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Lifetime Positive Ratings: 8% [ Add Your Rating ] Repairs/Restorations/Re-tunes and service to Fender Rhodes electric pianos. Can carry out full cabinet refurbishments and on-site service is available. Specialist conversions for making Rhodes pianos into true stereo. In-House coil winding facilities. Suitcase style pre-amps.
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| Name: |
Mr Partridge
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| Rating: |
5 / 5 |
| Comments: |
Excellent company, very professional service at an extremly good price! |
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| Name: |
Marcel Groot
<m.groot01@quicknet.nl> |
| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
Still waiting for 4 wurlitzer legs which i 1 year ago ordered and paid,
They never pick up the phone, answer fax or emails, these guys are bad!!
look out!!
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| Name: |
david price
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| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
Ron at cravendale is a real con man and had to vanish as there were so many disgruntled customers its untrue.well i have tracked him down .i believe he dumped all the customers equipment at a caravan storage facility near ingleton ,north yorkshire wether its all still there god knows.la6 3pe is bout the location.also i have a number for him 07591652595 he trades as power factor soloution's now so give him a bell,kid on ya interested in solar panels lol |
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| Name: |
Matthew Bourne
<mattbourneix@hotmail.com> |
| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
PLEASE DO NOT USE CRAVENDALE TO CARRY OUT ANY WORK WHATSOEVER ON YOUR RHODES
I own a late MKI Suitcase 73 - here's a rundown of the problems I've encountered since I took a closer look inside it to find out what the fuck had happened to an instrument that was pretty ok to start with:
1. They carried out a key pedestal modification which made the action worse. They assured me that this would get better the more I played it. Wrong: upon closer inspection there are strips of felt glued to the underside of the hammers as well as the felt strip on the key pedestal, making the action very stiff - and there is no 5/32" felt piece at the end of the pedestal, which is pretty much the whole point of this modification.
2.They replaced the power transformer - but have added a safety system that protects the speaker from any power surges or 'DC Thumps' as they are sometimes called. This is all fine, but now the amp makes more noise (hiss) than it did before, and at louder volumes the speaker unit cuts out altogether. Not very helpful on a gig...
3. A number of the key caps had small cracks or were chipped when I took it in. No big deal, I quite liked them really and it gave the whole thing a bit of character. However, I took in a complete set of MKII 88 keys that I had got from the guts of an '81model to see if these could be transplanted in any way and to use in part exchange for the work undertaken. It was understood that whatever the result, Cravendale could keep any parts that were not used. It turned out that they wouldn't fit after all - and I didn't receive any discount on my final bill for letting them keep them.
Now, here's the best part (I NEVER asked them to do any of the following)...They then took it upon themselves to chip off all the key caps that were chipped or cracked, and replace them with brand new key caps. So I guess you're thinking - this isn't such a bad thing, right...? Wrong. Not only are some of them not glued on properly (horizontally and vertically. The vertical pieces stick out at a slight angle..) and clatter about whilst playing, but the new caps have been very badly cut on a jigsaw (the caps look as if they have been cut by an 8 year old in a woodwork class). In fact, the whole key assembly looks absolutely fucked, and yes, you've probably guessed it - the whole keyboard assembly now has a number of very brilliant white keys sitting amongst slightly older, more pale examples.
It looks and feels shit.
3. Before I had the above work carried out, I made sure that all of the keys were sitting evenly on the keybed (using those very small spacers..), so that all the keys were of equal height. Now all of the keys are of unequal height, which goes nicely with the 'smokers teeth' effect of the actual keys themselves.
4. Nearly all the hammer tips were replaced, and nearly all my time before/after a gig is spent glueing them back on again. Could this be due to using an improper glue perhaps?!
All of this work was carried out a while ago, and since then I've just resigned myself to the fact that to put all this right (from finding someone who can stop the speaker from cutting out, to unfixing all the felt strips from the undersides of all 73 of the hammers, sorting out the pedestal mod, or finding a complete set of MKI 73 keys and do the modification from scratch etc., etc.) will cost me so much money or time that I don't have to sort this out. I think I'm just going to hunt for another Suitcase and keep this one not only for spares, but as evidence for anyone who wants to see it. I'll be taking some close-up pictures in the next few weeks if people are interested in looking at the horrors described above. It now looks and plays like the organ in 'The Goonies'.
DO NOT SEND YOUR RHODES HERE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES |
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| Name: |
peter burns
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| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
please do not use Cravendale for your repair needs, the owner/operator is a dishonest individual. As a piano technician I did some highly skilled Wurlitzer E.P. refurbishments for him around five years ago, and he still owes me well, let's just say, a hell of a lot of money. |
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| Name: |
mark ross
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| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
We are currently speaking to solicitor and the police about Ron/Cravendale Electronics. We have been waiting for over two years for the return of our Farfisa Accordion. I personally spoke to Ron's family (Sue and Pam) who assured me that the item was packed and ready to go, after making me wait a year, having cited family problems as responsible for the delay. Having waited two years, out of common decency, the instrument is still not here.
No point me warning you off using them, they've apparently 'moved on'. Anyone else who's also been ripped off by them can take comfort in knowing that if the 'conventional' means of retrieving the item don't work, my brother runs a debt collection firm. We'll be catching up with Ron & Cravendale very soon. We've spoken to other parties at the industrial estate they used to frequent, and have a very good idea where they are now :) |
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| Name: |
Nathan
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| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
I had the displeasure of dealing with Ron a couple of years back when I took up a beautiful 200a in need of a few tweaks and adjustments. After what seemed like a carefully planned visit to Rons house to find out what job i did and how much money i had to throw away, we went to his unit to get his verdict. Although i just needed the vibrato re connecting, 1 reed replacing and the grounds firming up, he came back with a quote of £350+vat. This included new amp (which i didint need), 7 new reeds (only 1),new power supply (you guessed it!). To my horror during the inspection Ron started banging the fuck out of the lid to see if it changed the level of hum! He rejected my concerns as unfounded as he told me this was normal! (twat) When he put the metal shield back over the workings he tightened it so far down that the keys would not return down the lower end! Total Joker.
I was lucky that after seeing Ron in "inspection" mode, I decided to not take him up on his offers of service. Afterwards I found out that the hum I was hearing was cured by 2p of solder on the vibrato circuit and he was going to replace just about all of the electrics! Id just paid alot of money for the 200a and to tell the truth it was my pride and fucking joy. He prays on the fact that people love their Rhodes's, Hammond's and wurli's and trys to fleece you for that fact. DO NOT USE!!! |
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| Name: |
Aaron Tandy
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| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
Cravendale took the piss out of me, I sent my Wurlitzer EP200 in with a mains hum, they charged me £375 for the previlage of replacing one broken ground wire (even though 2 others were connected at the same point)and recieced my piano back 3 weeks later to no improvement. It later turned out the fault was in which phase line in my studio I plugged into- one half of the room is on one phase for the desk, the other half for the amps and I was simply plugging the piano into the same side as the desk and the amps into the other... But it cost me to find THAT out. And they claim to have tuned it, but it didn't even NEED tuning... still, I got charged for a tuning. But, knowing what it's like to piss about with a soldering iron and a file tuning the buggers, I would charge a fair bit for this service- had it been needed.
DO NOT allow these people to tinker with your instrument, as it were. They do fuck all, wait 3 weeks and charge the earth for it. And from what I read above other people feel the same. BEWARE. I feel like I was done up like a kipper. |
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| Name: |
Nick
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| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
Sent a VOX AC31 head unit to these guys in 2003 for repair/refurb. Followed up with £250 towards costs in 2004. In 2005 they disappeared off the planet. The money is bad enough, but the amp I cannot replace. If anyone knows of whereabouts I would love to find out if my old amp is still with them. |
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| Name: |
Andy T
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| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
Awful - Ron said for £500 he would make my Vox Continental 'as new'. He did the following:
1. Sprayed the chrome legs black!! It now looks awful.
2. Re-tolexed the whole organ. This looked OK until it all started falling off (in the car on the way home from his workshop) because he used the wrong glue. It's currently held on with bits of sellotape.
3. Did apparently nothing whatsoever to the electronics... he assured me it would sound 'as new' but all the dodgy notes, missing harmonics and tuning problems are exactly the same as before he 'serviced' it.
4. Promised me he would send me a replacement percussion unit. Fat chance.
It does make me feel slightly better that it obviously wasn't just me he took for a sucker.
Avoid at all costs. |
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| Name: |
peter burns
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| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
If Mark Ross has had any success in retreiving monies or otherwise from Cravendale, would he take a moment to email me please? I'm still waiting for those spares I left with Ronnie to be returned, or to be paid for them; it is 7 years after all. Thanks,
Pete |
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| Name: |
nathan
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| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
Mr Partridge are you for real? How come everyone used specifics of what went wrong, when and to what instrument on the other comments and you just say he was good with no detail - obviously bullshit! Only one good thing about cravendale is that they are now out of business. CUNT |
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