What's the general consensus as to the best Rhodes synth out there?? I'd be interested for it to include software plugins, expansion cards, synths, and harware modules..

Some of the possibilities I've considered:

Roland Jv-xp keys of the 60's and 70's exp card....

EVP 88 Emagic plug in softsynth....

Kurweil sp76 stage piano....

any suggestions or opinions?

Kurzweil K 2xxx + real rhodes cd-rom from pyramid sound productions

Reason also has a great Rhodes sound . Put a little phaser on it and BAM there you go . After working in a place where we fixed them and tuned them , I don't ever want to see another real one again . Those and MELLOTRONS too .

The Roland card sounds good, but only when run through an amp or some kind of amp sim. The Rhodes are nice, but they are a little too nice. Great jazz rhodes, but not really spanky dirty ones. But if you overdrive it and like editing patches, it sounds extremely realistic. I haven't tried any of the others you mentioned. If you don't want to spend time tweaking, and don't want to run it through some effects processors or a decent amp, it's probably not going to suit you just going right out of the synthe to the main mixer.

STOP. If you want the king of the hill - get a Yamaha Motif. I'm tellin' ya - it doesn't get any better. I'm a Rhodes geek, and the Mo has it ALL.

With that much money you could just get a Clavia Nord Electro.
http://www.clavia.se/nordelectro/specs.htm

-tek

I must admit, I've never heard the Nord. Impressive specs, but I never trust the hype. Have you played it?

Only the B3 sound at a theme park here. I know nothing about good or bad B3 sounds

There's no hype. You never hear about Clavia stuff. You just see red things on stages.

-tek

I see an awful lot of silver things too, that doesn't mean that I want a Triton.

That makes two of us.

-tek

Actually , I've played the Clavia Electro . It sounds great and it rivals the sounds of the Rhodes . In the shop where I work repairing and tuning Rhodes , we have a few Clavias and the customers buy them over the Rhodes . Not all the time of course but most often then not . It's far more reliable , lighter , and it never needs to be tuned . Sound wise , anyone that says they can hear the difference , it's most likely in their heads . I agree about the Korgs as well , boring .

A friend of mine owns a real Fender Rhodes. Cool instrument. I don't believe that a synth with such a sound would be the same; it simply has its own feeling.

One word to the "Keyboards of the 60's and 70's"-Expansion Board. I'm not very interested in those sounds for my music, but as far as I could hear it I couldn't find great differences to the JV's internal E-Piano and organ-sounds. There just were more sounds like that, and many of them very similar. But I didn't hear it with great interest....

The best Rhodes sound I've ever heard, and I've been selling electronic keyboards including the Fender Rhodes since 1970 just showed up at my store last week. It is the Generalmusic Pro Mega 3 keyboard. By far and away the best I've ever heard. What Generalmusic did was to develope a new chip called "Drake" which is a new type of chip which allows all parts of the sound from polyphony, to effects, to sampling to physical modeling to be included in this one chip. More than one Drake chip can be used in a product and in this first one, there is 320 note polyphony, sampled Pianos as well as totaly physical modeled Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Clavinet voices. And by using Drakes power, even the harmonic content which changes by how hard you press the key, is being physical modeled. I sell Yamaha, Roland, Korg, Kurzweil and have sold every other keyboard over the years and in my opinion, this is the best I've ever heard in the acoustic and electronic piano class.
The look of the pro mega 3 is very much like the keyboards of the 70's due to it's large volume pots and it's wood sides. If you would like to check this keyboard out go to www.generalmusic.com and click on GEM keyboards and then check out Pro Mega 3 and information regarding Drake.
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California

Now that's hype.

-tek

Clavia's dont sound like a Rhodes to me, at least not the ones I have heard...well whatever, guess I slept in that day.
RE: Posted Subect
My Opinion:
A Fender Rhodes sounds best unattended and unplugged if not out of earshot.
My consensus to the best Rhodes synthe:
Nonesuch. The Rhodes never was a synthe, nor was it's sound. It is a compound instrument blending percussive strings and woodwinds electro-mechanically to create the source signal which in most cases is further processed.
My Conclusion:
It might not be easy at first...Free yourself and extricate your Rhodes SOUND today. (Pulling old weeds makes room for new flowers) Mark my words and the date for those of you who dare to move on, the longer you are away from the sound, the more you will come to dislike it.
Hey what can I say... when somebody first told me that, I was shocked too. After a while however, I found myself even more shocked that they were right.
-LOL- I don't mean to take your baby blanket away from you to hurt you. You'll see after a while that I'm doing it because I love you

OK all, I'm ready to get ganged up on and beat up now, but I still mean what I said.
MORPH!

[This message has been edited by Morphamatik (edited 07-15-2002).]

According to your theory, we should then dismiss anything thats sampled, or emulated through hardware or software, because in fact, these are just "sounds", correct..?

Hey man, if using a real Fender Rhodes is the only way to capture the dyamics of an actual Fender Rhodes, then so be it...I'm there...

Hard to believe though that in this day and age, there's no alternative to hauling around 500 pounds of Rhodes gear, having in take up X amount of space in the studio, and having to deal with it constantly being in need of tuning or maintaining....that is of course, assuming that you have found one that isnt beat to crap, still works, and can stay in tune for more that a couple of days...

I think that it certainly is possible using sample playback or modeling to approximate the sound and feel of a Fender Rhodes. It simply hasn't been done that effectively over the years for various reasons. George Kaye recommended checking out the GeneralMusic Pro Mega 3 and he sees and compares many keyboards so his opinion is well worth taking into account. It uses Rhodes modeling so sounds like it may be the sort of instrument you are looking for.

...Hey captain ..... if you're looking for the only REAL Rhodes sound, I've got one in pretty good shape that will most likely be going on e-bay in a couple of weeks, unfortunately .... don't have the room, and it's just not getting the use it deserves ... let me know if you're interested
t.

You wont really beable to get all the oddball things of a mechanical device into a DSP model of the instrument, but it can do a dam good job and save your back. I will personally buy a rhodes when I can even with all its annoyances, however for now the PC2 rhodes I liked, thinking of getting there new little rack thing which should have the same sound. Haven't checked the Clava but it looks cool and never heard of the GEM.

Why people think the shrinking all this stuff into one little DSP chip makes things sound better is what is beyond me. I does make things lighter and cheaper but certainly doesn't make it sound any better.
Good for GEM if they pulled this one off but I have my doubts and will have ever less space in my house until some one proves otherwise.

If you mean that they can't get all the mechanical aspects of a Fender Rhodes in a DSP chip like it's unreliability and constant tuning and electrical problems then that's fine with me . I've spent alot of time working on those things and hauling them around . The Clavia ELECTRO is right on as far as I'm concerned . I've been playing that old junk since 1983 , I guess that's why there is no more nostalgia for me in that stuff , I was there in that time . I don't want to re-live it at all . Most of the electronic instruments that they are recreating with DSP is just that , electronic instruments . It's an electronic tone , to put that kind of nostalgia to it is dumb . These are not acoustic sounds , so there is no need to be so affraid of the DSP technology .

Genralmusic has made a CD demo of the Promega3 and it is available to anybody who would like one by contacting Generalmusic in their Bensenville, Il office. Phone 630-766-8230. I just spoke with Tina in their office and she informed me that the first batch of CD's have already come and go and more are being duplicated. With the summer NAMM show this week, it might be a few weeks until they have more. These are free of charge and show off the power of this keyboard if you can't go into a store and hear one for yourself.
Again, not using samples but rather having a computer generate every nuance of the real Rhodes keyboard, I've not heard anything sound this good!
George Kaye
Kaye's Music Scene
Reseda, California

In review of my own message, I can see how it could be taken wrong in what I had tried to express (in opinion). If you like the Rhodes sound, you could really benefit from xylophone based patches, modified. A touch of random distortion in with the slightest ring modulation mixed in maybe 8va down with triangle gain in the wave post 270 deg and a touch of pink gives it a woodwind vibratory effect. You should try it. The sound is similar, but not quite as "square". It's sort of like a Rhodes without the "magnus" in it.
By the way, have you hugged your Magnus today?
Morphamatik