" Thanks to midget pianos and short-cut teaching system, no one laughs when a convalescent flyer sits down to play the piano after only three weeks of instruction at the Army Air Force hospital in Fort Thomas, Ky. The tiny musical instruments, called Xylettes, were bulit by the patients themselves. Both the Xylette, which can be carried under one arm, and the capsule lessons where devoloped by Harold B. Rhodes of the AAF Personnel Distribution Command while himself a patient."
Text taken from press release courtesy of Harold Rhodes.

Picture 1: Harold Rhodes demonstrating the "GI piano" and teaching method.
Picture 2: Typical class of students receiving instruction on Rhodes pianos at an elementary school in the Los Angeles School District.
Picture 3 :The Emporium, San Francisco, 1947.
Picture 4: Scrap B-17 Bomber: Harold's Pick-Your-Part yard. Future Rhodes piano! Problem was, the pilot was going to fly it later on that day. Oops!

All pictures courtesy of Harold Rhodes.

Prepiano II

"The suitcase piano has only 150 parts and weighs but 15 pounds. Designed to be taken to the bedside of wounded veterans to encourage them to exercise injured muscles by playing, it is now in civilian production.

Aluminum replaces wood, the three-octave keyboard is plastic and the one-piece lid is molded Fiberglas. The hammers, shown below, strike special alloy rods instead of the usual strings. The rods never get out of tune. The price will be about $75.

Ex-GI Rhodes made his first model with scrap from a B-17. He also developed a short-cut method, disregarding scales and exercises, to teach convalescent soldiers to play tunes in three weeks. "

- The wood top cover was changed to a molded fiberglass top with a black finish, and all wood components, with the exception of keys, where now made out of aluminum and some plastic.

- The design of the chrome legs was modified to make the Prepiano II more portable. Interestingly enough, at the time, the Prepiano II was referred to as a "suitcase piano" because it's portability allowed it to fit into a suitcase.

- The diecast aluminum sustain pedal on the original Prepiano was deleted, along with the dampener bar (as seen on the picture)

- The volume control was relocated to the front left side of the piano and was made of cream colored bakelite material as opposed to the mahogany knob with a copper decorative ring on the original Prepiano. The amplifier was deleted, however, the instrument still had passive electronics. It used a specially designed transducer that was hooked to a volume pot and then a 1/4" jack was mounted underneath the piano for external amplification.
At the request of certain individuals, we have ommitted Les Barcus.
Major Key: Les Barcus was a very talented inventor who created many unusual amplifiers and transducers, however, certain transducers had been introduced by other inventors in the 1940s. Les Barcus has been credited with the mass production of certain special transducers for acoustical instrument amplification. =)

- Prepiano I harp assembly was a cast-iron harp with the tonebar rods placed in as we will further describe below. The means to amplify the harp was through a unmagnetized isolated piece of strap steel that ran the length of the harp, secured by screws and rubber isolation grommets. A shielded wire was screwed to the isolated rod. The method gave it a very simple but crude pickup. When a piano hammer struck a tonebar, the harp vibrated and a signal was generated but the output was extremely low.

The Prepiano II had a completely redesigned harp that was much smaller and incorporated the new transducer that had relatively higher output for outside amplification. Detailed pictures follow the Prepiano I harp assembly. If you look closely at the pictures you will notice several tone rods that are shiny silver in color compared to the original tone rods that were black oxide covered. I manufactured and replaced the broken rods at Major Key.

- On the 2nd generation Prepiano, the harp assembly was redesigned and was now mounted to the piano harp cover (whereas on the Prepiano I it was mounted into the action module) to give it a natural acoustic sound that resonated through the cover to increase the unamplified sound. Of course, you could plug it into an external amplifier if you so desired.

- The Prepiano and Prepiano II were short-lived because of reliability problems. The tone bar "rods" tapered down and were press-fitted into the casted harp; it was put in with so much force (known as a close tolerance interference fit) that when they broke (usually at the harp frame), to replace these rods required using a precision air hammer to punch them out. In many cases, the hole became oversized in the harp and a replacement rod would not fit in as tight as it was need to create the desired sustain. Harold told me that in most cases, they had to ship a completely new harp to the customer. One day in 1988, Harold came down to my machine shop in Anaheim, California where we were designing the one-key module that was used as the sampler for Roland's version of a synthesized Rhodes piano, and he handed me a Prepiano harp assembly. I asked him what he wanted me to do with it and he said, "Keep it, they're very hard to come by and I had it in my garage so I thought I'd give it to you for safekeeping. A customer that may have one of my Prepianos may need one in the future." I still have it after all these years wrapped in brown paper.

- More information to come soon! This is leading into a discussion page that I will be working on with James Garfield of the Fender Rhodes Supersite.

Prepiano Gallery

The Rhodes name and logo are trademarks of the Rhodes Music Corporation. The Fender name and logo are trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments. All CBS copyrighted images and text are reprinted with approval from CBS Inc., Fender Musical Instruments, and all responsible parties. All other material is the exclusive property of MajorKey.com and may not be redistributed without prior permission.

Majorkey.com © 2002 - 2010 Major Key. Email: Rhodescholar@hotmail.com