Hohner Clavinet D6 restoration 

Thank you!

The switches sometimes need to be fully disassembled, and the contacts need to be manually/physically brushed with a fibreglass brush. When disassembling the switches, you will notice there are little plastic spacers along the mounting rods. These spacers are not all the exact same size, so make sure you keep track of their position and order on the rod. I have had no problem using gel, and have installed it a couple of times. I will confess I have not learned to re-yarn from scratch. New strings will greatly impact the sound. Some do not like the change. You can use the cocktail straw trick to replace single strings, threading the small rigid straw through the yarn, and then threading the string through the straw, then removing the straw. For an assessment, are you located in Ontario?

Hi @jyuma2000! There could be a few things, but overall this is a natural aspect of the clavinet, similar to a guitar: the harder you fret the strings, the more tension is applied, raising the pitch of the note. You can experiment up and down the clavinet keyboard, and you'll notice this in action, especially if you move the mute slider to different positions. As to what could be affecting one key more than the others, it is possible the metal underneath the plastic has shifted so that the hammer tip is not fully in line with the other hammers. The metal itself is designed to be somewhat bendable for adjustments. I would recommend taking the front panel off and looking under the offending key to see if anything looks out of adjustment, when compared to neighbouring keys.

@@dcatkinson thanks very much for your reply. That's somewhat comforting to know as I thought it was a problem with just this clavinet. I own an E7 as well which I've noticed also does this to a very mild extent, but it's acceptable. I guess I'll have to look at the mechanics of the D6 more closely or try and adapt my style of playing.

@@jyuma2000 Also check the hammer tip itself - they frequently need replacing. Original tips from the 70s will be practically toast. Easy to replace them all.

@@dcatkinson well this is the disturbing part is that I already completely restored this clavinet with new strings, yarn and hammer tips (original electronics) a few years back. So naturally I'm wondering if it's an issue I introduced during restoration, but the hammer tip is aligned the same as all the others. Wanted to mention that I have experimented with the elevation of the keyboard assembly as well. Lowering it closer to the frets did seem to alleviate the issue a little bit. I'm sure my style of playing is a large part of the issue, - just not entirely. I'll fuss around with it again some rainy day.

Thanks! I'm based in Toronto, Canada.

I'm afraid I do not have experience with doing cosmetic repair to the exterior finish. For major cosmetic repair and refinishing, I'd find a woodworker/furniture repair.

New hammer tips you mean? If you are just changing the hammer tips, there are lots of great resources out there for doing it yourself. Check out Vintage Vibe's channel.