Rhodes Suitcase 73
The piano and its amplifier in one road-ready case — and the pricing history tells you everything about how badly players wanted one.
Overview
The Suitcase 73 is the smaller of the two Suitcase pianos in the Rhodes lineup, and the British price lists of the late 1970s and early 1980s make its position plain. In one contemporary dealer's table, the Suitcase 73 carried a recommended retail of £1,546 against an "our price" of £880 — a 43% saving. The Suitcase 88, by contrast, listed at £1,749 and moved at £980, a 44% cut. Dealers were pushing the 73 harder, and the numbers say why: it was the volume model.
That same pattern repeats across the surviving trade listings. A later Supersynth sale sheet put the Suitcase 73 at £1,546 RRP against £899 — again 42% off — while the Suitcase 88 sat at £1,749 against £1,065. A separate London dealer's advertisement quoted a new Suitcase 73 at £750 and a used one at £425, with a new Suitcase 88 listed at £999. Prices bounced around between shops, but the 73 was consistently the cheaper way into the amplified Suitcase format.
The Suitcase name is literal: the piano and its amplification travel together as one unit, as distinct from the Stage pianos, which are keyboard-only and need outboard gear. The trade lists make that hierarchy explicit — the Stage 73 appeared at £1,008 RRP (discounted to £575 and, elsewhere, £649), while the Suitcase 73 at £1,546 commanded a substantial premium for the built-in electronics. Buyers were paying roughly fifty percent more for the convenience of a self-contained rig.
Electronics & Music Maker (the issue carrying that Stevie Wonder keyboard inventory) put the Suitcase 73 at approximately £1,000 in its survey of the instruments Wonder used on his last tour, alongside a Yamaha CS-80 at £3,500, a Fairlight CMI at £13,000, a Hohner D6 Clavinet at £400, and a Steinway 7-foot grand. That a working soul and funk keyboardist of Wonder's stature kept one in the touring rig is the most useful endorsement the model ever got — and the magazine's own reader mail suggests the Suitcase 73 was the aspirational Rhodes for players assembling a gigging setup.
Collectors note that the Suitcase 73 turns up in studio inventories well past its production era. A 2004 equipment list from Jungle Room Studios in EQ (November 2004, p.114) names a Rhodes Suitcase 73 among the room's keyboards, sitting alongside a Nord Lead 2, Korg MS2000R, and Novation Bass Station — a twenty-year-old electromechanical piano still earning its space next to then-current digital gear. That is the Suitcase 73's real reputation: not a museum piece, but a working instrument that studios kept plugged in.
The model appears in British dealer price lists across the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, and the discounting visible in those sheets — 42% off RRP in more than one shop — suggests the instrument was being cleared as the era wound down. Buyers today should expect the piano action and the amp to be separate restoration projects, and should budget accordingly.
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Related Models
- Rhodes piano (1959–1985)
- Rhodes Stage 54
- Rhodes Stage 73
- Rhodes STAGE-88