they were then(there's one at a local music store now for $400, that's what I gave for mine).

[David]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

I don't have any MP3's. I just always add this sorta minor 7th funky walk to the sequences. **** songs like Brickhouse, Funkytown, etc... Fills the dance floor everytime though.

I'd like to hear what you do with those songs. They are way too hard for me to play.

I don't know what the problem is with posting MP3s.

[David]

Originally Posted by Alexbt

I think her Rhodes is probably sampled also. I doubt she kept hers.

Why do you doubt that? Thousands of people still have their Fender Rhodes from the 1970s, many having been rebuilt, repaired, buffed up & kicked into gear again. There are Yahoo groups & mail lists filled with hundreds of musicians who still play -- & talk lovingly about -- their Fender Rhodes pianos. Iin fact, judging by prices on eBay & from music shops, Rhodes keyboards are more expensive today on the secondary market than they were throughout the 1980s.

Here's a current auction, chosen at random:

http://snipurl.com/jh3e

Two & a half days left, already 18 bids, & almost $800.

[chiliD]

Didn't Christine mention in that 1979 Contemporary Keyboard magazine interview that she'd bought up all the existing Hohner Pianets (that Hohner had in inventory) to use for parts?

[macfan 57]

Originally Posted by chiliD

Didn't Christine mention in that 1979 Contemporary Keyboard magazine interview that she'd bought up all the existing Hohner Pianets (that Hohner had in inventory) to use for parts?

Here it is from Contemporary Keyboard Magazine:

When looking for a harder sound, McVie used to rely on a Hohner Pianet. "I liked the old Hohners, but they don't make them anymore," she sighs. "Before they went off the market I bought about six of them to use for replacement parts, but now that a transistor blew out of one of them, I'm down to my last one. They would break down a lot onstage too, I'm telling you. It would make the most awful, atrocious noise, this crackling hiss and farting all over. It would sound like some sort of alien parrot trying to get through to you.

[David]

Originally Posted by chiliD

Didn't Christine mention in that 1979 Contemporary Keyboard magazine interview that she'd bought up all the existing Hohner Pianets (that Hohner had in inventory) to use for parts?

Yeah, she was in a bind with regard to the pianets -- the same bind that other Hohner players were in. The mechanism of the N & Combo models -- the type she always played -- was dropped out of production before 1979 & was replaced with a different mechanism in a different model, the T, which sounded different. She may have tried the T at some point & perhaps didn't like it (it sounds more like a stage Rhodes). Of course, by late 1978 she had already been introduced to the Yamaha electronic piano (it went into production in 1977) & started using that in the studio & probably planned to take it on the road at that point, too. I assume she didn't hear the Yamaha until after the 1978 tour because otherwise you would think she would have brought it along then.

Everybody's sticky pads in the old-mechanism Hohners are long defunct, & it's only in the last five years or so that clavinet.com started marketing its replacement sticky pads, which apparently give the old Hohners a very close sound to their original sound. If sticky pads had been serviced by Hohner into the late 1970s, Chris might have kept using the pianet. But the unit was basically a contraption, although it sounded cool.