Does anyone know how Herbie recorded his rhodes in 70s ?

[spuchtelwulz]

The only thing i know about Herbie's recording is that he used a 88 Suitcasepiano,but i think this is not really difficult to find out....i wonder how he recorded it...did he use an additional amp like the fender twin and recorded through a microphone or did he use the direct way from the chinch-jack inside the rhodes directly to the recording tools?Does anyone know?If Mr. Rubinson happens to visit this page...please say something about it,David:-)!

[CherryFive]

good questions...

[Loucas]

HEAR HERBIE HIMSELF TALKING ABOUT THIS : http://www.fenderrhodes.com/history/audio.php

interestingly enough, i have the answer. this is from a skype conversation with my fellow-herbie-nut mate max who tracked down an interview with david rubinson from a magazine he had:

[09:55:20] Max Schlueter says: what's the most difficult keyboard instrument to record? [asked to david rubinson]
[09:56:16] Tom O'Grady says: a ha - what did he say - the rhodes?
[09:59:03] Max Schlueter says: the rhodes electric piano is probably the hardest single keyboard to record, harder than an acoustic piano. the dynamics are very wide, and the transients are very strange up and down the keyboard; they're not uniform. you'll get sudden transients that are way off the scale, and then when there is a pianissimo section, the electronics of the instrument are so structured that the notes sink down somewhere into the noise level. the output electronics in the rhodes are not particularly of professional recording quality. recording direct from an electric piano, which is what almost everybody does, and certainly what we do, you have to use a limiter on the signal because of the dynamic range and because of the particular way that the tines are struck. there's a very fast transient.
[09:59:40] Max Schlueter says: does that create distortion?
[10:00:48] Max Schlueter says: there's peak distortion on the transients, and also, because of the way the piano is designed, there's harmonic distortion, too, if you hit a cluster, or a good fat chord the way herbie does with his left hand - he's not someone who just jabs at the piano with his left hand.
[10:01:05] Max Schlueter says: are there any other pecularities in recording the electric piano?
[10:03:54] Tom O'Grady says: that is very interesting
[10:04:29] Max Schlueter says: you're familiar with the effect where, on stereo records, the electric piano vibrato bounces back and forth between the left and right channels? well, the device that makes the vibrato on a rhodes is a phase-cancellation device. it's not like a leslie - there's nothing physically moving. so if you record the instrument that way in stereo, when you play it through a monaural system, such as a tabletop radio, the whole piano will disappear. the signals will add up to zero. in order to prevent this, you have to record the piano out of phase when you're using vibrato. then when you play it mono, you'll still hear the piano. but when you go back to normal straight piano without vibrato, you have to go back in phase.
[10:04:50] Tom O'Grady says: interesting that he recorded directly from the piano (and not mic'd which is what i assume he meant).
[10:05:24] Max Schlueter says: that's what interests me most as well...i've always been very keen to know how herbie's rhodes was recorded
[10:05:41] Max Schlueter says: to me it sounds as though they didn't mike the rhodes but went direct
[10:06:35] Tom O'Grady says: i think a lot of people must think they mic'd it - i believe there's less trouble with hum that way. but herbie's rhodes sounds so warm, like melting butter, on those headhunters records - amazing that they recorded it direct
[10:11:42] Max Schlueter says: well, rubinson's and fred catero's (the engineer who recorded virtually all of herbie's 70s albums) first bought a recording studio in san mateo called pacific recording
[10:11:55] Max Schlueter says: that studio had a quad 8 console
[10:12:32] Max Schlueter says: as rubinson got more work on the west coast, he bought a studio in the wally heider recording complex, he bought studio a
[10:13:10] Max Schlueter says: i'm pretty sure that they had an API desk there
[10:13:50] Max Schlueter says: in 1977, rubinson then built his own recording studio, also in san francisco, which was called the automatt...there they recorded on a trident tsm

so there you go, herbie's rhodes was recorded direct, with a limiter.
tom
www.myspace.com/tom_ogrady

[Spookyman]

I allways thought it was recorded with ProTools 7  :lol:

Thanks a lot for the report, i'm allways interested in vintage recording technic !

[Nitrofunk]

The most interesting Quote is the one about the "Out of Phase"-Recording Techique when the Suitcase's Vibrato is enabled. The funny Thing is that during a recent Recording Session we accidentally recorded my Suitcase 88 out of Phase (which was caused by some faulty XLR-Adapters). And the Moments when the Vibrato was enabled sounded indeed very spacious, three-dimensional.
Peter

[The Real MC]

I have a strong suspicion that Herbie's Suitcase 88 was fitted with pickups from late 1960s sparkletop pianos.

I bought a 1967 sparkletop piano back in 2010 that was missing the original electronics.  No loss as I never liked the sound of the Jordan preamp/power amp, so I was forced to use the output right off the harp.

While playing with pickup adjustment I discovered an interesting trick of the late 1960s green coil wire pickups - if you place them too close to the tines, the pickup coils saturate causing a squaring of the sinusoidal timbre of the Rhodes sound.  But if you back them off just right, you get a brief pleasant "thunk" on attack transients with hard playing, which sounds like a limiter.  When I heard that I recognized the Herbie Hancock sound.

Herbie's first use of Rhodes piano was with a sparkletop piano provided by Miles Davis, so Herbie may had exploited that trick.  I tried that trick with pickups on 1970s Rhodes and they will not produce that effect.  It only seems to work with the green coil wire pickups of the sparkletop era pianos.

Since the original electronics on my piano were gone I was forced to experiment with external amps, preamps, and DIs.  Turns out that the Jordan preamp was hiding a wonderful tone.  The green coil wire pickups are very sensitive to loading - if the impedance of the receiving device is too low, you get tone suck and the pickups get very noisy.  I had read that recording engineers would record the Rhodes signal right off the harp using a DI with minimum one mega ohm input impedance.  I have several DIs and the varying input impedance of each did impact the tone and noise.  None were optimal so I acquired a Countryman Type 10 DI that has an input impedance of 10 mega ohm.  When I used that, the noise disappeared and I got this wonderful tone from my sparkletop, which ranged between a beautiful bell tone and the "fusion bark" of early 1970s pianos with dynamic playing.  Later pianos would not reproduce this trick.

During the 1960s there were no active devices with 10 mega ohm input impedance, the technology didn't exist.  The Jordan preamp wasn't optimal so it was designed to drastically reduce the treble to cut the noise from the pickups.  Using the harp signal you could use a Fender amplifier - such as a Twin Reverb which had a one mega ohm input impedance, that was the best there was at the time.

One of my favorite amps with my sparkletop piano is my old Selmer Truvoice Zodiac Twin Thirty, a UK amplifier from the early 1960s that is not common in the US.  I play guitar through it as it resembles the sound of a Fender Twin Reverb, so why not try it with the Rhodes.  It sounds great with the sparkletop piano but it still a little noisy.  So I recorded the sparkletop direct using the Countryman DI, then reamp'd it back to the Selmer using a Radial JCR Reamp box - same great tone but no more noise.

So my strong suspicion is that the "Herbie Hancock" Rhodes sound was achieved using sparkletop era green coil wire pickups adjusted for that "thunk" attack transient, recorded direct off the harp using a high input impedance DI, then reamp'd back to an amplifier of choice and mic'd for the final sound.