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Lorin Parker of Electric Western is slowly working on an authentic tube Martenot. He has designed a heterodyne oscillator and a controller. He has made progress on the various resonators. It will take awhile to surface. The slow economy has him stalled on his first product release.

http://electricwestern.com/

That was right at the transition point, so the Rhodes branded parts must have been newly manufactured, while the Fender Rhodes parts were older stock.

I used to use one with guitar, and my guess is that the suboctave will be unstable as it attempts to track the transients of the Rhodes, which I like, and you may need to adjust the sensitivity of the pedal. There is a trimpot on the back for doing that.

You have a point, but there can be a fine line between an amplifier and an effect. Anyway, it may be what some people are looking for. There is also the Swell Pedal Company, which makes several overdrive pedals based on the 12AU7 and 12AX7. But I agree, the list of respectable tube effect pedals is a short one.

There are legitimate tube circuits which run at real plate voltages and are not gimmicky at all. I use the Siegmund Double Drive as my Rhodes preamp. I typically use the first gain stage for my normal clean sound. Adding the second gain stage can result in a very articulate overdrive or distortion. It has an excellent passive tone stack which is subtle yet quite effective.

I suspect that the POG wold have trouble tracking the Rhodes. Ring modulators are great with the Rhodes. The Moog or Frostwave ring modulators should have good enough frequency response for the Rhodes. I have a Moog that was working great with the Rhodes, but now it needs a repair. A great feature of the Moog is that the cv inputs all provide power for expression pedals.

It isn't too surprising that the octave multiplexer didn't work well. Any effect that depends on pitch tracking is going to have trouble with the complex attack and decay characteristics of the Rhodes. I've also noticed that a lot of EHX effects have a limited frequency response. For instance, I love the Deluxe Memory Man, but the op-amps suck the tone dry.

Right. Typically an oscillator will just run free.  I do have some thyratron tube oscillators  that will shut off  when a negative control voltage drives it down lower than it's lowest pitch. If you have a modular or semi-modular synthesizer, patching the oscillators somewhere without attenuating them with a VCA will result in a drone.

If all that is desired is to process the Rhodes with a synthy-sounding filter, running it through a synthesizer is more trouble than it's worth. The Moog and Frostwave stuff will get the job done. Specifically, for the ARP sound, you would want the Moog MF-101 low-pass filter. ARP designed their filters to sound like Moog - so much so that they were sued.

If Dyno-My-Piano could do it, someone else should be able to do it. I would love to have this modification. Perhaps Speakeasy or Vintage Vibe should look into this.

Some of this information is mixed up. A gate or trigger triggers an envelope generator, which can send a control voltage to a VCA (or anything else).

The best way to send the Rhodes signal through a synthesizer is to have a small modular system which is specifically put together for processing external audio. You need some kind of preamp because modulars are usually designed for audio signals with an amplitude of 10v p-p. Most modulars offer an external input module which amplifies the signal and generates  a control voltage which follows the input amplitude and a gate signal for triggering. Then you can choose any effects modules that you desire. There are filters, phasers, flangers, delays, frequency shifters, waveshapers, etc. An audio and/or low frequency oscillator can be used to provide cyclical modulation of volume (with a VCA) , tone (with a filter) or any voltage controllable parameter (including the frequency of another oscillator). Very interesting effects can be achieved by modulating with an audio-rate signal.

If you don't need to generate any triggers you may just want to look into voltage controllable effect pedals such as Moogerfoogers and Frostwave pedals for synth-like effects. The Moog CP-251 can add some more control features to a voltage controlled pedal setup.

Use a compressor and some kind of chorus/vibe/leslie effect. Depending on the kind of organ tone you want , you may want to overdrive a preamp and/or modify the tone through tonebar adjustment or EQ.

I really don't think there were any effect pedals used on Bitches Brew. Those early hammers must have really cooked before they started to get grooved. It's probably a combination of pickup , amp and speaker distortion. The album was in the summer of 1969. By early 1970 Chick is using ring modulation , wah and echo. My preference is to overdrive a tube amplifier. I am awaiting delivery of a Siegmund Double Drive. I will post my reaction on this forum when I get it.

If you don't need very hi-fidelity echoes , I suggest the Memory Man. The chorus and vibrato are great , and it is one of the best bbd effects available. The op-amp has limited frequency range , but the newer units are true-bypass , so your sound does not suffer when the effect is off.

If you want something clear and airy , try the EH Clone or Polychorus pedals. If you want liquid , out of phase chorus , look for the Memory Man.

It's normal. I believe it was the only way to get proper output from the extra high notes. I hear it lowers the overall output slightly , which accounts for the slightly different sound of the 88. Have fun with the extra range. I am in love with my 88.

There is also CAE Sound in San Mateo , California.

Perhaps the ebay references were about entire keys. But I have purchased only the white covering. I doubt that any discrepencies should come into play with these.

I've purchased a set of those keycaps on ebay and I'm happy with them. It takes alot of filing down but it looks good. So far I've only used them to replace badly chipped keys , so it was very easy to remove them.

Most stomp boxes are going to use cheap op-amps with very poor frequency response. Typically , you're going to get what you pay for. My understanding of bass chorus is that they should at least have good low frequency response and I think they limit the chorusing to the higher frequencies so the fundamental doesn't get too muddy. But if you are going for the classic rhodes chorus sounds , these were obtained primarily with guitar chorus , or leslie cabinets. If you feel like spending for quality , check out the effectrode tube-vibe and phase-omatic. Though optimised for guitar , the fully tube circuits should provide much better frequency response.

Donna Lee is a great tune. Written by Miles Davis , though. Falsely credited to Bird. In a similar vein , try Reincarnation of a Lovebird by Mingus. If you think these tunes are hard on the rhodes , try them on theremin! I'm a trained musician and can read like crazy for trumpet and voice , but due to a gap in my keyboard playing from the age of 10 to 14 , I prefer to play keys from memory ... or improvise ... or play my own compositions. Bach is alot of fun on rhodes. Try simple things like Two part Inventions and the Well-Tempered Clavier.

Your idea for a stringed instrument is similar to what I've thought about. The description of the sounds you imagine remind me of the early piano music of Henry Cowell. His invented technique involved muting, plucking , scraping and rubbing the strings , producing consonant and dissonant overtones by stopping that at the proper nodes , and strumming the harp with chords fingered on the keyboard. Look for his album Piano Music [ particularly the track Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance].The muting technique produced an extremely warm pleasing sound quality. I've always wanted to hear this with built in amplification. If this could be built in a considerably smaller package than a grand piano and provided a mechanical means of manipulation , or merely access to the harp for manual manipulation , I would jump all over it.