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What a gorgeous piano, and it sounds just as good as it looks!

I personally think your tone sounds really nice. The way I look at it, everybody's piano is going to sound a little different, particularly when considering different generations of the design of the parts used in the piano, and while you can tweak it, don't fight what your piano is trying to do. You could experiment with like a 2 or 3db drop around 6.5khz to take away a little of the bright attack without changing it too drastically.

I have had my Stereo Vibe since 2011. I don't have any real noise problems with mine, unless you're in dead silence with the volume cranked you won't notice any noise. You're going to get an increase in noise any time you increase the treble in general, but I don't have a significant noise bump with mine. I recorded a sample for you with the noise level at a more moderate EQ setting, then the noise level with the treble turned up all the way. In fact, this clip has more noise than I usually hear, probably because I have both my personal computer and my work laptop running in the same room as my Rhodes right now, and I don't have a power conditioner so that doesn't help either.

For Rhodes, I'm interested a project that Jay Graydon has been spearheading to recreate the famous Model E Rhodes, which has a pretty distinctive tone. It's not your every day Rhodes sound, but if you are looking for that sound, nice.

Otherwise, Keyscape has some very solid electric piano recreations. Multiple Rhodes, Wurlitzers, Clavinets, Pianets, all that fun stuff, plus some acoustic pianos too. Here's a cool video of Greg Phillinganes showing off some of the presets (which FYI are a bit hit and miss, usually the bass or treble gets hyped too much in the presets I've found). Here's another video specifically done with Wurly 200A patch. I have a 1979 Rhodes, but I still like to play the ones in Keyscape sometimes just because they have a very different tone than mine does, and they can sound really nice.

As far as Hammond organ stuff goes, I don't know a ton about those options. I personally have a copy of VB3 which I bought a long while ago which is probably not the best, but still sounds great. I'm sure others have more knowledge on that than me.

I'm a huge fan of Steely Dan, and both Donald Fagen and Walter Becker's solo work. One of my favorite Walter Becker songs is Downtown Canon. Once I learned how to play it, I decided to record myself playing it on my Rhodes along with bass and vocals.

https://youtu.be/HM95VcrSvlg

I used some EQ on the Rhodes to cut out some of the mud from the low mids and remove everything below 80hz to not conflict with the bass guitar. I also used a little compression, delay, tape emulation, some stereo tremolo, and a very subtle amount of chorus.

Luckily nowadays my wife and I have our own house where I am able to have my computer and all of my instruments in the same room. However, many years ago when I lived with my parents, I had my Rhodes and my desktop computer and audio interface in my bedroom. When I bought an electronic drum kit, I didn't have room for it in my bedroom, so I set it up in the basement. I drilled a small hole in the floor by the baseboard (with my parents' permission of course LOL) and ran a long MIDI cable and headphone extension cable through it. This let me connect my drumset to my PC and record with it. It was inconvenient having to go up and down the stairs all the time, but it certainly worked when I didn't have any better options. Whenever recording, I would set up my DAW to have plenty of extra space before the start of the track so I had time to get down the stairs and in position before the song started. Also sometimes I would set it to loop so I could play through multiple takes in a row if I wanted to without having to go back up the stairs and click anything.

This is super cool and quite clever. I love it.

Vintage Vibe makes a preamp called the Stereo Vibe that is essentially a modernized, improved Peterson suitcase preamp. I bought one several years ago and absolutely love it. Super clean and low noise, good tone adjustment range, and the tremolo is so sweet, it even gives you a wider range of speed adjustment than the original Peterson.

When I installed a Vintage Vibe preamp on my Stage Rhodes, I used a wide drill bit to carve out an indentation in the wood block under the cheek block where the 1/4" jacks went. This worked like a charm and the cheek block sits down properly in place now.

Here's my latest song I've recorded and put on Youtube. So, this one is actually a guitar-centered blues, Albert King's Born Under A Bad Sign, but it does have Rhodes throughout. (I basically replaced the horn parts with Rhodes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6HuV8O__ts

The raw sounds are great. The recordings of the electric pianos on it are very treble-heavy and need to be EQed down to sound like a standard run of the mill Rhodes or Wurly. The default sound patches are not the greatest in my opinion and need a lot of tweaking to sound "right" to my ears, so the demo clips on Youtube aren't really a fair comparison to how good it can be! With some tweaking they are really authentic sounding and fun to play.

The "specialist" they brought in to determine the value said they could sell it for around $2500, so the store offered the guy $1200.

Here's something I recorded recently. A cover of "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" featuring my Rhodes. I played Rhodes, guitar, bass, drums, and sang on this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MztfOemNZ6M

Glad you guys got to enjoy these as much as me!

What is PYT? I could only hear about 30 seconds of that one then it locked up.

There are a few spots throughout PYT where the Rhodes drops out for a few measures and the clip is completely silent, such as the spot 30 seconds in. I didn't edit out any of those spots.

And one more. They also had stems for PYT, so I was able to get the isolated Rhodes from that song as well. I left the entire thing, including a brief intro before the song begins where Greg Phillinganes plays a couple notes without the chorus effect engaged.

https://soundcloud.com/dan-belcher/pyt-rhodes/s-zTFGK

While browsing reddit.com/r/songstems, I found a link to all the tracks from the master tape of Michael Jackson's great song Rock With You. I saved a copy of just the Rhodes part for you all. Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/dan-belcher/rock-with-you-rhodes/s-x7JSl

Wonderful! I just ordered my copy. Can't wait to watch it later tonight.

Just a heads up, if you want to hear essentially the dry sound of these recordings with the chorus, listen to only the left or only the right channel. It's a stereo chorus effect, so that will basically negate it.

My personal opinion: I think it has a great tone for what it is -- a bright Rhodes tone. I tend to think of dark and brights Rhodes tones as being like single coil vs humbucker pickups in guitars. Two totally different sounds, but both are equally "good" to me and just have their own places and fit in different songs and styles of music. A brighter Rhodes with a lot of the low-mid frequencies stripped away will fit great in a ballad, while a meaty, growling tone will be right at home in a fusion or funk record. This particular Rhodes is one of the best I've ever heard at creating a bright tone without being shrill or thin. It still has body and character, even if it's certainly thinner than say Herbie Hancock's sound.

Can anyone say for sure if this is the piano used on "Just the Two of Us" by Grover Washington and Bill Withers? I always found that to be a really interesting sounding Rhodes.

As far as it sounding too trebly, yes, by itself maybe, but with a band and a bass, it could sound amazing. When I was in a band in '81-'83 the leader kept telling me to let the bass player play the bass notes because the bass was too overwhelming with the Rhodes and the bass guitar together.

That may have been part of the reason for this mod?

When mixing sound, the lows and low-mids can very easily become muddy and overwhelming when you have multiple instruments fighting for sonic space. When I'm mixing audio, I almost always use EQ to remove some lower frequencies from every instrument except the bass and the kick drum. When you listen to the entire mix, the instruments sound balanced and the overall sound is rich and full. However, if you solo out any of the instruments, they tend to sound fairly thin. This is especially true of the Rhodes, since it can get very bass heavy and boomy due to its nature.

If you have access to a graphic equalizer, dropping the gain a bit in the region of about 200 Hz to 400 Hz can often take lots of muddiness out of the tone.

This is something I absolutely do with my Rhodes. I have one from 1978, and the natural sound of the piano tends to have lots of low-mids. Even when using a Vintage Vibe Stereo Vibe preamp which helps my tone a great deal already, I still like to EQ out some of the stuff below 400hz. This provides a much more natural tone on the high end than trying to boost certain treble frequencies and lets the real character of the piano shine through.

I installed the Stereo Vibe on my '78 stage a few years ago. I had to drill a very shallow hole with a wide drill bit in the wood under the cheek block to accommodate the power supply, but even considering that, it was incredibly easy to install.

As far as look and feel, I love the fact that the faceplate matches what you'd see on a vintage suitcase Rhodes. The power supply and outputs in the cheek block aren't a big deal to me. They don't look bad, they're sturdy and stable, and they don't get in the way while still being very easily accessible. (I love having two 1/4" outputs for stereo to capture the stereo tremolo easily. And looking at the website, it appears they've added a headphone jack since I got mine!)

The sound is really fantastic. Very crisp and clear, with big amounts of boost and cut available on both the treble and bass ends. Very low noise. The tremolo has a huge range of settings for depth, stereo width, and speed. I have it set to the FET mode and never even bothered with the other setting because I loved the tone so much.

And I thought I got a hell of a steal on my Rhodes back in 2006 when I paid $200 for it!

Congrats! Have fun!

What's worked for me is to fold a tiny piece of paper and put it in between the harp support and the rear of the offending tone bar. No more buzzing and it hasn't affected the tone of the note (well not to my ears anyway).

This is what I did when I first got my Rhodes back in 2006, and that same piece of paper has been sitting there ever since. Works like a charm!

This is good stuff.

The piano sounds fantastic (especially with the Small Stone) and your playing was equally fantastic!

For what it's worth, there's nothing wrong with using a little EQ. By nature, the Rhodes creates an extremely bass-filled soundscape. It really helps to get rid of some of that with EQ.

I took your clip and slapped a basic EQ plugin on it (highpass filter at 75hz to get rid of some of the low end rumble, a pretty wide 3db cut at 150hz, and a 4db notch at 450hz (since that frequency range gets kind of boxy sounding pretty easily). This makes it just sound a little more clear and punchy without really making it bright or anything. See if you like what it did to the sound. https://www.dropbox.com/s/xuerxe5pwdh73pe/eq.mp3

Whatever EQ pedal you use, remember that you don't have to just boost frequencies. You can also cut frequencies that are muddying up the sound and getting in the way. Don't be afraid to remove some of the low end to make your Rhodes sound brighter and richer and clearer. This is especially true on my '78 Rhodes that has quite a bit of bass and treble but less midrange. I like using a big cut at 100hz and some cuts around 200hz and 500hz. It gives me a crisper sound without making the treble sound hyped and unnatural.

The MK1 in that clip sounds gorgeous. I strongly prefer it over the MK2.

Here's the Boss CE-5, just the mono chorus sound. (I can get you a sample of the stereo chorus later if you want, just ask).

http://soundcloud.com/dan-belcher/ce-5

Two takes of the same passage, one clean, one chorused. The knobs are all set at 12 o'clock except for depth at 2 o'clock. I recorded this direct through the outputs on Vintage Vibe's stereo vibe preamp, then used some serious EQ tweaking for tone and a multiband compressor/limiter to add some punch, plus some reverb. So there's no actual amp involved or anything, meaning this should hopefully show you the pedal's nature as far as sounding too digital or sterile. I personally feel it sound great.

This is the book I have. It's pretty good for the right chords, but I don't know anything about how its leads and solo transcriptions are. One significant downfall is that all the songs on the Can't Buy a Thrill and Aja albums are transposed to different keys. The other albums have the songs in their original keys, however.

This DVD includes sheet music for five songs. It's an official Fagen effort, so I would imagine the chords would really be right. Chain Lightning, Peg, Josie, On the Dunes, Teahouse on the Tracks all have demonstrations in the DVD, and the case has actual paper copies of the sheet music.

I like it, both dry and with the chorus effect.

Supply and demand means you unfortunately tend to pay through the nose for a Rhodes outside of the USA it seems like. And yes, I remember that Rhodes. I can't say I'm surprised you had to abandon it. At least you didn't abandon it like its former owner or owners did at least -- they apparently just chucked it into the bottom of their swimming pool to get it out of the way...

I stopped in my local Music Go Round used instrument store yesterday and glanced over at the keyboard section when I walked in, and got all excited when I saw this!


This is only the second Rhodes I have ever gotten a chance to actually personally play in my life. Outside of the one sitting next to me right now, I have never been around one in person except for watching bands like Steely Dan and Boz Scaggs use a Rhodes on the stage in concert. So I was extremely excited just to get a chance to check it out.

Upon closer inspection, it was a 1977 Stage 73. The tolex wasn't in bad shape, but it was missing the harp cover logo, and the harp cover was very badly scratched all over, and the whole thing was dirty and grimy. Nothing too bad. But the thing that caught my eye the most was this:



The entire keyboard looked this rough! It needed either a new set of keys (not always the easiest thing to find) or some serious recapping work.

Then I tried playing the piano. It felt like the keys were floating in a bed of jelly. The action was incredibly mushy and slow. The tines and tonebars all sounded like they were in pretty good shape, and they had a much more aggressive, barky tone than my 1978 Stage 73 I have at home. Unfortunately, even the best sounding notes were extremely muddy sounding, and the entire thing needed to be completely revoiced and the strike line needed to be readjusted. Not huge deals, but in its current condition it sounded abysmal. Also no sustain pedal and no legs.

And yet they wanted $600 for it! I know the value for Rhodes pianos is higher than it has been in quite some time, but that's still asking way too much for this piano in my opinion when it needs hundreds of dollars in repairs and replacement parts. (Even the employee I was talking to agreed it was horribly overpriced) Makes me definitely appreciate how great of a deal I got on my piano ($200, a steal!). But it was also just sad to see such an amazing instrument in such poor condition. It's a downright shame so many people let their pianos fall into this condition without ever learning how to do even the smallest of tweaks and repairs to keep it sounding and playing the way it's supposed to. It made me honestly very sad to see it!

I've been reading a lot of the tips at homestudiocorner.com and therecordingrevolution.com even though they never really use Rhodes pianos in their mixes. The same principles tend to apply though. You probably could stand to use a little more compression (don't squash it or anything, just take away the peaks a little so you can raise the overall volume a hair without making it too loud when you play harder, plus it also adds sustain and body). Also using high pass filters on everything except the bass and the kick drum can give everything more room to breathe and remove some competing frequencies. From there you might look for the frequencies of the Rhodes you want to cut through more and notch out 3db or so from other instruments in those areas if possible, and also try notching away 3db or so of frequencies from the Rhodes you DON'T really need so you can raise the volume on that track a little without dominating other instruments. In general the Rhodes has a LOT of bass frequencies that make the tone sound fat on its own, but get lost in a full mix. You can probably stand to EQ out a lot of those frequencies to make it sound clearer and more powerful. Listen to something like Patrice Rushen's Forget Me Nots and hear how thin the Rhodes sounds on its own, but how well it sits in the mix, even if it's just bass and drums filling in the bottom end that's otherwise missing.

I've heard a few people speculate it's a Yamaha YC-30, but I've never seen any kind of definitive proof.

I too was surprised by how good Greg Phillinganes' Stevie Wonder voice sounded. I've heard him play for years on assorted things (love his work on the Rhodes on Donald Fagen's Nightfly album) and even saw him backing Boz Scaggs a couple years ago, but I hadn't heard him sing before.

No wonder ( no pun intended) that his playing sounded exactly like the record, but his singing sounded like Stevie also.

I always assumed that Stevie did all of his own Keyboard tracks.

Me too. Learn something new every day I suppose!

Finally got to watch it tonight. That was a very, very enjoyable two hours!! Unbelievably well done, and it really touched on so many key Rhodes moments through the years.

Love the sound of both of those pianos, and both of those pedals.

Well crap. I'm in the same boat as Kenneth! According to my computer's DVD player, the disc is blank.

Edit -- Already got replies from Ben and Gerald that they're sending me a new copy first thing today. That was quick!

Sent my donation in a few days ago. Can't wait to get my copy!

Even if made by the same manufacturer, the actual construction of the tines isn't necessarily going to be exactly the same from year to year. The exact mixture of the alloys may change, the quality of the metal used may change, and even the exact manufacturing process may change. The later 70s and 80s era tines simply had a different tone than even the mid 70s era tines. I can voice my piano however I want, but it's always going to be a little lacking in midrange punch because the 1978 tines I have just naturally have a lot of bass, a lot of harmonic treble, and a less powerful midrange fundamental tone. And I subscribe to the school of thought that you can't add something that's not there, so you have to just make the best of the natural characteristics of an instrument, so I've just accepted that my Rhodes is going to be naturally fairly bright and full of harmonics (think of that sound Bob James got on "Angela") and I've tried to voice it and EQ it accordingly. If I try to take away some of that treble, it just ends up sounding dull and lifeless. But if I just go with it and use the punchy brightness to my advantage? It sounds great.

I think he means he only wants to replace the tolex on the half of the case that is attached to the piano, but not the half of the case that you take off and set aside while the piano is in use. (Because who's ever going to see that part of the case anyway?)

When I buy something from Vintage Vibe, I'm also paying for their knowledge in getting me the right part/remanufacturing a part that no longer is mass produced/etc. That's certainly worth something. For example, I'm sure I could have gotten the hardware to build my own suitcase-style Rhodes preamp if I really wanted, but I wouldn't have the slightest clue how to actually put it together! So it was well worth the money for me to get one of their preamps that just needed to be dropped in my piano and that's it.

There are a ton of pictures near the bottom part of the page.

The logos on the suitcase bottom and the piano's namerail all say Fender Rhodes, so it should be earlier than this guy claims. Probably '73 or '74? Also the front isn't blacked out -- the guy just doesn't know how to put the lid on the piano properly! It's supposed to rest behind the silver namerail, not in front of it.

The VSTs of Rhodes never, ever get the dynamics quite right, and they always insist on changing the sound to "fatten it up" and such. But whatever they do just makes it sound worse in my opinion! At least give me the option to use the dry, unaltered tone and I'll EQ, compress, reverb, and/or chorus it as necessary for whatever I'm playing that day, you know?

That said, I do love VSTs in general. I have spent a combined total of around $350 on VST instruments to recreate the sound of a Steinway D, a Hammond B3, and several modern and vintage drums and cymbals. They're not perfect, but that's also better than the $200,000 it would have cost me to acquire all of those actual instruments. 

Also note that the piano voicing plays a very important role here. If the tines are as little as a few mms above the pickups, you will be so much into the fundamental tone that it will muddy itself defeating any chances for bell. If you haven't done so already, it might be good to pick a few notes in the middle register and voice see if this gets a difference.

Assuming the escapement is already OK, you need only tighten the inner screw, playing the note until it hits the overtone (harmonic) range. Then untighten it a little so you just fall back into fundamental. You're at a sweet spot then where you'll have the best tone.

This is a huge, huge aspect of it. The physical sound creation needs to be right before any amount of EQ can get you a decent tone. Proper voicing through the tonebar screws, making sure the strikeline is set properly, and making sure the pickup distance from the tines is appropriate will all make your Rhodes sound brighter and punchier with less muddiness in the low-mids.

Great tone. However, you really ought to get a Smallstone or MXR phaser though because they're pretty cheap and you just can't recreate that sound easily!

(Also, I very recently discovered Reaper. Great DAW!)

Do any of you guys have any experience with the Vintage Vibe stuff? Their preamps, and other assorted goodies? I've always really wanted the Quadrapuss. Any thoughts?

I've got the Stereo Vibe preamp and love it. Here's a clip I posted of it awhile back showing off different EQ settings and tremolo settings. (And a little Small Stone phaser action at the end for good measure )

http://soundcloud.com/dan-belcher/preamp-example

Also, it has the same exact faceplate design as the older suitcase preamp so it looks stock aside from the cheekblock power supply.

[great]

Bypassing the stage piano's passive controls is a great way to clean up your signal and reduce some noise and hiss. Come straight off the RCA connection and plug into your amp or pedal chain or mixer.

Some thoughts: the treble on a Rhodes is really closer to what would be a midrange frequency for something like a guitar or bass amp, and it's a fairly narrow frequency range. An EQ pedal or running through a mixer with EQ adjustments or something may help, but like jean-papa mentioned I can certainly imagine running through a preamp designed for the Rhodes would be most likely to get the job done. I personally use the Vintage Vibe Stereo Vibe preamp and get an extremely clean, low-hiss tone that I can get to be fairly bright if I turn up the treble and turn down the bass (on a '78 piano, so it's a different tone than you'd get, but still applicable). The Rhodes already has a good amount of bass when it comes off the harp -- I end up cutting a lot of that bass on my preamp, and if I'm recording it and plan on mixing it with other instruments, I usually need to cut the bass even further for it to really sit well in the mix. When I play through a guitar amp, the amp adds a fair bit of noise and hiss, but it's mostly negligible if you're just listening through the amp. If I try to record playing through the amp, however, the hiss really becomes noticable so I tend to just record direct for a cleaner sound.

Cool, good to have that info available to anyone else trying to go your route I suppose! FYI, installation is really pretty easy. They forgot to include the faceplate and knobs by mistake when boxing my order and I had to wait another few days to get those, but other than that, I was able to remove the old passive electronics and faceplate and put the new assembly in very quickly. (I am assuming your namerail already has the holes drilled for a suitcase preamp. Can you confirm that?)