Vintage Vibe Dual Capstan Action

Regulation is the art of achieving even feel and dynamic response across the piano keybed. Traditional Rhodes instruments rely on shims and back-rail felt for broad global adjustments offering limited control over key dip, hammer throw, and escapement.

At Vintage Vibe, years of vintage electric piano restoration and hands-on player feedback have guided our work in evolving the action regulation mechanism. Our goal: enable precise key regulation with surgical, note-by-note adjustability.

While original Rhodes actions were elegantly simplistic, they lacked individual adjustability. We took the next logical step: embed adjustable piano action features directly into our design.

This allows our team and more importantly, you or your technician to fine-tune the action at any point in the instrument’s life, dialing in specs with a level of control once thought impossible in a tine-based e piano.

Our patented Dual Capstan Action includes two independent regulation points for manipulating

• Key dip
• Hammer throw
• Hammer blow distance
• Stop-lock (brake)
• Escapement

These refinements give players and techs total command over piano action fine-tuning while preserving the precision tactile feel of classic Rhodes playability.

The Lower Capstan adjusts hammer height at rest controlling key dip, hammer throw, and hammer blow distance.

This simple yet transformative feature replaces coarse factory settings with micro-adjustable nuance, essential for a responsive, uniform keybed.

The Upper Capstan governs stop-lock adjustment, affecting escapement and brake position. This design breakthrough lets you independently control how the hammer disengages after striking the tine, preventing bounce and enabling cleaner sustain.

In traditional action designs, this was fixed and often inconsistent across sharp and natural keys.

During decades of Rhodes keyboard restoration, we found that sharp key hammers often sit lower in stop-lock due to the angled keybed and staggered fulcrum. This caused uneven escapement and an inconsistent feel.

The Vintage Vibe patented action corrects these legacy issues by offering individual escapement control a crucial innovation for performance-grade instruments.